Holiday Photos #22

We're still in sunny Edinburgh. Snort. The rain stopped the morning we left.

Down at the bottom of the Royal Mile (which I keep wanting to refer to as the Miracle Mile, like in the U.S.) they had a wall full of literary quotes. It was raining and William was dragging me past, but I photographed a couple of favorites.


I've been told I say things well, but I doubt anyone would accuse me of saying but little.


I had never even heard of this poet. I looked him up. Hmmm, a Jesuit. Gotta love those intellectual Catholics. Here's another of his poems. Lovely.

Pied Beauty

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.


Statues, statues, statues. Everywhere. This one is of John Knox, leader of the protestant reformation movement in Scotland - yawwwn. But what I liked was how the statue looks all noble and dignified and the shadow looks like the wicked hag in Snow White, like the shadow self is different then what we show people in the light.


Here's William up on a pedestal pretending that he is a statue of someone famous. William the Snowboarder.

This was a, I assume real gold, design on the doors to one of the entries to the Holyrood Palace. I mentioned before, we didn't get to go in because real royalty was using their palace during our time in Edinburgh.


It was hard to capture the scenes above us. Everywhere we went I would aim the camera up and most of the time give up because the image wasn't the same as the experience. But here's more of those dark, looming rooftops of old Edinburgh. Remember if you click on the photos, you get more detail.


Here's William entering another close. Earlier I said , or perhaps I didn't and just thought it, that I thought they were called closes because the walls and buildings were closed in on the walkway. The other night I was watching a travel show about Edinburgh and they said that the reason they were called closes were because at night they were closed off to keep them safe, or keep the riff raff out, whichever.


I like the bicycle. And the way there rain makes all the stone green around the edges. I'm a sucker for anything green. Speaking of green, I went on a photo walk the other day and put some green pics up on Laumes Studio. Go check them out.