Continuing my photos from our month of European Adventures, September 2014.
Our second day in Edinburgh started off with something really special: tea and breakfast with Tanya of
52 Books or Bust. She reached out to me before my trip when she saw I'd be in her town, and you know I won't pass up an opportunity to meet another book blogger.
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I saw Tanya read drink tea in real life! |
Plus it didn't hurt that we met at Elephant House, the spot where the great Rowling herself sat to ponder Harry Potter's story.
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| Where it all started. Seating in the seats of great minds. Etc. etc. etc. |
On Tanya's recommendation, and with our otherwise useless little guidebook in pocket, we decided to walk over to Arthur's Seat that afternoon. We contemplated stopping in Holyrood House (one of the Royal Family's palaces), but at £16/person (nearly $32, for those doing the math), we decided the gates were pretty enough for our liking. Plus, the (very proper and clean) WCs were outside the gates, no admission required. Bonus!
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| The bottom of the path up. Feeling pretty optimistic. |
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| Looking up to the peak and wondering if we're really up for this. Too stubborn to admit we aren't. |
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| St. Margaret's Loch. Aka Swan Lake (to us, not to real people who actually name things). |
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| Old Stone Things! I couldn't quite figure out the path to get TO the stone things, so opted to observe it from afar. I believe it was the ruins of St. Anthony's Chapel, but to be honest, my map-reading skills aren't all that great, so I could be wrong. |
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| Not the most flattering picture (selfies are bad on me), but proof that we made it to the top! |
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Actually one of my favorite pictures of The Beard from the whole trip
(second to the one of him in Rome in front of a salumi store... to come later on in this series). |
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| Heading back down. Yours truly very grateful for hand rails, because I'd yet again climbed up something I was afraid to climb back down. |
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You think you're back at ground level, and then you're at the top of these stairs.
Jacob's Latter, Arthur's Seat |
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| Look at those little dots for people at the top! |
Our trek to the top of Arthur's seat and back took a few hours--it was definitely higher and generally larger than we'd anticipated--and it was worth every minute. The Beard was grumpy going up and I was terrified going down and the whole way, we were both absolutely amazed that so much raw nature can exist in the middle of an otherwise bustling city. Essentially in the "backyard" of a palace, at that.
We walked down the far side of Arthur's Seat, landing us in the small town of Duddingston, where we had dinner and
too many several drinks at The Sheep Heid Inn (fun fact: there's been an operating pub in this location since 1360, making it Edinburgh's oldest surviving licensed pub). Then we waited for 40 minutes for a bus back to town (the not-at-all helpful guidebook we had listed instructions for getting
to Duddingston after a day on Arthur's Seat, but not a word on how to get back).
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See the rest of our trip (or rather, what I've posted photos of so far) here.
