Europe Day 8: Edinburgh

The Deacon House Café.   A most fine place for breakfast: close, full of history, and full of scones.  Drambuie scones.  I mean, could there ever be a finer scone, ever?

And that William (Deacon) Brodie dude.  He had a respectable job: being the son of a renowned cabinet maker and cabinet maker himself, as well as council member and recipient of a substantial inheritance. But this fine and respectable man had a dark side.  A dark side that inspired Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde.  You see, he used to make copies of the keys of his customer during the day, then come back and rob them blind when they were out.  He ended up on the gallows, like many others in this fine city.

Scone.  Did I mention the scone?  It had Drambuie in it...
The bulk of today was spent at Edinburgh Castle.  The castle is absolutely amazing, and it seemed it was of significant inspiration for George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones.  Castle Rock sounds much like Casterley Rock.  Then there is the Black Dinner; surely a precursor to the Red Wedding.

The tales of siege after siege and war after war, since the Romans and before used the rock through to the present were just amazing.  So much history in such a small place.

I pretty much managed to explore the entire castle: from the ruins under the Half Moon Battery, the amazing medieval ceiling in the Great Hall, the oldest surviving building St Margaret’s Chapel, the prisons, and the quaint pet cemetery.  And mostly in time for the firing of the One O’Clock gun.  This gun served the same purpose as the ball drop at Greenwich.  That is, as a time marker for those in port and around town to set the time on their ship's chronographs, big pocket watches and various other time pieces.  In Scotland, we were told, the reason it is set off at 1:00PM instead of at 12:00PM is that artillery is expensive…

Oh, and Edinburgh castle has introduced me to a whiskey liqueur to die for: whiskey, honey and sloe berries.  Love.  Bruadar.  I will need to check if Dan Murphies stock it when I am back home. 

Walking back from the castle, and a huge thanks to Shanny as I actually missed it on first passing, were owls!  And I got to pat them and have a good chat to their handlers. Undoubtedly a high-light of my entire holiday so far!

In the afternoon we had a tour of The Real St. Mary's Close.

It’s hard to explain, but basically it’s a time capsuled piece of Edinburgh.  Highly recommended, and our guide was a great character.  The Close was frozen in time when some bank decided to build on top of it, lopping the tops off the existing houses at the front street level, leaving the close and lower floors abandoned and  forgotten below.  It was quite spooky and eerie to wander the subterranean houses and the close, enhanced with tales of plague, ghosts and of course gardyloo.

Dinner tonight was a real treat at the Iris Restaurant on Thistle Street.  Ken had redeemed himself superbly from the Crumbed Cod and Chips in the cold rain the night before.  And the lights at St Andrew’s Square were sublimely magical. So many treasured memories being made.

Michelle and I finished the evening with a walk up to the castle at night time, which again was just beautiful.

Check out the photo highlights here.