Day 2 of our Edinburgh Adventure

Started off with a great breakfast at a local restaurant, The Refinery, with a full Scottish breakfast for me, and a poached egg for the Misses. Beautiful morning, clear, bright and forecasted to be in the mid-50s, but a tad bit breezy.

Today we’ll walk to Calton Hill for amazing views of Edinburgh, then off to Palace Holyroodhouse, residence of the Scottish monarchy. In the early days, Calton Hill was used as a “drying” scape for laundry that had been bleached. Local residents would register for their time to place bleached shirts and other clothes on the grassy hill to dry. In 1792, James Craig designed and built the old observatory house on Calton Hill, which was the main center for astronomers until 1896. The hill also has the “Nelson Monument” (Lord Nelson) built between 1807-1816, which has a “time ball” used for ships to set their chronometers. And one last monument, the “National Monument” or better known as, “Edinburgh’s Shame”, an unfinished structure that resembles the facade of the Acropolis in Athens. That’s what happens when the money runs out!

Since we’re at this end of town, we walked to the Palace of Holyroodhouse. Built on the site of the Augustinian Holyrood Abbey (1128AD), the Palace is still in use today by Queen Elizabeth II. Each summer the Queen visits the palace for a week to conduct official Scottish business and ceremonies.

The palace was built between 1671-1678 with a square court as the center. The first level consists of arches on the north, south and east sides of the quadrangle, with pilasters indicating the importance of each floor, Doric for the services level or first level; Iconic for the second level and the State apartments; and Corinthian for the third and top level for the Royal apartments.

The tour is self-guided but admission does include an audio guide which was really good. The audio guide went room-by-room with a description of the rooms use; how the room is decorated or painted for “Royal” activities; and any fun facts such as, there is a naked ghost of Agnes Sampson, who was stripped and tortured in 1592 for being a witch, that roams the palace halls.

The tour took longer than we expected so it’s time for lunch. We decided to walk back down towards Old Town and the Royal Mile to scope out the restaurant scene. I had a craving for some good old fish & chips so shouldn’t be hard finding a place to eat. How about the Malt Shovel pub!

Collette ordered the scampi and chips and I ordered the haddock and chips, yummy! Well, not exactly. Collette’s scampi came straight from the freezer bag and my haddock was severely undercooked. I sent mine back for a second try but it wasn’t going to happen. The second order was as undercooked as the first, so chips made up my lunch. Good part, the waitress came over and refunded my lunch, less her tip, the cost of the fries, handling fees, oil disposal fee, the cooks retirement fund, and 10% to the orphans.

After all this, we strolled around Old Town a bit more just taking in the city sites. The train leaves at 2:50pm so we needed to make our way back to Waverly station for the ride home. Fun couple of days in Edinburgh, didn’t see everything so sounds like a future trip to Scotland is in order.