While we rang in the new year in fairly standard style at the local pub here in Galway we had an altogether more spectacular Christmas holiday in Edinburgh.
We went to Edinburgh not only to see Scotland but also to visit our buddy Rupe, pictured above in "the meadows" with Emmett. Rupe was a great sport and a fantastic guide who fair nearly wore us out with his determination to show us all of Edinburgh, especially the scary bits!
This is the meadows, a sort of green belt between our hostel and the city, it was cold as the thick frost clearly shows.
So our first tourist stop was the castle. Edinburgh castle is not just an old fortress it's also the home of the war memorial and a couple of museums. We were even there at 1pm, when every day a canon is fired to tell the people of Edinburgh what the time is. In one of the castle towers are the Scotish crown jewels which are really cool and look just like crown jewels in story books. The crown even has that ring of white fur around the bottom of it and everything.
Inside the castle grounds.
Looking up at the castle from inside the lower walls.
Emmett in his Dr. Who t-shirt by a tardis.
So on one of our first nights we all went on a ghost tour of the South bridge vaults. The vaults are the areas under the south bridge that were walled in some rediculous amount of time ago. Anyway at first the vaults were considered good property but then it rained and it turned out they leaked. So they became an underground nasty place where all sorts of bad/poor/sad/mean/icky/illegal stuff happened. And now they're considered haunted, we didn't see any ghosts, still scared the pants offa me though. Less scary but almost cooler was Mary King's close, an entire street simply built over the top of and perfectly preserved below the city council buildings.
Well it got really cold, the canal iced over but alas no snow.
Swanning around, haha.
Well with the sun setting before 4pm each day we had a great deal of evening time. Here we were walking through Santa's petting zoo area (he had real reindeer that he fed) and the castle looked really pretty so we took a couple of pics.
This is Advocates close (a close is like an ally or a side street) the scene of a famous murder, and a pretty picture.
I sorta fell in love with the German Christmas market and it's mulled wine stall... The markets were really cool and sold all sorts of festive stuff, like tree decorations and wooden toys. They also sold German Christmas food like stollen (fruit cake) and german sausage.
OK very exciting was going ice skating on Christmas Eve under Edinburgh castle. Emmett was not keen so Rup and I had a great time while he took pictures. As you can see in the picture below we were naturals.
On Christmas eve evening we went to the Saint Giles Cathedral Carols service, opening line "there will be no more than 8 hymns" - spoil sports. Anyway the 8 we were allowed to sing were very nice and it was good fun.
Christmas day came clear and frosty and it was over to Rupert's for lots of good food and wine.
Christmas group shot.
Spectacular Christmas dinner, many thanks to the chef.
On Boxing day Emmett was a little worst for wear so Rup and I climbed Arthur's seat, it's a hill that overlooks Edinburgh. It was really cool but as the picture shows also very windy. Then Rupe decided we'd climb down shunning any pre-made paths so we had a great time scrambling down a steep hillface. I'm serious it was great, how often past the age of 12 do you get to scoot down a hill on your backside?
Then on our last day we went to see the royal yacht Brittania. The royal family really are something else, a yacht with over 200 staff and as pictured a Bentley on board in case anywhere they landed didn't have a vehicle suitable for them.
So Christmas was great and Edinburgh should you ever get the chance is fantastic. We did so much more than I've even mentioned here and we could have stayed longer easily and still been entertained.
So Merry Christmas and Happy New year (we hope to see you all in it!)
Love,
Aimee and Emmett.
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