Edinburgh

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In addition to staying the night at Alnwick, we also visited the Alnwick castle which is the first castle we visited on our trip which is still inhabited. This one is inhabited by the Duke of Northumbria. When you go on the tour of the castle, not only do you see paintings of old royality but there are also recent photos everywhere of the current Duke and his family. It was quite a change to what we had been seeing at other places. Alnwick castle looks much more like what we would expect a castle to look like, prior to visiting all the castles we saw on the main European continent. This castle has also featured in some of the Harry Potter movies.

After Alnwick, we continued up the coast to see another castle at the small town of Bamburgh. This castle was particularly impressive as it is located directly adjacent to the coast and you can get a good photo looking up at it from the water.

After Bamburgh we drove on to Edinburgh. Again we hadn't booked a place to stay so we ended up using the internet when we got there and we ended up booking a hostel which was out in the suburbs.

On the morning of the 7th we did a guided tour of the Edinburgh Castle along with many other people. This is a very large castle with all the trimmings and houses many displays inside. We could see the area where they house the military tattoo each year at the entrance to the castle as there was still some temporary seating remaining from this year's event in August.

Edinburgh is a very hilly city with the train line located in a valley in the middle. The castle and the old town is on one side with its narrow streets, whereas the new town (the main commercial area) is on the other side. The new town area contains a grid road network with wide streets which is a change from what we had been used to in Europe. We could even find places to park there!

We walked down High Street in the old town and saw Holyrood Palace where the Queen stays when she is in Edinburgh and we saw the modern Scottish Parliament building which doesn't really fit in with the nearby buildings. Arthurs Seat (an extinct volcano) is located in a public park area adjacent to the old town.

After we left Edinburgh, we went for a big drive north towards Inverness. On the way we stopped off at Stirling Castle in the town of Stirling. Unlike Edinburgh Castle there were far fewer people at Stirling. Also unlike Edinburgh Castle, the interior of all the buildings at Stirling are not furnished. Instead, Stirling Castle resembles a working archeological site. After Stirling Castle ceased to be used by royalty back in the middle ages it was used by the military right up until 1961. Many internal alterations were made to the interior of the castle during this time such that it looked nothing like it once did. The castle is shortly to be restored to resemble how it once was in the middle ages back when it was built in the time of King James IV. Currently only the Great Hall has been restored.

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