Monday, April 20, 2015

Day 1: The Royal Mile in Edinburgh

One of Mary's friends made the following suggestions for Edinburgh that I thought very intriguing:

The witchery secret garden, late night in the downstairs bar of the Royal Oak, Stac Polly Scottish restaurant. The Kitchin restaurant..... Dynamic earth, national gallery, modern art gallery .... All in Edinburgh.

So, we went to Stac Polly....not the main one but the small one close to the Royal Mile.  It was scrumptious!  I had the chicken with haggis.....Mary had the lamb....We tried a Spanish Red wine that was labelled old vines....We gave it a 3.0....but it was a great night.

 Finished the night off with a flight of whiskeys at Whiski on Royal Mile (photo of Bar just below taken the next morning).....bartender lots of fun.....we did flight #10 ....all of these whiskeys were from Islay.  Jack and I had always thought that we would someday come back and do a golf and whiskey tour going to places such as Islay where the golf is not "big name" courses and the whiskey is made right there.  Our favorite of the four that we tasted was Laphroaig 10 year old as we both thought it the smoothest and very easy to drink. The Ardbeg 10 year old tasted a bit like manure to me.  This company has been bought by Glenmorangie.  Second favorite was Lagavulin 16 year old which had a bit stronger taste than the Laphroaig.  And the Kilchoman tasted too much like just plain alcohol to us....we didn't finish it.



This morning we walked from the hotel to breakfast.  It is a lovely morning that had a FINE finish:  Our luggage just arrived so we will have a shower and clean underwear to start off our first day with the group.  We are meeting at 1 for a photo shoot along the Royal Mile and up to the Castle.

So here at the end of the day are some of my photos from the walk down the Royal Mile from Castle to Holyrood with our group:





  Below is William Wallace collecting money for Leukemia!  He was great!




We dropped into one of the many Closes along the way to just see what was back there:



It seemed that people lived in the "alley way", but the area was quite ancient.  Notice that the door is quite small by our standards.  This is out tour leader, Mike.

Part way down the Royal Mile.



Bottom of the Royal Mile with Holyrood Castle just beyond



Below:  Break for lunch after trip down Royal Mile and before the hike up Arthur's Seat.


I did not get photos on Arthur's Seat.  I'll try to add a few of Mary's photos here.

After dinner at our hotel, Mike, Neil, Mary and I went for an excursion to take photos in the fog that had come up as we ate.  I had no luck with my new camera, but my iPhone took enough photos to make me happy with the excursion:












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