This beautiful stroll is called Middle Meadows Walk and leads into city centre. There were kids playing, people eating lunch on benches, families strolling and even two street performers rehearsing some kind of juggling act. At least I think that's what they were doing!
The place we wanted to eat is called Greyfriars Bobby. It is a great looking pub just down from the museum and outside, on the main street, is a bronze statue of Bobby. Now, you can't tell from the story yet but Bobby was a dog, a Skye Terrier to be exact. The legend goes that Bobby was the faithful companion to a policeman named John Grey. When Grey died, Bobby, the dog, walked every day and lay down on the grave. He did that for over 10 years. The city gave special permission for Bobby to be buried beside his mater. Everyday fresh flowers are laid on the grave of the dog, Bobby. We have a photo of David with the statue but truthfully, I can't remember when we took it so I can't find it right now, in all our photo folders.
David had a sausage sandwich and I had a cheese and chutney one. They both came with the signature "big chips".
Fortified, we headed to the west side of Princes Street Garden. On this side, you can take one of three paths that lead you along side the vertical volcanic rock face that is the base of the castle. There are some indescribable views of the castle...but I'm going to try to show it to you through photos. Standing there, you can't help but imagine yourself an invader, coming upon that imposing site. It seems impossible that anyone could ever gain access to the castle, given its location, perched straight up this "rock".
The photo below shows New College in the background where David has worked and is taken from the same side of the garden. New College is in the center, the two towers with what appears to be 3 spires.
Cathy climbed up and is standing right next to the vertical face of castle rock. It extends up for well over a hundred feet before you get to the castle wall and the ramparts around the castle.
We headed up the to other side of the garden in search of more sights. This beautiful fountain was turned off at the moment because the gardeners were out working. The other monument was given by the United States in honor of the Scots who fought in World War I.
This cute house was at the end of the garden and it is here that we found out that the flower clock would not be planted this Autumn. It turns out that the recession has hit everywhere.
Here is a pic of Princes Street which is at the center of activity in Edinburgh and where you will find all the trendy shops. But right now this part of the street is closed down because they are putting in a tram system to carry people around the shopping area. Though the shoppes are open, they say their business is down so the Edinburgh City Council has given them a discount on their taxes until the traffic can be resoted. As you might imagine, given that this is such an ancient city, they keep digging things up like people and artifacts. So they have to stop work and call in the archeologist to date and catalog everthing before work can begin again.
This beautiful building was highlighted by some great tree color and was the backdrop for a big and really fun children's playground. We had a great day today as we wrapped up our work and our last little bit of sightseeing. Tomorrow we get up at 3:00 am, catch a cab at 4:00 am and a KLM flight at 5:55 am, Edinburgh time. We will have one more post for you to wrap up our Big Adventure so come back and check with us one more time. Till then!
No comments:
Post a Comment