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Published: August 5th 2007
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Kara and I actually got up in time to eat breakfast! Yey! We wanted to make it to the Palace of Holyroodhouse as early as possible because it has been very busy. The Palace is the Queen's official residence in Scotland. She was in residence about a week before I got to Edinburgh. The palace is closed to visitors during her stay so a lot of people were trying to get in after she left. The palace was beautiful, as every palace should be! We were not allowed to take photos inside so you will have to wait to see my guidebook or you can go to . The palace was founded in 1128 by David I of Scotland. Legend is that he was hunting when he saw a vision of a stag with a cross between its horns. When he took the cross the stag stopped attacking him, so he founded an abbey and the beginnings of the palace on the spot. Mary, Queen of Scots, is very much a part of the history of the palace. Her Italian secretary was murdered right in front of her by her husband and his cohorts. A year later her husband was
murdered and not to long after that she fled to England to ask her cousin, Elizabeth I, for protection from the warring lords in Scotland. Elizabeth I instead had her imprisoned (at Carlisle Castle which I visited in May) and she eventually had her executed for plotting for the English crown (an unsubstantiated accusation). I have now seen where Mary, Queen of Scots, was born, lived, imprisoned, and executed. The palace was used as a sometimes royal residence through the years but generally suffered from disuse and was in a state of disrepair when Queen Victoria visited in 1850. She loved Scotland very much and really loved Holyroodhouse and so repairs were put in motion. The palace became an official royal residence in the early 1900s.
A royal palace or castle was designed to impress the wealth and power of the crown. The rooms would get more and more grand and impressive the closer you came to the king. This particular palace is in the shape of a square around a courtyard. You enter into the Great Stair, which contains many paintings that are much taller than I am and a beautiful hand modeled carved plaster ceiling. If
it wasn't grand enough just wait for all the other rooms! The Throne Room is next and was the most public room of the palace. This is where the sovereign would receive public complaints and dispense justice. There are five more rooms to progress through to get to the King's Closet (basically a study). Your status dictated how far you could get. Only the closest and most favored were allowed to enter the King's Closet. Of course each room got more and more impressive in furnishings, artwork, and ceilings. The carved plaster ceilings became more complex and intricate and there were many painted ceilings.
An annual luncheon is held by the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh for members of the Order of the Thistle (Scotland's oldest order of chivalry). Another historic event to take place at the palace was the knighting of Sean Connery in 2000. An interesting tidbit (that they did not mention on the tour or in the guidebook) is that there is a plague pit located under the palace gardens. Records show that 8,000 people were buried in a mass grave on the same site during a plague year. Yuck!
Next we headed
to the World's End, a famous pub along the Royal Mile (the street that stretches from Edinburgh castle to the palace). It is called World's End because when Edinburgh was a walled city it was located next to the gates leading out of the city and the people of Edinburgh felt that the world ended after you left the city (wasn't an actual belief;more an attitude). However, we were sidetracked and stopped at Canongate Kirk, the Queen's chosen place of worship while she is in Edinburgh. You would expect a soaring cathedral to be her chosen place. The church is a rather unassuming building and is not richly decorated (in fact they probably need to redecorate!; bright blue pews and red carpet). There is a special pew for her use only. Besides that it isn't really that interesting. We finally made it to the World's End and the food was ok, not any better or worse than your average pub food but at least we can say we ate at the world's end!
Lastly we went to St. Giles Cathedral, which is more in the center of the city but still on the Royal Mile (basically everything is
Statue in the outer courtyard
really bad picture of a beautiful statue in the outer courtyard. on the Royal Mile!). St Giles is as beautiful as many of the other cathedrals I have visited, but it has one thing that really makes it stand out, the Thistle Chapel. This Thistle Chapel was built for the Knights of the Thistle in the early 1900s. The original Thistle Chapel was destroyed in 1688 by an anti-Catholic mob. A permanent chapel was never built until the existing one was built around 1909. The chapel has an altar and then the other three walls contain the stalls (basically a fancy chair) for the knights and the sovereign. Each stall is ornately carved with symbols associated with that knight. Their emblem or arms are also displayed. The sovereign's stall is of course the most ornate. Nearly every surface in the chapel is carved or molded. It is outstanding workmanship. I have included some pictures but as usual pictures can't convey the entire beauty of the room.
We headed back to the hostel to rest and eat. Kara has a debilitating condition (I can't remember the name of it) that is genetic and has to do with her ovaries. It is extremely painful and causes her to fall unconscious sometimes.
Royal Arms
Unicorn is the symbol of Scotland and the lion is the symbol of England. She was having difficulty so she stayed in bed for the rest of the day. I went back out and did the Murder & Mystery walking tour. It was a black-humored look at Edinburgh's gory past. It included a lot of the same stories I have already told you about Edinburgh but with the delightful extras of halfway decent acting, jumper-ooters, (guy dressed in different costumes jumping out at certain places), and very colorful demonstrations of torture devices. This tour is not for children or those that get offended easily. It was very funny! I did one of their other tours called the Ghosts & Gore tour the next night. The tour guide was the same guy both nights but we got a new jumper-ooter and of course there were different stories. The Ghosts & Gores tour focused more on the body snatchers, the plague and the clan wars instead of witches like the murder/mystery tour. BTW Scotland burned more witches per capita than any other European country during the witch burnings. Well they have to be good at something right?
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