Julia’s Journical

The day after our wee trip into the highlands, Marlene and David took us to Glasgow to see The People’s Palace, a museum on the social history of Scotland. We spent a few hours going through the museum which was fascinating. The residents of Glasgow have had a hard life over the past 100+ years.

On the back of the museum was a glasshouse where we had a cool drink because it was so hot in the glasshouse I took my 2 jumpers off!

We found out that Glasgow still has a rougher side. While we were still in the museum David found that his car had been broken into and his watch and Blackberry stolen. The police arrived very promptly and wrote things down in their little note book. It was a hot sunny day and the car was parked in the middle of a park full of people lying in the sun on the grass, and no one saw anything!

David drove us back home and cleaned all the glass out of the car. I was feeling unwell and had the best afternoon nap ever in Marlene’s spare bed (omg so comfortable).

We spent the next day making sure Marlene and David’s amazingly gorgeous, comfortable and beautiful couches didn’t get lonely. Before being driven all the way back to Edinburgh by David, a very luxurious door to door service!

The next day was very busy and full on for us, we didn’t get dressed till 2pm hung around the hostel eating pasta and cheese. We did go or a walk down the Royal Mile and planned the rest of our week though! On our walk we came across some amazing cherry blossoms! And being a huge cherry blossom fan…I took hundreds of photos!

this one is my favourite, the cherry blossoms in focus are in the shape of a heart!

the trees were outside an old church

while I took photos Lindsay made a new friend.

his new friend unfortunately had a penis rather badly drawn on his forehead.

We then walked around Hollyrood Palace and walked back up the Royal Mile, and resisted buying a second dose of Fudge….

The next day…Wednesday was Edinburgh Castle Day! The day we had been waiting for. We got up extra early, had breakfast, made our lunch and walked the 15 minutes to the castle. We walked up the Royal Mile, across the carpark and through the gates. As we stepped through the gates we were sent back in time! And you would never believe who we bumped into…but Claire and Jamie Fraser. Well not really. We walked through the gates, bought our tickets and went up in the the castle.

From the outside, the castle looks quite small, but in reality its huge! There are many buildings and car parked around the place.

this was the cafe with stale scones

this is the old military barracks and is still used by the military today, as it has been for hundreds of years.

the rock that the castle is built on has been inhabited since the bronze age, and buildings have been added, demolished and renovated since that time. The oldest building on the site is the St Marguerite Chapel, while dates back to the 1400s, the newest building is the ticket booth just inside the gates of the castle.

This is the one o’clock gun fired daily at 1pm so that ships in the harbor knew what time it was. Edinburgh is often very misty so the clock tower wouldn’t have been visible. When asked why they didn’t fire the gun at 12pm like in Greenwich, the tour guide said that it had been fired at this time since the 1700’s because one cannon ball is cheaper than 12.

We spent a good 4 hours wandering around the many museums within the Castle, my favourites were:

The royal chambers, with their ornate and rather large fire places (Lindsay is doing a lovely job at showing how big the fireplaces were)

And in the Museum about the Prisoners of War kept at the castle they have old doors that had been carved into by prisoners (usually sailors) from the 1700s.

this carving was particularly interesting, if you look closely it says DUCATEZ, which is very similar to Decates, possibly a different spelling of the same name? Jacob showed me a photos of this from when he got back from his travels, and it was exciting to see the carving for myself!

After the museums we took the time to pose for the usual tourist photos:

And enjoyed the wind

and the view

before taking some more photos of the castle (you can never have too many!)

the ground was paved and very nice to look at, and just fantastic to walk on when you are a clumsy person who roles her ankles frequently which resulted in a rather drunken looking wobble.

And it was 5pm when we realised we had spent 6 hours walking around the castle that most tourist places recommend you give yourself 1-2 hours to look at it. So we had gotten our monies worth!

The following day was Climbing Arthur’s Seat Day!

It was a nice sunny day, with a cool breeze….until we arrived at the mountain/hill. The wind picked up and it started to rain a bit.

But we didn’t let that deter us, and began to walk up the steep slopes.

we stopped halfway for photos, ventolin and water before continuing up the hill/mountain.

Just before we reached the top we were overtaken a group of children on an excursion, the boys had sprinted up the mountain ahead of the class a a rather tired teacher was struggling behind trying to catch up!

We made it to the very top, where it was only a little bit chilly….

The view was pretty spectacular!

It took us about 1.5 hours to walk up the mountain…but about 10 minutes to get down again we found the fastest way was to slide down the grass like the world’s longest slippery dip. The grass made the ride very fast and smooth, I did pierced my hand on a rock but it was worth it!

The heather was flowering with beautiful Yellow flowers

At the bottom of Arthur’s Seat I decided to take a quick lie down:

we came across the remains of an old chapel

Lindsay was blown away!

the cement around the bricks was really interesting and had bits of pebbles and shells through it which was very interesting!

We decided that it was time to head home and eat non stop, we had spent several hours extra exploring the hill/mountain and taking photos!