Edinburgh Castle

Edinburgh Castle

We finally made it to the Edinburgh Castle, the one we used to live beneath, the one we see practically everyday, the one we hadn't gotten around to visiting yet.

It was not what we expected. From the front gates it looks like you walk straight into a very large building from the parking lot (which used to be the "killing grounds"). But in fact it is just a large gate with a gate-house (should have been obvious) perched on top. (Apparently this is where you get married if you sign up to get married in the "castle".) What we found beyond the gate was a cobblestone road that winds spiral fashion up to the highest point of the extinct volcano that the "castle" is built on. There are several buildings with various functions (not all of them tourist functions) along this road. (Some of the buildings are still in active use by the military). I should also mention that for each of the four courtyards that the road leads you through there is a souvenir shop.

The views from the Castle are amazing--who needs a CN tower when you have a castle atop a volcano. If you click on the photo above you can see our album from the visit.

The Scottish war memorial is perched on the very top of the volcano at the heart of the spiral. It is a chapel with little cubby-holes for each of the Scottish battalions, each cubby hole has a book or two in which all their war dead are listed from World War I to the present. Strangely enough, there are also books of Canadian war dead from battalions that had some sort of Scottish association--either a formerly Scottish place name, like Renfrew and Lanark, or were "Highlanders" or "Scottish". I know nothing about military history ("battalion" is probably even the wrong word), but I found it strange to find Canadians listed at the Scottish memorial. But then there is a very strong connection between Scotland and Canada that we hadn't realised until we got here.

We had a guided tour (free with admission and about every 20 minutes) and he told us the Castle had always been handy in a fight but that the monarchy were not too fond of it because it is cold and blustery. And I can attest that it was much colder and windier up there on the hill than it was down below in the town.