Is it a strange title? I suppose so, but why l titled this story as such will become evident soon enough.
Like many European cities, Edinburgh had an old town and a more modern, larger part.
The city is dominated by the castle which can be seen from much of the old town and is only occasionally obscured by other buildings. The old town is a very attractive place full of old buildings and history. Aesthetically it was a very pleasing place and well worth visiting.
As any traveller/tourist should, we visited the castle to see what all the fuss was about. The first thing that struck us was the size of the area where the tattoo is held each year. On television it looks quite large but we were struck by how much smaller it really is. That was not to say that it was tiny, but nowhere near as large as we were expecting. As expected, the views of the city were spectacular. However what really struck us was the size of the crowds.....
After striking the school holiday crush a few years ago, we have since made a point of establishing each countries school holidays and planning our activities to avoid those times. Of course, l looked at the UK term dates and made our preparations accordingly. What l didn't check was the Scottish school dates - if l had l would have discovered a small holiday named the mid term break which lasts for just one week and coincides with the Bank Holiday. So we had a public holiday and school holidays to contend with. Couple that with an influx of international visitors visiting Scotland when it isn't cold and you have crowds that resemble Venice in July. It was extraordinary to say the least. Some later research revealed that Edinburgh is the most visited city in the UK bar London. Apparently the Edinburgh Castle has over a million people visit each year and it felt like most of them were there on the day we were there.....
As we discovered, the street that leads to/from the castle is locally called the Royal Mile. It literally has dozens of expensive tourist shops and the footpath is quite narrow so the pedestrian congestion is amazing. And so was the congestion at the castle......
I suppose the highlight was the Scottish Crown Jewels which comprise of an impressive crown with red ermine bonnet, a sword and a sceptre. The wait to see the exhibition was in a very long queue that was 20 minutes long. The wait for a simple cup of coffee was, we were told by a staff member, 25 minutes or more. We decided to deprive our bodies of caffeine until we could find a barista away from the castle and crowds.
We tired of the crowds after a couple of hours and decided to explore the nooks and crannies of the old town. There are quite a few old and narrow alleys, many with plaques detailing the history around them. After some time, my tour leader decided that she required some time to undertake the obligatory shopping in a foreign city. My belief that shops were fairly similar the world over was confirmed by this time spent browsing and buying.
Tomorrow we start our exploration of castles in the Aberdeen area. I'm hoping the crowds will have declined by then.....
