6/12, Monday. Visit Edinburgh for on the last day of my 7-day Explorer Pass.
Linlithgow to Edinburgh X38. At 10:41 on time. 1 hr to Edinburgh center.
Stopped at
Corsdorphine Dovecot, a cool giant pigeon house (for meat production).
Unable to see the inside.
Waited for X38 for over 20 min to Edinburgh downtown.
There, walking to catch a Lothian bus for Craigmillar. The bus has wifi. £2 per trip.
Downtown Edinburgh is rather impressive.
The buildings around the castle and the park are all very handsome stone facade.
A lot of tourists though. So far the most crowded place I've been on this trip.
Craigmillar Castle (£7.5 included in the Explorer Pass).
A well-preserved ruin. Large ground. Very few visitors. Some picnic tables near the gate.
Mary of Scots stayed here recovering after giving birth to James VI.
Entered
Edinburgh Castle ~2:50pm, even though my ticket is for the 3:30 slot (£22 included in the Explorer Pass).
The castle sits on top of a bluff. Different levels of structures.
Way too crowded, to a point that's very unpleasant.
There are also quite a few employees keeping orders and answering questions, but no guided tour or talk.
The oldest building here (and in Scotland) is
St Margaret Chapel (12th century).
Quite plain inside.
The crown jewel and royal sceptre + sword in a room with 2 guards.
All in shining condition. No photos allowed.
A long queue outside in the sun, like in an TSA queue, only longer and hotter.
There are military museums, prisons... Not interesting.
The
One O'clock Gun (that used to set the maritime time of local ships. It's still fired at 1pm).
Tourists were taking turns to do selfies with
Mons Meg cannon (1449).
As you can tell, I didn't like Edinburgh Castle.
On the way out, walked along the large Prince Street Park. Quite pleasant.
All buses run on Prince St, but they have different stops.
Waited for X38 forever. Didn't see it in either direction.
Missed my connection bus at Falkirk. X37 runs every 2 hours to Glasgow.
I bought some bread and veggies at ASDA by the bus stop, ate at the train station next door in the very empty seating area.
Bus X37 arrived ~5 min late. About 7-8 people got on board.
1/3 way onto Glasgow, I was the only passenger left.
No wonder it only runs every 2 hours.
6/15 Thursday. Took direct bus from Glasgow to Edinburgh. Smooth.
Checked into an Airbnb just south of the Meadow (which is just south of Univ of Edinburgh), in an old-looking building.
It's a very large and pleasant meadow, which I walk back and forth for 3 days here.
Attended
Social data science hub launch at University of Edinburgh.
12 five-minute talks mostly by students.
Less than 50 people in the audience, most are friends or collaborators of the speakers.
I actually really like some of the talks.
Left after Q&A.
This auditorium is in one of those industrial concrete buildings. Pretty ugly, looks like 80s products.
It took me awhile to locate the room.
The old college looks nice.
Nearby, the
McEwen Hall is most impressive.
Used only for graduation. No public entrance.
Overall, University of Edinburgh is not as pretty or old as University of Glasgow.
I really like the
National Museum of Scotland, even though the building itself is kinda ugly.
It is very big. Has every category under the sun.
Dolly the sheep.
Dinasaur skeletons, prehistoric earthwares, Egyption sarcophagus, Roman/Greek statues, geo stones/fossils, historical mechanical devices, technology evolution, and of course Scottish specific articles throughout the time.
One room is dedicated to
Declaration of Arbroath (1320, independence of Scotland).
Clean bathrooms, cafes, tall airy walkways. 3 stories filled with things to see.
There's even a wave machine.
I spent many hours here, and joined the free hour-long
guided tour at 2pm.
I liked it so much that I came back later twice (11am and 2 time), but the 3rd time it had the same guide, so I left.
The 2 different guides are volunteers and each highlighted different objects in the museum, all I missed during my hours of browsing.
Made a note of these rare animals:
There's also a roof deck, but limited where you are allowed to go. They should put a cafe here.
St Giles Cathedral is stunning, both inside and out.
Beautiful stainglass windows.
It has one of the signed copies of
National Convenant, prominently displayed in a wooden frame.
Museum on the Mound of Bank of Scotland.
Scottish coins, notes, and everything related to money. It has some funny cases of life insurance bond.
Tech talks at
Fanduel in a new building just outside of the old town.
It looks like a startup in US' west coast: open office, ping-pong table, comfy chairs, phone booths, large deck, beer and snack.
This took care of my dinner today.
6/16 Friday.
Walking up to Calton Hill. First,
Robert Burns Monument at the end of the near cemetery.
The proper Calton Hill has the National Monument, as well as monuments for
Dugald Steward,
Horatio Nelson.
High enough to offer great view of the city.
There were quite a few tourists here.
I like the
Observatory House at the hilltop's west end.
Bursting with flowers now. A venue to rent. Closed at the moment.
Walking down the hill to the west. Visited
St. Mary's Catholic Cathedral.
Not too fancy from the outside, but nice interior with beautiful painted panels, stainglass windows, wood ceiling.
There are many nice looking churches. Some are now converted to event venues.
Visited the
royal botanic garden.
I went in the east gate, and out the west gate which has a huge cafe and shop, which also serves as visitor center.
Manicured lawn and little mounds. Curved pathways.
A small exhibition in the
Inverleith House (original residence of the garden director).
I also tagged along a guided tour, noted these 2 species: the
Scots Pine with reddish bark, and the pretty blue poppy of
Meconopsis.
A long walk back into the old town center. Checked out
St John's, another beautiful church (Episcopal).
Unique ceiling, nice stained glass windows.
Below the street level is a cute cafe with tables outside, next to a garden.
I reserved the 45 min
guide tour at 1:30pm at
Scottish Parliament.
We are not allowed to take photos inside the restricted area, only in the space open to self-guided tour.
The highlight is the assembly chamber.
Throughout the building, Scottish motifs are used.
I enjoyed the tour, but no longer remember what I learned. I was impressed about the representation of all corners of the state.
This concrete building and its surrounding area is very modern, ugly from one angle, better looking from a different facade.
Visited
National Gallery.
I especially like this painting of a stag titled
"Monarch" (mid left in this photo).
There're works by famous renaissance painters like Titian, Rubens, Rambrandt, Raphael, Da Vinci...
5pm book launch of Matthew Eddy’s
Media and the Mind: Art, Science and Notebooks as Paper Machines, 1700-1830” at University Library's
Center of Research Collections.
It's about student's note taking in the 18th century, which the author calls paper machine.
6pm, went to another talk by
Specific Learning Difficulties Network about raising awareness of dyslexia, at The Royal Society of Edinburgh.
For me, the content of the event is not the sole purpose. I use these event to check out the venue.
In this case, the Royal Society is a disappointment.
The building is not the prettiest.
The auditorium is somewhat small, seats ~100 people, probably enough.
Walking back at dinner time. Rose Street was bustling with activities.
Another beautiful church
Barclay Viewforth.
It was closed.
~8pm, I went to Bruntsfield Hotel. At its basement bar,
Andy the Highlander was demostrating how to wear a proper kilt.
He had various ones for you to try, one of which was used in a movie set.
Maybe 6 people, all a bit drunk.
6/17 Saturday.
Early morning, hiked up to
Arthur's Seat.
There're many trails going up, can pick easy ones and more steep ones.
Great 360° view of the city and the coast line.
Coming back to the city, I visited
Holyrood Palace (£20) at the foothill of Archur's Seat.
Not sure if it's worth the entrance fee.
I liked the garden, but the large chunk of it is fenced off.
I really like the abbey next door, which is now a ruin, without a roof.
It's being fixed, but not sure it'll be used as a worship space.
In the afternoo, I went to Lochrin Basin to witness the raft race,
part of the all day multiple site
Canal Festival.
This ties in with my visit of the canals in Falkirk.
It's quite fun. A bit slow. They only let at most 2 rafts paddle at the same time.
All the rafts are bizaar, made with anything conceivable to float.
One capsized. A couple couldn't go straight. A lot of laughs.
4-6pm An evening at the Edinburgh Academy with
Amish Tripathi, whom I had never heard of until today.
I just wanted to checkout the venue.
The academy is a bit bland. Huge parking lot, plain building.
The auditorium looks better.
Everyone here is Indian. Many kids, and they all read Tripathi's books. Some asked him questions.
I found the guy easy going, and straightforward.
7pm, I went to the South Side Community Center to hear UN Special Rapporteur
Alexandra Xanthaki speaking on Cultural Rights,
and
Southside Symphony performance.
On the way, I bought some Scottish food from Lidl (cheap store) to take home: oat cakes, MacSween's haggis.
I also bought a bag of dried mango and pumpkin seeds, because they cost less than half of what's in Seattle.
I was late. I did like this UN reporter and her talk. I was hungry after walking so much, was chewing my leftover bread during her talk.
Unbeknowth to me, after her talk, before the performance, they laid out so much food.
It was already past 8pm.
Many of the food are new to me. They are made by an African community here.
6/18 Sunday. Fly home.
The trail to the former fire lookout site on Church Mountain is well established.
Very boring for the first ~3 miles.
First is road, then zigzag. I quickly lagged behind 3 guys.
Finally the trees open to a lovely meadow.
Here patches of glacier lilies and pasque flower, melting creek, some muddy patches.
Tons of corn lilies, very green.
The last bit is an easy scramble. Not loose rock. There's a cable, if you want to hang on.
However, one of us stopped here.
The view at the lookout site is tremendous.
The real Church Mountain is still to the west.
I didn't stop, and headed down north through snow to avoid the steep drop from the lookout site.
As I was putting on spikes and ice axe, Karsten came over and attempted Church Mt with me.
Here's the group, and them watching our attempt.
K is very sure on snow, just in his running shoes, and went ahead more numble than I can be.
We did see one guy coming back to the snow, but where the snow connects to the rock, the terrain looked loose and steep.
After consulting the track I downloaded, we decided to tackle from the ridge, at least it's solid rock.
Well, many ups and downs. Had to pick our ways. Sketchy at times.
We could see our group at the lookout site, and then they left.
I continued ~15 minutes after K gave up.
When I saw there was one more peak to climb (see the last photo), I needed another 30 minutes, I turned around.
It was getting too late, and and clouds were rolling in,
These photos were taken then, seeing what's still ahead of me, and the lookout site behind.
On the way back, I lost my way twice.
Eventually I found K waiting. Thank you.
The two of us now took the snow molt, then back on the ridge. Avoided the loose rock terrain, and some steep rock scrambles.
