Scotland Day 3. First trip to Edinburgh.

The public transportation here is amazing. In the span of 90 minutes we went from our hotel room in Glasgow to standing on top of the train station in Edinburgh with an incredible view of Old Town.

From there we hopped on another bus and made our way to Rosslyn Chapel. It is in the process of being restored so the outside pictures were not great. Here is one with the scaffolding around it.
Rosslyn is magnificent. Nearly every inch is covered in carvings and Bas-Reliefs. There are so many thematic elements that it is hard to separate them all. There are signposts all around to give you information, but it is really just guesswork for the most part. Pictures are not allowed inside the chapel, so we had to settle for pictures of the of the signs around the outside.

We ate lunch afterward at The Grail restaurant and then had a pint at the place across the street since it was closer to the bus stop. We rode back to Edinburgh and got off a little before our stop. We walked through the Princes Street Garden. It's a very nice park and there were a lot of people there for a Tuesday afternoon. There were humongous seagulls there; so big that could have been served for Thanksgiving.

We walked a good bit uphill to get to the Royal Mile.

The Royal Mile is the mile long street that is a shopping and tourist areas these days. In the 17th century the Royal Mile was Edinburgh. For a long time the city was one mile by one-quarter mile with a wall around it. That was it. The castle was at one end and the Holyrood Palace was at the other end. As we walked we ran into a street magician performing and commanding a growing crowd of people. He was funny and got the crowd involved. He juggled knives, swallowed a sword, and the had a guy stand on him while he laid on a bed of nails and ate fire. Does that qualify as a triple threat?

I had picked up a flier earlier detailing a tour of the underground chambers under South Bridge. We found the stand for the tour and hung about for a few minutes until our guide showed up. The tour was mostly centered around ghosts, but the guide did give us some details on the history of the place and the thousands of people that lived in the darkness and squalor under South Bridge in the 17th century. The woman in the cloak is our guide. The picture of the ring of stones was set up by a Wiccan priest who stayed the night in the room by himself a decade ago. He swears that some malevolent force attacked him and that he left the stone circle in place to keep it contained. While I don't have any belief in that sort of thing, the place is very creepy.

Afterward we headed back to the train station to get to Glasgow.

The train ride between the cities is very nice. It passes through some very scenic areas. The Queen Street Station is were we got out and we stopped at a bar on the corner called Europa. The were offering a pizza and pitcher special during the World Cup game that sounded too good to pass up. They gave us a huge pitcher. It was supposed to hold 4 pints, but I think we squeezed right around 5 out of it. Of course, Carol drank most of it. ;)