our time in glasgow...i mean edinburgh

for some reason jay had a hard time remembering that we were going to edinburgh not glasgow. he knew it in his head but his mouth would not speak the word 'edinburgh'. everytime we talked about it while we were in york he would say glasgow. it got to the point where i would have to look at him to see if he was seriously saying glasgow AGAIN or if he was saying it because he was teasing me. then on the way to catch the train to stranraer (via glasgow) he mentioned we had a one hour stop over in edinburgh...sly look in his eye...got a punch on the arm for that one!

so okay. i realize that i've now described london & york as gorgeous...but for really...edinburgh is gorgeous! i think my favourite city so far...possibly the most expensive...but that is par for the course when you are me. expensive taste is another fault (fault?) that has followed me on our travels.

our visit to edinburgh would not have been complete if we hadn't visited the castle. positioned high on a cliff...bluff...hill, whatever you want to call it...spectacular was what it was. up top there was a tiny chapel. the day we were there a wedding was about to begin. the bride arrived in a classic rolls royce and as she walked up the winding path to the chapel the bagpipes began to wail. the audio guide we were listening to really emphasized how pretty it was on the inside so we decided to come back after the wedding to have a look. it was tiny. i'm not sure how the priest, bride & groom fit in not to mention the 25 guests that a tour guide said were inside.

we spent a few hours going to and through the rosslyn chapel. made famous by dan brown's "the da vinci code", it now gets 10 times the amount of visitors than prior to the movie/book's release. the tour of the chapel consisted of people seated in the nave while the guide pointed with a red laser beam as the crowd was too large to lead around. she pointed out a few hollywood-isms that were not fact...such as there is no star above the stairs to the crypt and the crypt is just a plain room - nothing like in the movie. the ornate sandstone carvings inside are quite amazing but some idiots thought that by spraying them with cement they would preserve them. in fact the opposite has happened. the concrete does not allow the sandstone to breathe so when the roof began to leak the water went down into the pillars and had no where to go. they've put a metal shed roof over the whole chapel...not so pretty in pictures but they've effectively stopped the water problem. there is also a conservation project happening right now...i think the guide said £30 million was to be spent before it was complete. there is scaffolding all over the chapel which again doesn't make for stunning photos but it did allow us a close up view of the roof line.

other notes of interest in edinburgh are: the royal mile - from the holyrood palace to the edinburgh castle this is a mile long stretch of historical sites, shops and restaurants, calton hill - which we climbed to see beautiful vistas of edinburgh and the scottish parliament - which is a bit controversial because it went £300 million+ over budget.

view from calton hill - holyrood palace

scottish parliament

during our stay in edinburgh we experienced hostel life. a first for me...not for jay. we could only find a place with a 4 bed dorm. without going into the gory details we made a friend named kathy from australia. hi kathy :D

we're now in ireland...on to dublin tomorrow morning. if time allows jay may have a word or two about ireland...or we may just spend all our money posting pics to this one.

cheerio, corina