Growing up, Europe was very far away and while I had been around Europe (France, Italy, Austria) in high school and through Heathrow once or twice as an adult, I’d never actually visited the United Kingdom (nor had Severin). I think one of the reasons is that it was always perceived as being so expensive. After Brexit last May, the British Pound was still dipping to record lows against the dollar, and yet I can still say that the UK was (almost outrageously) expensive. If I recall correctly, tickets to Stirling and Edinburgh castles were 16 and 18 pounds, respectively (18 pounds = $22!). That is not nothing!
Anyway, I daresay it’s almost impossible to visit Edinburgh and NOT go to the castle. There’s a huge rock in the middle of town and the castle has been built on it for a long-ass time. Not as long as the Parthenon has been in Athens, but definitely more time than the Europeans have been in North America.
Edinburgh has a famous military tattoo that happens in the summers right in front of the castle. Had we done any research ahead of time, I think we would have definitely liked to have gone– the atmosphere would have been incredible and having watched a few clips from YouTube it seems like it is a pretty good show (lots of bagpipes and kilts). Maybe some day we’ll be back.
We took the long route and walked all the way AROUND the castle before we walked up it. Fortunately, it was a sunny day:
(Another angle, on a less sunny day):
We ended up standing in line for about an hour which was rough because we’d already walked around the entire damn castle that morning and we still weren’t even inside. But we held it together and I distracted myself by reading the guidebook and figuring out the plan of attack, which we promptly abandoned as soon as we got in.
It was pretty crowded inside but fortunately the castle is big enough that we weren’t having to throw elbows. We randomly walked into this military museum which just so happened to have a few rooms dedicated to the cavalry, which ended up being really cool. They had this old saddle that had a bullet stuck in it from WATERLOO! (Because at Waterloo, Napoleon did surrender!) and all kinds of other fascinating paraphernalia. Between this museum and our visit to the Spanish Riding School in December 2015, I thought it was a good reminder that it wasn’t too long ago where horses used to be considered an instrument of war and being a true horseman was a valuable skill, not just a matter of recreation. Below is a photo of a not-quite-to-scale display they had of all of the different types of horse shoes they made for war horses, because as the old saying goes– “No foot, no horse!”
After the calvary museum, we stood in a random line for a while which ended up being the line to go see the Scottish crown jewels, which consist of a five-hundred year old scepter, sword, and crown. They were pretty awesome but unfortunately the way the lines were designed you basically get shuffled past them without even a second to pause and ogle them (let alone contemplate them!) for a while which is a big pet peeve of mine about crowded museums. We ended our ramble around the castle grounds by going into this World War I memorial (no pictures inside), and then called it a day.
