No Railings

One of our first views: Arthur's Seat. From this prospect, it seems impossible to climb. It's not.

Where you stayed, what you ate and what you did are the three gross measures of the quality of a holiday. 

Where we stayed: APEX Waterloo Place. The hotel was fine. The room, after an upgrade, was a good size, quiet and comfortable. 

What we did not know beforehand is that the hotel caters to bus tours - every morning the lobby was crammed with the luggage of outgoing groups. The restaurant is therefore not really a restaurant: it is a dining hall for tour package customers. We avoided it.

What we ate: Long stays without access to a kitchen can run to money. After our second $70 lunch, I started thinking about ways to economize. We had a bunch of serviceable meals, one exceptional (lunch at the George Pub) and one that was fine but could have been better (dinner at The Honours). 

What we did: Highest scores in this category. Edinburgh is interesting.

Finer Measures of What Makes Edinburgh Interesting

Above and two below: City as romantic landscape.  

The temple structure is the Calton Hill monument to Dugald Stewart, a leading mathematician and philosopher of the 18th and 19th C.

And here's the view from the top of Arthur's Seat, where we went twice during our stay. We noted the lack of railings and the long fall if you slipped.

Environmentalism 

In the corridor on the way to the "restaurant" at the APEX Waterloo: it's a jungle-colour-painted Disney-influenced figure of an ape sitting on a box marked "FRAGILE". I get it.

Practically every specimen in the Royal Botanical Gardens - including these Amazonian lilies - came with descriptions of how endangered they are in the wild. 

By the place where our bus made an emergency pit stop: the only electric vehicle charging station in Scotland (that I saw).

Dyson has the Scottish market cornered: Airblades were everywhere.

View of the Firth of Forth: telltale smudge of photochemical haze on the horizon. The air quality in Edinburgh seemed good, but they have oil refineries north of the city.

One of a cluster of six wind turbines on the way out of Edinburgh.

Dogs

The Scots love their dogs. They are especially fond of dogs who sit by their master's graves for 14 years. 

Bruce by Greyfriar's Bobby. Tourists rub his nose - the dog's, not Bruce's - for good luck. 

At the National Library: a display of 80's ephemera.

Royalty and Nationalism

There is no nation more fully pro-monarchy and at the same time adamantly anti-monarchy than the Scots (I am aware of the Irish).

In the National Portrait Gallery: Queen Victoria's portrait gets its own bed curtains.  

We stayed at WATERLOO Place: this is a statue of Wellington.

On the other hand: England was the enemy for many years as commemorated by this bas relief inclusion high on a wall in Edinburgh castle. Flodden Wall, pictured elsewhere on this blog, was built to keep the British out after the 1513 Scottish defeat at Flodden Field.

Scotland loved Sir Walter Scott because he crafted a quickly stale-dated (for the rest of the world) but immensely attractive Scottish national character. That's why he got the big monument, not because of Ivanhoe.   

Traffic

I don't imagine that the traffic in Edinburgh is worse than in any other moderate-sized city (Edinburgh's population is just under half a million people). But it comes at you from every direction and on the wrong side of the road. Intersections are controlled by elaborate, unpredictable signals. 

Crossing the street in Edinburgh is an experience mixing elements of "Waiting for Godot" and Russian roulette. Locals seem to understand when it is safe to ignore the "don't walk" signals but most of the time it seemed wisest to just wait (and wait and wait and wait) for the little green man.

Politics

I admire a country where Socialism is a political party and not a vituperative epithet.

Burial Grounds

If you have a thing for graveyards, Edinburgh's the place for you. During the Scottish Renaissance, philosophers, lawyers, accountants, goldsmiths, architects - everyone with some extra scratch and social status to put on display - paid for extravagant, elaborate and, now, almost entirely ruined "memorials" - some so weathered by age there is no saying whose life and death they mark.

A rhyme-time Jeopardy answer: what is Hume's tomb?

Calton Burial Ground: right across the street from our hotel.

Fill in the blank.

Public Washrooms

One measure of a society is the state of its prisons; another is the state of its public washrooms. In Italy, when we visited there, it seemed as if providing adequate facilities to millions of visitors utterly overwhelmed the public imagination: it just couldn't be done. In Edinburgh, it's done, done well, and, recalling the photo from Thursday's post, even done with flair.

Walk Along Water of Leith

We were drawn to the Water of Leith Walkway more than any other identifiable thing in Edinburgh.

Edinburghers build bridges like they mean it.

This is a revolt of mushrooms. They are consuming a stone.

Lost in our search for Dean Village, we came across the Water of Leith and the first thing we saw was this eerie figure .... On second look, it's a statue.

Some lucky Edinburghers have the Water of Leith as part of their back yard.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen