Travel Diaries: England & Scotland 2015 (3) – Edinburgh all the way!

And to England as well, but oh well, it’s the Scotland bit I was most excited about 🙂 On our third day, we went back to Edinburgh to visit Edinburgh Castle, the Scottish National Museum and drove to (and through) Perth!

I’m absolutely not sure whether anybody cares about what we did while on this holiday, but as at least one friend asked, this seemed like an easy way to get it all down at once – one day at a time.

Day 3: 12/09/2015: Edinburgh – Perth

On the third day, we got up pretty early (6-ish) as it had started raining (I just really don’t do well with sleeping in the rain, I much prefer to listen to it), so we started the day by watching the (absolutely gorgeous!) sunrise. By 07h30, we’d packed up our stuff, and we were on our way, back to Edinburgh. After going to the same Starbucks as the day before (we wanted to look up how we did on our exams) (and I really needed something warm to try and regain the feeling in my feet), we started the walk towards Edinburgh Castle.

Now, this castle is situated at the top of a hill which consists of old lava, and is as such the only thing which hasn’t been eroded away at the highest point – so naturally, this beautiful walk consisted mainly of going up.

On the way, though, we got to see some lovely sights, such as the ferris wheel; a street musician – dressed traditionally in kilt, playing the bagpipe; beautiful stores; beautiful houses; some lovely old streets which made us feel a bit as if we went back in time quite some centuries… The walk alone would’ve almost made the castle worth it, but the moment we actually entered the site those streets paled into nothingness (after quite some time queueing, if you take anything away from this post, let it be that to visit Edinburgh Castle, it might not be a bad idea to actually get your cards beforehand, online, so you can avoid the queue).

Edinburgh Castle, as it might have been had the sun been shining when we were there

Anyway: the castle is actually still in use today, as it is a sort of army-base, as well as the home of the crown jewels with which Mary Queen of Scots had been crowned. Apart from those two elements, the building is also just plain old impressive: history is really, truly present everywhere, and as you walk through the buildings, there are quite a lot of (very interesting!) exhibitions which highlight certain elements of the castle (and the Scottish) history. One exhibition in particular, the one pertaining to the history of Scotland as an armed nation, and as a part of the British/Imperial army was incredible. And even though it rained almost the entire time we were there, the view over the rest of Edinburgh, all the way to the mountains, is quite breathtaking.

At about 14h, we’d agreed to leave the castle (and we’d just about seen everything anyways), and we walked to the Scottish National Museum. We grabbed something to eat while on our way, and soon enough, we split up to go see the different parts of the museum. While the other two focused more on the parts about science, I went to visit the rooms that showed the evolution of Scotland -from the earliest beginnings, back when Scotland was still floating around somewhere near the South Pole, up to the present day, everything was excellently explained through objects, images, and sometimes even short films. The only downside I could possibly imagine finding to this museum was that, as some new rooms were being constructed, we didn’t have as much choice of what to visit – then again, we didn’t actually manage to visit even half of it as it was, so I suppose it’s not too bad…

At 17h, when the museum closed, we went back to the car and drove in the direction of Perth. We had originally planned to visit there the next morning, but as we drove through it, looking for something to eat, we figured it didn’t really seem that interesting, so instead we ended up driving about half the way towards Glasgow, eventually parking the car a little bit off the main road so we could get some sleep.

-Saar