Scotland - Edinburgh - Hogmanay

This post covers all the Edinburgh-related things we did over the New Year's holiday.


As usual, Yuka did a really amazing job of planning our trip. One of the best things she planned was for us to use park and ride instead of having to deal with parking in the city. I'd heard that parking in Edinburgh could be difficult and to be honest one of the things I hate most about cities is parking. Parking sucks...  After long days of sight seeing, and an even longer New Year's eve, being able to relax on the bus for a while and not deal with traffic was awesome. 


When it came to food, Yuka also did a great job finding us good places to eat. One day we at a nice seafood restaurant called Mussels Inn on Rose St near the city center. We had a tasty lunch of mussels, beer/wine, and fries for 7 pounds, a pretty good deal.  Another day we at a very cheap lunch at a small place called Oink which specializes in pulled pork sandwiches. It was also really good.


Realistically, Edinburgh is a lot like other European cities we've been too in that it has old churches, cathedrals, a castle, relatively narrow cobbled streets, and the typical European scenery of double-decker buses, cyclists and trams. Personally, I think what makes Edinburgh interesting is the castle high on the hill in the center of the city. It's pretty interesting.


About the castle, that was one of the first places we visited. The history of the hill being used as a fortress dates back to hundreds of years BCE. The exact date the current stone castle structure isn't known, but is estimated to date back before the 12th century.  The castle is the type that spirals around and up the hill with multiple levels separated by individual gatehouses. It must have been pretty difficult to attack.. 
More history of the castle.

Edinburgh Castle viewed from the top of the Scott Monument on Princes Street.

Entrance to Edinburgh Castle from the end of the Royal Mile.

View of Arthur's Seat (hill across the way) from the castle entrance.

View from where the 2nd gatehouse was towards the 3rd gatehouse.

Technically the 3rd gatehouse of 4 into the castle.

Outer courtyard (inner courtyard is further up the hill.

More of the outer courtyard

View to the West of the castle.

Edinburgh castle St. Margaret's Chapel. Oldest building in Edinburgh dating back to the 12th century.

View down on Princes street where the Hogmanay street party was and out to the Forth (Bay) of Firth. Notice the Ferris wheel for Hogmanay and train station to the right.

Front of the War Memorial / Chapel. Behind this memorial is the inner ward where the Palace is located.

Back of the War Memorial from the inner ward.

Royal apartment building and where the Scottish Royal Jewels were located.

Amazing carvings above the doorway in the Great Hall.

In researching things to do in Edinburgh, I happened upon the Trip Advisor website which listed a place called Gilmerton Cove as one of the top sights in Edinburgh. Gilmerton Cove is a series of 7 underground chambers carved out of the limestone bedrock located on the south side of Edinburgh that is steeped in mystery.  The tour was 5 pounds and lasted about 45 mintues (many of which were unneccesary). I'll be honest, this wasn't as impressive as the sight and reviews made it seem.  


It took 40 minutes (probably 30 stops) to reach the site. That leads me to another problem with the bus system in Edinburgh. Unlike other places we have been, none of the buses here had signage of the next station nor did the stops have detailed maps showing the stops. After about 20 minutes of not seeing our stop we started to get concerned some nice locals tried helping us out (they didn't know where or what Gilmerton cove was). Finally a guy (with the worst smelling breath I have ever smelt, btw, I almost started dry-heaving) told us where our stop was.  Ugh.


About the cove... In the 18th century, a blacksmith named George Paterson claimed to have excavated the entirety of Gilmerton cove in 5 years. Recently, experts have claimed that wasn't possible using 18th century technology and the coves are likely much older.  There are multiple theories of why the coves where created stemming from a mining operation digging test shafts searching for coal to bootleggers creating the underground area to illegally distill and distribute whiskey. Another theory I found intriguing is that this place was created as a secret escape from a royal residence half a mile away. There is a collapsed section that goes in the direction of the residence, though excavation has been disallowed since the collapsed area goes directly below a busy road (in several places we saw the actual pavement above...) and would risk collapse of the road. The big problem with the tour was that almost nothing is known of the cove so most things were conjecture.  It was interesting that there were distinct rooms and most of them had what appeared to be tables with stone seating areas. That would potentially point towards a history steeped in the illegal consumption of alcohol, but who knows. I would say if you are thinking of going, you may want it to be low on your list of things to see unless you run out of things to do.

Gilmerton Cove hallway

Gilmerton Cove - 1 of 7 distinct chambers

Another room in Gilmerton Cove

The main purpose for us to visit Edinburgh was to participate in the New Year's festivities (otherwise known as Hogmanay).  We purchased tickets not only to the New Year's eve celebration, but also to the torchlight procession and a New Year's Eve concert in St. Giles Cathedral (see pic below).

St. Giles Cathedral where we saw a candlelight New Year's Eve concert.

The torchlight procession happened the evening before New Year's Eve. It involved participants carrying a 3 foot long wax torch (after purchasing, of course) on a 1.4 mile journey (behind full Scottish band of bagpipers) through downtown Edinburgh, by the castle, up Prince's Street, and to the top of Calton Hill. We thought it would be neat, but I don't think we were ready for how cool of an experience it was. There were 6,500 people with torches (more without) who participated. With the full group of people gathered, it seemed like all the torches were lit within the period of a few minutes and it was really neat (and warm as well).  The atmosphere was really neat, (we had to be careful to avoid young children waving their torches about), and after about an hour we made to to the top of Calton Hill where the finally included a really nice fireworks show. Quite a cool experience and we definitely recommend it to anyone thinking of going for Hogmanay.  

Just after lighting our torch (we gave our other one to a kid who didn't have one) 

We started right in front of St. Giles. Yuka was having a great time.

There were so many people behind us.

There were also a lot of people in front of us.

I didn't think we were walking slow, but somehow the line in front of us got really, really long.

The following evening was New Years'. We actually took a bit of a nap (since we're getting older and less used to staying out late) and made it to the city in the early evening.  At 7:30 we went to St.Giles Cathedral and saw a candlelight concert where a really nice orchestra played Handel and Mozart. The music was nice, but what I really enjoyed was the atmosphere of sitting inside an old cathedral with artificial light. Quite neat.

St.Giles before the candlelight concert.

St. Giles well-lit

More St.Giles. The ceiling was really interesting.

After having dinner we headed towards the street party. The street party is a ticket-only area on Prince's street where people gather to get a great view of the fireworks shot from the castle. It was an interesting experience with a lot of drunk people... The fireworks were amazing, the best either of us had ever seen.
  

This was taken around 11pm, and the crowd is already huge.

Amazing view to see the fireworks shot from the castle.

I did a poor job of getting a good shot of the fireworks. They were great.

More fireworks.

After seeing the great fireworks display, we hauled-ass to the free bus area and caught the first bus to the airport where we parked. Again, it was nice taking the bus. That pretty much ended our Scotland vacation. It was nice sleeping in the next day...

Scotland - Highlands, Perth, Stirling Castle, Linlithgow Palace

Since we were staying in the UK over the Christmas / New Year's holiday, we decided to spend a few days in Scotland. We'd heard that Edinburgh has a really nice New Year's celebration called Hogmanay so we decided to check it out and see a bit more of Scotland. We drove up on the 28th of December and stayed through the 1st.


Here's a rough shot at our travel itinerary.


The 28th was a driving day. We decided rather than just drive to Edinburgh, we'd drive towards Inverness in the Scottish Highlands and see some nice scenery.  The drive to Inverness was supposed to be around 7 hours, but unfortunately the weather was quite poor.  It rained pretty much the entire way up and the winds were so severe that part of the drive through Scotland was at a reduced speed limit (70 down to 50mph). Even though the weather was crappy, the scenery was pretty. Here are some pics. We made it nearly up to Newtonmore before we turned around and headed back to Perth.

Scottish Lowlands

Scottish Lowlands - Sheep on the hillside - They were everywhere

Scottish Lowlands - We saw quite a few rainbows on the way since it seemed to rain, stop, then rain some more the entire drive.

Scottish Highlands - The weather got worse the further north we got. We saw several snow spotted peaks. Not sure what we missed due to the rain/fog.

The next morning we headed to see something very Scottish, a Single Malt Scotch Whisky distillery.  I'll admit I don't really like Whisky, but when in Scotland, do as the Scots do.  We saw a relatively average sized distillery near Blackford called Tullibardine. We were fortunate enough to get a tour from a nice Scottish man named Jim who taught us many things we didn't know about single malt Scotch whisky. {Thanks to Steve Frey for clearing up my confusion with the difference between whisky and whiskey}.

Stills used to take the alcohol from 7% to 23%.

Empty barrels, many of which I was surprised to find come from American bourbon distilleries because Bourbon distilleries can only use new wood barrels. They sell their leftover barrels to other spirit producers like Tullibardine. 

Tullibardine Whisky barrels (the oldest Scotch was aged nearly 60 years)

Now, after visiting the distillery we headed to Edinburgh and spent the next several days between there and a few other notable sights.  Rather than jump around I'll just hit Edinburgh at the end and mention the others first.


Of all the places we could see, we decided to see Stirling Castle and Linlithgow Palace. Both sites are rich in Scottish history and quite impressive.


Here's a bit more (hopefully accurate) history on each:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linlithgow_Palace


We hit Linlithgow Palace first.  Linlithgow Palace is located in the village of Linlithgow, 20 miles west of Edinburgh. The palace is now in ruins, but was used as a royal residence and meeting hall from the 1420s to 1746. In 1746 a fire spread throughout the castle and it was never rebuilt, quite a shame to be honest because this place must have been impressive in it's day.  The palace itself is a square structure with 6 floors (1 basement level) with a center atrium with an impressive fountain added by James V.  The rooms were very large compared to other palaces and castles we have seen (aside from Windsor Castle) and the most impressive was the Great Hall. You can see a picture of me in the hall just to get an idea of the size.


http://www.aboutscotland.com/linlith/two.html

Linlithgow Palace (unfortunately, not my pic)

Linlithgow Palace Atrium

Linlithgow Palace Great Hall - It's HUGE 

Linlithgow Palace - Great Hall

Linlithgow Palace Atrium

One of the things I've really enjoyed while being in the UK is seeing so many castles.  Since we'd seen so many already, why not go see another? When discussing places to visit in Scotland, Scottish coworkers and friends here kept mentioning Stirling Castle as a place to visit so we went to check it out. 

Rather than bore you with castle details, here's the wikipedia page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_Castle

The castle is built on a hill aptly named Castle Hill and has been officially recognized as a castle since the early 12th century. Again, like all other castles and palaces, it has been heavily added on and modified over the years. My impression of the castle compared to others I have seen is that it wasn't really all that impressive compared to say Windsor or Neuschwanstein. What is really interesting about Stirling Castle is a small part of its military history.  While in Scotland we did discover that the movie Braveheart is complete crap, with almost all of the movie being false. That being said, one of only a few realities in the movie is that William Wallace was a real person and did defeat a rather sizeable force of British soldiers at Stirling.  If you look at a few of the pictures below you'll see the Wallace Monument on the distant hill. This is where William Wallace and a small force of Scottish volunteers launched a surprise attack on a British force of over 5000 troops crossing the river Forth below.  Pretty impressive.

Of the other things we saw in the castle, there were several oaken carvings that were conscripted by James V as a symbol of his power and right to rule as King.  These carvings are known as the Stirling Heads and are some of the finest examples of Renaissance Scottish wood carving in existence. There were originally over 50 of these figures and they hung from a single ceiling in one of the palace rooms.  The weight of the heads was too much and the ceiling later collapsed. 38 still exist and were displayed in the castle. I've included pictures of a few. 

View from Stirling Castle - That's Wallace Monument on the hill, marking the spot where Wallace's troop hid before attacking (and beating) the English crossing the river Forth at the Battle of Stirling.

Zoomed view of Wallace Monument

View from the other side of the castle - Gardens below and King's Park (now a golf course)

Stirling Castle Palace

Stirling Heads - Commissioned by King James V as a symbol of his wealth and right to be the Scottish King.

Stirling Castle Great Hall - The roof was built by shipmakers, which apparently was common back then as this was true of several other medieval castle / palace roofs we have seen while in Europe. This is likely how the Great Hall's roof in Linlithgow Palace (earlier pictures) would have looked.

That concludes our non-Edinburgh part of the trip.


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