Edinburgh - A City of Scottish Charm and Fascination

As our explorations of Newcastle and the surrounding area came to an end, we began to look northward. Scotland beckoned! We boarded a train that took us from England into Scotland and arrived in Edinburgh's Haymarket station. We settled into a nice flat in Roseburn, just a short bus ride further west and prepared to explore this famous city.

Edinburgh's heart was just a short bus ride east. Here Edinburgh Castle perched on top of a towering basaltic crag, remnant of an extinct volcano. Royal Mile runs down from it along the crest of a narrow ridge, ending at the Palace of Holyrood House and the Scottish Parliament. Princes Street, the principle shopping street, runs parallel to the Royal Mile but below it and also on the opposite side of a ravine, once a loch, now a lovely greenspace. Surely, this was one of the most dramatic cityscapes we have ever seen!

For most all visitors, a visit to Edinburgh Castle is a must, and so it was for us as well.
Click here to read about our visit (opens in a new window)

After this dramatic introduction to Scotland, our next stop was the Tourist Office where we bought a handy pocket sized Lonely Planet Guide to the city with maps. Now we were ready, first to study and then to explore the rest of this great city! We soon realized that the two weeks we had to spend in Edinburgh would be totally inadequate for a real understanding of all that this city had to offer! Nevertheless, we soldiered on, enjoying every minute as we explored not only the "attractions" but also, the neighborhoods and the immediate surroundings.

We began at the bottom of Royal Mile with a visit to the Palace of Holyrood House. The amazing art collections here provided our first exposure to the royal history of Scotland. At the same time it is part of English royal history as it is the official residence of Queen Elizabeth when she is in Scotland. Unfortunately, no photos were allowed inside.

Alongside the Palace, the ruins of Holyrood Abbey stood haunting and austere, brightened by the lawns and flowers of the surrounding park and the rising slope of Arthur's Seat, another volcanic peak, beyond.

Just across the street, the Scottish Parliament provided a completely different architectural style! On another day, we toured this amazing place, both inside and out, further expanding our knowledge of the Scottish people and their history.

It was now becoming very clear to us that Scotland is really another country with its own special history, legends, cuisine, beliefs, politics and culture. We realized that in our US education system, Scotland was not well differentiated from England and that many of the prominent people from our 'English' history, were actually Scottish (Sir Walter Scott, Adam Smith, and Robert Lewis Stevenson to name a few). In more recent times, well known people, such as Sean Connery and Gordon Brown are Scottish, too.

With this insight, a visit to the Scottish Portrait Gallery enabled us to meet and learn the stories of Scottish people from around the world. In addition to the wonderful library and the gorgeous central gallery, of special interest were displays showing Scottish royal lineage beginning in the 1200s, on through Mary, Queen of Scots and James VI who became James I of England in 1566, and moving forward to the present Royal Family. We were pleased to find our knowledge of Scottish history increasing dramatically.

On another day, we visited the National Museum of Scotland, with it's historic original building and modern new addition. Inside, we found it packed with objects and documentation about everything Scottish. Of special interest was the lineage of Scottish royalty contemporary with the more well known (to us) English royalty. Before long, we were feeling completely boggled with so much new information to comprehend.

The Scottish National Gallery was filled with such a wondrous array of pictures and sculpture that many visits would be required to see everything.

The Museum of Edinburgh, housed in a complex of historic buildings, offered us a maze of rooms packed full of iconic objects of all sorts. As urbanists, we especially appreciated the documentation about the planned development of the New Town. We learned that in the 1700s the city fathers decided that an expansion of the congested city beyond the medieval Old Town was essential for the city's continuing health, growth and vitality. The fields to the north of the Royal mile on the far side of Nor Loch (today's Princes Street Gardens) were acquired and a design competition announced. In response, James Craig, a young urban designer and architect created a plan for this major addition to the town in 1766. The plan was accepted after some revision and before long construction began. The grid of streets lined with neoclassical and Georgian architecture, and the squares at each end, offered a sharp contrast to the labyrinth of streets surrounding Royal Mile in the Old Town.

In between visits to museums we marveled at the wonderful sights Edinburgh is famous for