Holiday Photos #20

Today's travelogue is all about the Edinburgh Castle. It's built on a rocky crag on one end of the historic high street of town. The palace sits on the other end of town, where it's lower and apparently warmer and more pleasant to live. We didn't get to tour the palace because honest-to-goodness real royalty were in town and staying there.

This first photo gives you an idea of the courtyards, the craggy bluff it was built on (see the rocks beneath the wall on the righthand side?) and how high up it was above the city (see the view in the background). There's another photo of the view over on Laume's studio. And of course you can click on the photos to see more detail.

One thing that we learned in all the castles we toured, a castle isn't just a building. It's a walled complex of buildings and walkways and towers and walls and courtyards. Here's William sitting in front of a picturesque backdrop of one of the buildings.


A big cannon. That's William taking a photo just in front of the cannon. I liked the how huge the cannon balls were in comparison to the small child.


Hellooooooooo? Anyone in therrrrrrre?

See the walled in section in the middle of the photo lined with gravestones? That's the castle pet cemetery - I thought that was so sweet.

This next building was filled with a very touching war memorial. Statues and wreaths and columns and rows and rows of books - official records of all the men who had served and died in wars in both the distant and the not-so-distant past. I actually had to make a quick sweep of the rooms and leave quickly, as I got very emotional. This photo, as well as an matching one of me standing in the matching box on the other side of the doorway, was taken before we went into the building. We saw other people standing in these funny little "houses" and though we didn't know what they were for, we decided to take our pictures in them as well. Later, in London, we saw them in use and - DUH! They're guardhouses. I'm assuming popular to keep the guards at least partially dry during the ...cough, cough.... rare rainy days on the island.

This photo was taken inside a grand hall that was renovated to look how they thought it might have looked in it's heyday. I took a photo of the hall, but it came out fuzzy. I took this photo because in the lefthand window was a crest of William Wallace. William, meaning my William, is related to Wallace on his father's side. How closely he is actually descended from THE William Wallace I don't know, although he would undoubtedly be descended from the Wallace clan. I hope that the Wallace crest is that left hand one with the three blue stars. I mean, who wants their crest to be the other one of three fluffy pillows!?

Here's the Wallace tartan.

Don't forget to hop over to Laumes Studio for three more photos, somewhat arbitrarily designated the "artsy" photos of the day and posted other there.