Up bright and early for a full day in Edinburgh … I kept wanting to pronounce it “Edin-burg” not “Edin-burough”. We were anchored out in the Newtown area, so will take the tender into shore. Our guide on the bus was really interesting, and started by mentioning that that Newtown isn’t all that new, it started in 1767, but when your history goes back thousands of years, 200 years is new. About 25% of the students in Edinburgh go to private schools, many founded in the 18th century, including one called Fettes College (actually for 8-18-year-olds). The actor Sean Connery had an early job delivering milk to the prestigious College, so upon learning this, author Ian Fleming managed to work attending Fettes College into James Bond’s fictional background. The second half of the 18th century saw a huge upswing in Scottish creativity, inventors, scientists, writers, and engineers flourished, and we went by sone of the homes (such as Robert Louis Stevenson’s). The lovely 4-story buildings around the place where the shuttle bus would pick us up were built by an architect named Morry, came from a family of lighthouse builders which built about 200 of them throughout Scotland. The guide also pointed out a status of James Clerk Maxwell, whose four equations describe the relationship of optics, electricity and magnetism which led to discoveries such as the phone and mobile communications and GPS; he first asked who had heard of Maxwell, and only Barney replied. As we drove past a huge public park near the Scottish Parliament, we went through the neighborhood of Greyfriars, where is located the cafe where J.K. Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book, and took some of the name of characters (like Tom Riddle) from the gravestones in the nearby Greyfriars graveyard. On Candlemakers Row nearby, there was also a statue of Bobby the Skye Terrier, so distraught at the death of his master that he spent the next 14 years of his life guarding the grave, taken are of by locals who admired his dedication, and he became known as Greyfriars Bobby. Our bus soon dropped us by the Edinburgh Castle which sat high atop a volcanic mount dominating the city. Tickets for the day were sold out, but that was OK as we had planned to go to the National Museum of Scotland.
We walked down the Royal Mile, filled with shops selling Scottish wool sweaters, kilts, and anything plaid. I resisted the temptation to buy yet another sweater, so we enjoyed the walk on a lovely warm day (about 70 degrees) to the Museum. The Museum was quite large, with a five-story addition to the Victorian central Grand Gallery devoted to thousands of years of Scottish history. There were also galleries devoted to science and technology (the first rotational steam engine, Dolly the Sheep and more), artifacts from all over the world including Egypt, design and fashion, and the natural sciences (dinosaurs of course). We decided to focus on Scottish history, as this is something unique to this area that we’d not seen before. We began with the earliest people, dating from 8,000BCE with remains from burials, sacrifices, and worship. Four really interesting galleries showed how people lived, ate, drank, made what they needed from stone, leather, and wood, interacted with other peoples, and more. The famous Lewis Chess set was there, along with the Hilton of Cadboll Stone with its fanciful Pictish creatures, hunting scenes, and early Christian iconography. There were many tall stones filled with Pictish animal carvings and interwoven plants and animals similar to Celtic artworks, many of which were incredibly geometric, and these spanned the pre-Christian and early Christian eras, and also reflected many Viking influences. The Roman occupation of Scotland was also presented, showing their weapons, the silver they used to bribe local chieftains, and information about the wall Hadrian built to keep out the barbarians. After a quick lunch, we continued upstairs to the gallery, describing the kingdom of the Scots from 1099-late 1600s, with all its battles, political and religious intrigues, advances in technology and art, weapons, stunning jewelry, a beautifully carved harp, and of course William Wallace and Robert the Bruce, and more. On the way out we stopped by the animatronic Millennium Clock, which had been commissioned from a group of artists for January 2000, which described some of the horrors of war and distant of the 20th century in hope that the 21st century would be better.
We then had a long, 45- minute walk to the shuttle bus pickup, which took us down Prince Street, which unlike the Royal Mile that was filled with tourist items, had more of the everyday clothing, electronics, groceries, pharmacy items. It was more of a place where locals shop, rather like the rue d’Alesia in the 14th in Paris where we went shopping with Catherine and Anne. Back to the port and then the tender back to the ship. We read for a while and I updated the blog, and we had dinner at the Italian restaurant, and my seafood risotto was excellent.
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