A Day out in Edinburgh

Well, today was certainly a gallivanting adventure, and let me just say that my body is certainly feeling it!  I'd say that we walked more today than all of our days combined so far!

I'm certainly not complaining.....but, then again, my back and legs aren't too happy at the moment.

It probably didn't help that my sleep was definitely short changed last night. Honestly......who would have thought that South Queensferry would have such a hopping night life?  The sounds travel right up and through the window into our room.  But that's OK,  it might just be as noisy in those parts of the house without this awesome view, so I think I can put up with a little noise.

I managed to get a great photo of the new bridge over the Firth early this morning.

And couldn't resist taking another of the Forth rail Bridge as well.

After a quick breakfast, we hopped in the car and drove to Dalmeny Station so that we could take the train into Edinburgh.  We are only a few stops away, so it did not take long for us to arrive, and step out of the station into warmth and sunshine!  How lucky was that?

Our fist stop was the Scott Monument.  Amy had spotted that in a tour book that I had brought along and she thought it would be fun to climb to the top to see the views.   We got there just as the place was opening, bought the tickets, and started climbing.

There are 267 steps.  They are spiral, like those in a turret, and are in a relatively narrow passage to the top, although there are several landings to stop to catch your breath.  Which I needed!

Here you can see the castle in the distance.

The Balmoral hotel with the firth in the background

Arthur's seat on Salisbury Crag

the three of us catching our breath!

and a selfie with the castle in the background.

As I made the journey to the top, I had presumed that there was another spiral staircase, running in the opposite direction back down to the bottom.

Guess what?   There was NOT!

It gets rather narrow at the top of the staircase, so when those persons at the top decided they wanted to come down, rather than wait for us to finish our track to the top, they insisted on passing by us to go down.  That involved holding tightly onto the center part of the staircase, and breathing in as far as I could muster so that they could squeeze past. Let's just say it required becoming very friendly with complete strangers.  Luckily, that only lasted a few moments.

And, we had no trouble descending the steps as it appeared that no one was crazy enough to attempt the climb to the top after we bought our tickets. 

The experience was worth the effort as the views were excellent today.  But this was definitely a once in a life time experience.  Mountain climbing isn't in my future, believe me!

 Here are a couple of shots of the monument from ground level.

From here we headed to Holyrood Palace for a tour.  

This place was a bit pricey, but when it was all said and done, the tour was very well done.  This palace continues to be used by the Royal family and the queen conducts private audiences in the Throne Room, which we toured.  

Mary, Queen of Scots stayed in this palace, and we were able to view her apartments as well as several personal items that she had owned.  The descriptions were sufficient to imagine her life there. Informative but not over done. 

The Abbey built in the 1100s by King David I still stands next to the palace, as preserved ruins.

It's not difficult to imagine how grandiose the Abbey must have been.

And along the back of the property are well groomed gardens, adding to the charm and beauty of the Palace.  Every July, the Queen hosts a garden party which involves approximately 8000 people in attendance in these very grounds.  

From here we decided to walk back up the Royal Mile to Edinburgh Castle.

It might not be obvious in my photos, but this place was packed today!

We took in some of the key features, but it was tough visiting the exhibits with so many tourists crowding about.

But we still managed to visit the key features.

The Royal War Memorial was designed by Robert Lorimer.  We learned about him earlier in the week, remember?

Walking through the interior, you realize the enormous loss of life that the Scots endured in the great war.  There are lists of books of those men who never came home alive.  In one battalion, over 10,000 men perished. The horrors of war, yet, an honor to those who gave the ultimate sacrifice. 

We toured the Royal Apartments, saw where King James I of Scotland was born (it was a pretty tiny room), viewed the Crown Jewels, then decided to head out and walk around time a bit more.

We ended up stopping into the Scottish Museum, which, in itself, could take weeks to go through.  But we only spent a couple of hours before heading to dinner on George Street. 

The views of the castle from the restaurant were awesome!

After a scrumptious dinner (at least mine was scrumptious), we headed back on the train to Queensferry, and back to our B&B.

Did I happen to mention the name?

The Ravenous Beastie.

And, here is photo of the creature.

We almost had a ravenous beastie in the room with us, as her dinner was lacking some real substance earlier.  But no worries, we managed to find something to fill her tummy so she is no longer ravenous, and I'm happy to say.....not a Beastie either!

It's been a long day and I'm exhausted, so I'm heading off to bed.

Until tomorrow. 

A Picture Perfect Day in Scotland

Last night, I lay in bed listening to the rain pelting against the window and wondering just what was instore for us today.  Much to my surprise, we awoke to sunshine and brilliant blue skies with white puffy clouds floating by.  Now, how lucky was that?

We happened to arise early,  ate a quick breakfast, and headed to Aberdour along the coast in Fife.  I've always been a wee bit partial to this beautiful village from the first moment we set foot in it, several years ago.  And we found ourselves going back and staying there on several occasions when Marty was working in Scotland years ago.

It's a relatively small and quiet village, with a beautiful harbor and the train station has earned the award of "the prettiest" in years past.   But what I love the best about this place is the easy access to the coastal trail and the views that it has to offer.  Gazing upon these photos, how could you not agree?

We opted to climb the trail to the top of the cliff for a view of the surroundings. 

Here you can see Inchcolm Abbey on the island in the Firth

as well as a magnificent view of the Forth Rail Bridge.

Just a spectaular day, don't you agree?

We took a quick stroll around the castle. Just for the record, Aberdour castle has been standing in that spot since the early 1100s, although a good part of it is ruins at this point, but carefully preserved by Historic Scotland.

At this point, we hopped in the car and headed to Falkland.  My original plan was to head to the Hill of Tarvit first so that we could enjoy tea in their cafe, but a last minute check on my part showed that the tea room was now closed for the rest of the season, thereby prompting the quick change  in the order of touring.

On our way to Falkland, we were redirected due to some sort of highway incident, and we found ourselves on a winding backroad in the middle of a windmill farm.  Certainly my first experience getting up close and personal with the gigantic machines.  I didn't think to take photos at that point, but,  I managed to capture a photo from the car just before we merged onto the highway.

There were at least a dozen or more standing in the fields surrounding Loch Gelly, something that we did not see in our past visits. We never cease to find something different along our travels, that's for sure!

Finally, we arrived in Falkland, parked the car, and as we were walking along the sidewalk into the village, we came across a lovely little tea room.  How could we resist?  We headed in and each of us enjoyed a lovely cup of tea and scrumptious, warm fruit scone, topped with raspberry jam Scottish whipped cream.

Just lovely!

With a smile on our faces, we headed out the door and over to the palace for a tour.  Falkland is a relatively small village, and, to be quite frank, the Palace takes up a good bit of it.  It continues to be one of the family holdings of the Queen, although she does not visit often.  We were told that Prince William popped in one day when he was at St. Andrews, as part of a history class that he was taking.  I found that to be amusing, considering that the subject of the glorified house would be his Royal relatives.

The interior holdings included a bed commissioned by James VI as well as numerous portraits of the family over the years.  We learned that it was Charles II's wife, Catherine of Portugal, who introduced the practice of drinking tea to Scotland, in the mid 1600's.  This certainly surprised me as I had somehow associated the practice as being a British tradition for many years earlier that this. 

At one time, this palace was considered to be the largest in all of Scotland.  It was a family retreat home to James V who visited occasionally.  Although the center portion is carefully preserved, parts of it stand as ruins.

I was also surprised to learn that there has been a Catholic Chapel inside since the palace was built in the early 1500's.  The ceiling and interior walls are the original and have been untouched all of these years. Mass continues to be said every Sunday at 9:00 AM in the chapel. 

One last feature worth mentioning is that the grounds house a tennis court built in 1541 for James V.  It is the oldest, original court in all of Great Britain.  The court is located near the back gardens of the palace which made for a lovely walk this afternoon.

Here we are with the back of the palace behind us.

The palace sits on the edge of the village, which, in itself is relatively small.  We took a few photos of the center fountain, and surrounding area before heading to the car park. 

I just can't get over how lovely this little village is!

At this point, we headed towards the Hill of Tarvit, which is located just outside of Cupar.  This is actually a stately mansion,  originally built in the 17th century, but transformed into Edwardian style in the early 1900s by Robert Lorimer.  If you recall, we learned about Robert from Margaret the tour guide at Kellie Castle. He was a renown architect, and the house reflects his brilliance.

The house featured delicately plastered walls and ceilings as well as finely carved wooden banisters throughout the rooms. 

Framed family photos hung in many of the rooms.

The house was equipped with "modern" conveniences, including electricity, running water and a telephone.

Here you see a food warmer designed by Lorimer, which looks like a wooden cabinet, but when you peek inside (and you know I did), the interior is completely metal, allowing for keeping the food warm, but not causing any damage to the wood while doing so.

How clever is that?

The relatively large bathroom featured an extremely unique shower, which not only featured a "rain" shower head, but also had little vents poked into the sides of the circular piece where you stand, so that one could choose to be "sprayed" from the sides!

I have the feeling that feature wasn't too popular since this is the one and only time that I have seen anything like this.

The house also had a large billiard table which was open for one to try a hand at if they chose.  Marty and Amy both tried a few rounds, but found the long length of the table to be a bit of a hindrance for play.

In the yard outside the front of the house, there was a relatively large group enjoying playing croquet.

They were certainly having a great time, and you really couldn't beat the weather for some outside entertainment!

But we decided that our feet had really had enough walking for one day, so we headed to South Queensferry where we will be staying for the next few days before departing on Sunday.

Here is another shot of the new bridge over the firth the I promised earlier.

You can see it just behind the old bridge.  

Our B&B was very easy to find, and let me just say that the room is awesome!  Here is the view from our bedroom window.

Can someone pinch me?  It really does seem too good to be true, doesn't it?

We walked down the street to a local Italian restaurant that is located right on the firth.  The waiter led us to a table next to the window with a fabulous view, seating us with a friendly, "Prego!" The background music was Perry Como singing "oldies" Romantic music.    Oh, and let me mention that the waiter was, indeed, VERY Italian, but was wearing a tartan plaid vest.  What a combination!

The food, view and atmosphere were all top notch.  We honestly could not have asked for a better evening.

Before I end for the day,  I  might just owe my newfound Scottish readers an apology regarding last evening's post.  I commented on my husband's embarrassment in having to order a drink called a "Woo Woo" at the bar.  I honestly never heard of such a thing.  Not that I'm a big drinker, but I really do think that I would have seen that name of a drink on a menu somewhere had it been available in the United States.

Well, look what I found today!

 Woo Woo in a can!,
So, here's to a Woo Woo, a dram and a magnificent view of the Forth Bridge at night!
You just can't ask for too much more than this, can you?

Tomorrow we are off to Edinburgh for the day, taking the train from Dalmeny station.  I see that rain is in the forecast, but am hoping that it will be sprinkles and not deluges.  In any event, we are up to the gallivanting adventure.  It will probably be a late night, so I can't say that I will get an update out tomorrow.

But I'll be sure to try to keep you posted!