More photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/middles. We're a little late on the blog due to partaking in the local music scene into the wee hours of the morning (fine, it wasn't even midnight, but it felt like the wee hours).
The day started at Edinburgh Castle. The castle has a strangely large car park (parking lot) for a castle with no public parking. The castle, apparently, has only ever been taken by stealth and starvation-besiegement. Which is only surprising since the car park seems to have plenty of flat ground for siege equipment and a healthy road (Royal Mile) leading up to it.
This is the queue to buy tickets to get into the castle. Historically-failed castle besiegements have been quicker than the time it took to buy tickets. In fact, they have removed security at almost all of the nine gates and instead keep out pillagers and plunderers using the more-effective buy-a-ticket system. This method is particularly effective for keeping out the Scots (I'm allowed to make that joke because the Scottish castle guide made it first).
This is the "cannon" they fire once a day to tell the sailors what time it is (especially during times of fog... which is 363 days a year). The artillery is fired daily still to this day because the Scot-sailors are still too cheap to buy good watches. The artillery fires one shot at 1 pm - the Scots are too skinflint to fire 12 blanks at noon like the rest of the world (calm down Mary, the local guide made that joke too).
This is the British (Union) flag. Correctly, it flies above all other flags at the castle. Ouch.
Most visitors are here to see the wonderful and historic castle that happens to be built on top of a volcanic plug. Note the igneous formation behind Gordon's left shoulder. On the other hand, Gordon-the-volcanologist came to visit the mafic intrusion that happens to have a pile of old stones perched on top (aka Edinburgh Castle).
Gordon threatened to buy this CD for his wife, an ingenious mix of tacky bagpipe music with a groan-worthy play on words. Since we had the misfortune to here some snippets of the Red Hot Chilli Pipers on our first day, we decided to give the CD a miss.
This is the Scottish Parliament building at Holyrood. This is where some Scots-people get to practice their red tape making and other bureaucratic tricks in lieu of the much anticipated independence referendum. The building looks like it was put together by a bunch of Jemez builders - apparently, the mish-mash of building materials and wonky pipework is fashionable in this part of the world.
This is a view of the parliament building from Arthur's Rim. Arthur's seat itself is a little high for our liking, so we instead settled for skirting the rim.
Edinburgh skyline. Lovely jubbly.
And finally, what are the chances that Gordon could turn down a photo with sandstone in the foreground and volcanic rocks in the background? Absolutely none.
Comments
Post a Comment