Out and About in Edinburgh – A Selection of AttractionsEdinburgh Castle (Thursday April 21, 2011)I wanted to get to the castle early (they open at 9:30) to beat the waves of tourists I’d seen streaming in there the day before. As it was I ended up getting there around ten and had to wait in line for about fifteen minutes for my ticket. On Sunday afternoon, however, when I went back to the castle esplanade for one last look at the view, the line was about 4 times as long as it had been for me, judging by the number of head-tops I could see.
My camera, of course, died less than halfway through my visit, so I didn’t get a huge number of pictures. Me being me, I had forgotten to plug in the battery the night before, and on the day of I thought, “Oh, my battery will live for a little while!” ha… I should know better by now.
Luckily for me, there were several places where we couldn’t take pictures anyway. A few of the buildings, such as the one that housed the Crown Jewels, prohibited photo-taking of any kind. The rather extensive exhibit consists of the history of Scotland’s Crown Jewels and the Stone of Destiny. The models are creepy but otherwise it’s quite an interesting story.
Asymmetrical structure and presence of vehicles (for Chan’s sake) made it difficult for me to picture the castle as it used to be. I’m so used to seeing castles with their walls all lining up and everything, and with all of the resident stone looking square or flat or at least like it was at one point fondled by a mason. Instead, a lot of the original mountain face is still visible within the castle grounds, which I thought was interesting. It’s like when you see a marble statue that’s only been half-chiseled. There’s a (relatively) smooth wall meeting a (relatively) smooth stone floor, then POW a huge uncut area of natural rock. It gave the place a very rugged and unique look.
St. Margaret’s is a wee tiny itty bitty chapel in the middle of the castle. It’s quite cute and, ironically, positioned just behind Mons Meg, the monstrously huge cannon and one of the oldest in the world. The cannonballs it shot weighed as much as 400 pounds and the farthest shot was found almost 2 miles away. After a salute in 1681 caused the barrel to burst, the cannon was never used again.
In one little garden area that has been made into a cemetery for “mascots” and dogs belonging to officers. You can’t see it from the lower courtyards – it just looks like another rocky outcropping from below), and can’t actually get into it, so you have to view it from above.
The Queen Anne Café is a beautiful place that smells of fresh baked goods, flavored coffees and fruit, depending on where you stand. Those baked goods, flavored coffees and fruit are quite expensive, however, and I didn’t see anything that tickled my fancy enough to pay whatever they wanted for it. I was getting hungry by this time, however, so shortly before I left I wandered back down to the Argyle Battery, one of the first things you see upon entering the portcullis. I noticed two things: 1) there were people climbing and sitting on the Argyle cannons and were not being scolded by castle staff, and 2) the cannon on the far left was not being molested at all. Of course, that meant that I would have to be the one to do so. So I mounted the cannon as I would a horse and sat there eating a Nutri-Grain bar and letting my eyes roam over the view across the city to the north of the castle. I want to note that whenever I am sitting rider-style on top of something, such as a horse or this cannon or a saddle at Valley Tack, I experience an automatic postural improvement that I find intriguing because it just kind of happens on its own. At one point a man moseyed over with two children and stood nearby, talking on his cell in a foreign language. He must have been standing close enough for people to assume that we were at the castle together, because a guy approached us and asked if he could take a picture of us. Weird.
There was a small museum dedicated to the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards – the mounted cavalry regiment that saw active duty for about 2 ½ centuries. Another, much larger museum was dedicated to the military history of Scotland, its amalgamation with Britain, the romanticism of the Highland warrior, the importance of the regimental bagpipe player and Scotland’s past and present place on the world stage. There were spotlights on the evolution of armor and weaponry, well-known military heroes, specific battles and wars, etc.
A lot of place within the castle are off-limits to visitors *sadface* The underground stuff (prisons of war and the ruins of David’s Tower), for example, was so cool! However, there were a lot of places that were blocked off that I wanted to slip into SO BADLY but I knew I’d be in real trouble if I got caught. In one place within David’s Tower there was a random hole in the path that was protected by an iron fence. From the top I could see down into a lower level – there was a small flight of stairs leading to a doorway on one side, but that was all I could see. It made me wish that I had a string to tie around my camera (with battery power, of course) so that I could lower it into the hole and take a video of what was down there. There was also a place in the Prisons of War exhibit where a staircase led down into an open doorway, and the only thing between me and it was a rope that had been hung with a sheet. The sheet was clearly for decoration rather than to mark off a “No Admittance” zone, but I still chickened out.
And I can’t write about anything that happened during that week without mentioning… the FOG! Of course I couldn’t have picked a clear day to go up to the castle, but in my defense we didn’t have very many clear days that week. It actually ended up getting worse by Friday, which turned out to be the day I finally got to go to Holyrood Park…

Holyrood Park (Friday April 22, 2011)After Michael and I went up Calton Hill I wasn’t sure I actually wanted to take a stab at Holyrood – it looked very intimidating, and Evil Bob had pounced on me that morning, so I was already exhausted by lunchtime and really didn’t think I’d make it. The first quarter mile or so of hill was quite steep, but after that it was like hiking in any hilly terrain, with ups and downs and places where the path was really narrow and places where there were deteriorated stone steps and you felt like you were wandering around Tibet. I couldn’t help but think that it looked the way Scotland ought to… all craggy and green and hilly and beautiful. It’s so easy to fall in love with the landscape here!
The important thing to note is that we made it the top. And after wandering around a bit and (because I have to) poking around everything that looked even remotely interesting, we promptly got lost, as it was so foggy that it was like we were the only people in the world – white as far as you could see, and in some places it rolled in close enough to touch.
We wandered back and forth between the two major peaks. One side was covered in brambly-looking plants, and another was far too sheer to have hoped to get down by. Of course it would have been a trifle easier if we could have seen more than 30 feet ahead at any one point due to the exceptional fog, since Scotland wanted to be chilly that day and nature was concerned about Michael getting a sunburn. After about 15 minutes of following the guy I began to get seriously worried. I ended up picking the right direction to get us back the way we’d come… and as soon as we saw a familiar spit of path Michael declared “See, I knew I’d get us out of that!”
Trust the guy to take all the credit.
Between the two peaks we found a plethora of what I would describe as Druid-style graffiti. Names, words, pictures, birthday wishes, declarations of love etc. were laid out with stones that must have been carted there from elsewhere on the mountainside. I think my favorite one was the picture of the bekilted bagpipe player.
On our way back we came across St. Anthony’s Chapel, or rather what’s left of St. Anthony’s Chapel. The building is at least 600 years old and was mostly gone by the time we got to see it. I took a lot of pictures of it, though, because I thought it looked really neat.
On our way out we discovered that doing down the hill was actually more painful than going up. Even though going against gravity wreaks havoc on the knees of the relatively unfit, going with gravity actually wreaks a bit more on the feet. I would like to note, though, that at any point in the adventure where we had to pick our way down a rocky expanse, I seemed to have an easier time than Michael, probably courtesy of my experience in nature with Dad and my comparatively short legs.
I learned a few things about Wild Hairy Haggis, a population of which apparently still hangs on within Holyrood Park despite the development of the city around the site. We didn’t see any, but the place had a lot of rabbit poop all over it, so I imagine that’s what they eat up there. Also, we found places where the ground was soft and spongy, and holes where they might have burrowed. I tried to get Michael to play documentary and tell us all about the Wild Haggis – where it lives, what it eats, what to look out for to keep yourself safe if you’re going jogging on a random mountain in Scotland – but he went all camera shy on me.
Speaking of being in danger of meeting a Wild Haggis, in addition to hikers like ourselves we saw several joggers (and when I say “joggers” I of course mean “lunatics with a death wish”) gamboling about the place, rushing up and down slopes that I had to work hard to get up and be alert going down. If one of them disappears, you can bet he or she tripped, fell and was eaten by a Haggis.
I also didn’t see any Haggis at…

The Edinburgh Zoo (Wednesday, April 20, 2011)Edinburgh’s zoo is much smaller than the Cleveland Zoo. I’d expected it to be larger; Edinburgh is the second largest city in Scotland, after all.
Being Scotland, the zoo was quite hilly. Lots and lots of ups and downs and windy paths. The trek to the zebra paddock was tiring, and I felt bad for all the parents that had to push strollers up the hill. Also being Scotland, occasionally the trees would fail in their ever-eager task of covering up all the scenery, resulting in a few spots where you could actually stand and admire the view. And finally, being Scotland, the buildings were all stone, including the mansion. That’s right, I said mansion. There is a mansion right in the frakking middle of the zoo. At one side of the building there was a sign saying, basically, “This way to the mansion” with a little gate that was wide open, but it didn’t look like it was open to visitors because it was kind of randomly placed and surrounded by plant life. I should have wandered in innocently anyway. After all, there WAS a sign…
I got quite hungry when the afternoon came around and made a beeline for the Jungle Café. You would think that I would know better by now, but I still ordered the cheeseburger (the choices were somewhat limited). It was disgusting. I actually complained about food for the first time in my life (Mom would be so proud!) and got a refund. The chips I ate, because they weren’t bad despite the lack of dipping sauce, but the hamburger was absolutely completely inedible. *hurk*
I didn’t see any sousliks, otters or tigers in the enclosures where they were reputed to be. The sousliks were likely still hibernating, according to the informational sign (I saw one scurry along the ground and disappear, but that was it), and the tiger could have been hiding, but the otters were rather inexplicable in their absence. Souslik is fun to say. Say it out loud. Souslik. It’s the perfect word for such an adorable little rodent. It’s like someone crossed a prairie dog with a squirrel. Souslik. Say it plurally – it’s even cuter… Sousliks.
As a child, the sea lion enclosure was my favorite part of the Cleveland Zoo. The one here was nothing to write home about, and only had two lazy Patagonian sea lions in it, but the penguin area was relatively vast. There was a fenced path through the middle for visitors to use, and at one point a penguin came right up to the fence and started pecking at the dandelions that were growing there (I don’t think those are natural in the penguin’s environment, which made me wonder about the logic of such an enclosure. I wisely elected to restrain myself from reaching out and petting the bird, which probably would have resulted in me getting pecked as well as the dandelions.
Other random bits:
They had a tiny habitat with a few bush babies in it that just tickled me. However, it was all covered over with wood, with just little peepholes to look into to see the animals (they are night-dwellers). I tried to get pictures through the little holes, but they didn’t come out great.
A lot of the enclosures weren’t labeled very well, so when I upload the pictures I won’t be able to label them all.
There was a place called the “Lemur Walk-Through” where you’re supposed to be able to walk on a path that is allegedly open to lemurs, similar to the one at the Baltimore Zoo where you can walk through a waterfowl habitat. This excited me because I love lemurs, but I didn’t actually see any. *sadface*
The porcupines lived in a cute little tree house type thing that I really wanted to see into.
They had a little herd of Red River (African) Hogs that were incredibly adorable and ugly at the same time. I got to their pen right around feeding time and ended up watching them for several minutes. I loved the sounds they made, snorting and grunting and squeaking and crunching on their veggies and the clopping sounds of their hooves.
I saw two sun bears, smallish Southeast Asian bears, with dark fur but bright yellow faces and chests and über-long tongues. They had two enclosures that they could wander between, and I got to them just in time for one of them to wander into the larger enclosure (where there wasn’t a crowd to jostle through), stand up on its hind legs, look around, then drop back to all fours and wander back to its buddy. Great photo op. Couldn’t have trained the bear better.
I took a couple videos of monkeys playing, including one for Cindy of some spastic young squirrel monkeys. Also, there were several pairs of mated gibbons and howler monkeys that were sitting with their little arms wrapped around each other, and it touched my heart a little. They’re some of a very small number of animals that mate for life in the wild.
The vicunas were impossibly cute. I got to see one standing right by the fence watching people walk by, and its eyes were huge and soft and dark. It looked very soft and fluffy, and it probably is. I wonder if Jennie has seen any in Peru.
On the information sign for the sea eagles it said something like, “The sea eagle tarnishes its image by feeding on the offal thrown out by butcher shops.” When I read this I thought, “The Scottish people feed on the offal from butcher shops. It’s like, their national dish!”
I took an inordinate number of pictures of the black panther, but few of them were all that great. It was close to feeding time, and it was hanging around outside the door the keepers use to get into the habitat as well as prowling through the vegetation in anticipation. By the time I got over to the Amur leopard enclosure, a woman was walking by with a bucket of meat and was throwing bits into each habitat as a treat, and possibly so the visitors could see the animals actually doing something. I thought it was interesting.
There was an enclosure with Homo sapien specimens in it of all ages and colors, including quite a number of juveniles. I was disturbed to find that while the other animals in the park were secured behind glass walls, fences, moats and cages of all sorts, the zoo had clearly made no attempt to ensure the safety of its guests by putting up a barrier around this exhibit. Someone should fashion a strongly-worded letter harshly criticizing the zoo’s blatant lack of forethought in this matter.
♥
SM