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Published: March 7th 2008
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So I ran into Colleen last night, and since her mom had been in town this past week, they bought a five day pass to a couple of different historical sites here in Scotland. The deal is you can go to any of those sites any three of the five days. They had only used two, so guess who got to go to Stirling Castle for free.
It was kind of nasty outside today, but the castle was awesome! When you walk in there's this round entry way with stone walls built up all around you. On one side there's a long hallway leading to an even bigger opening. As you walk through the hallway, there's an entrance to your left. The rooms along the hall are marked- musician, jester, (I think one was the weaver), and the best part are the dungeons lining the entire left side. You could even go into one of them that was actually above ground. The other ones had a door above ground and then the actual space was below. It was super creepy.
If you retrace your steps out of the entrance and go back to the long hallway, you'll come upon
another large open area. There are several stone buildings surrounding you. One is the Great Hall where parties were held. It's a really beautiful place. There's a big heavy door at the entrance of it, a raised area where the "greats" would have sat, and large windows lining the very top of the building, close to the ceiling. It was gorgeous. Lot of long, green tapestries the entire way around the room.
The next building I stopped in was the church. It's one of the more recent buildings, built in the 1550s (?) in celebration of the birth of King James IV (?). Got to check out my history lol. There are three tapestries directly across from the door at which you enter. It's three scenes from "The Capture of the Unicorn." I found out they were recently made- like in my lifetime, and they are currently working on the four others in two places- one in England and one in Scotland. The paintings on the walls were "touched up" in 1996, but it's cool to look at them and think about what it must have been like to see way back when. There are two very tall matching
windows at the far end of the building and then the painting reflects the windows on the other wall.
There's also a museum on the site. I think it's the kings quarters that was remade to house all of these great things from past wars. There were bullets, a diary of a soldier (with perfect handwriting), and some uniforms left over. And in the center there was this awesome silver centerpiece placed on a long wooden table. It had to have been about 3 1/2 to 4 feet high- great carvings of two women and several animals all coming to a point at the top.
I went into the kitchen area too. They had statues through out it and fake food which was kind of gross actually- there were fake butchered chickens, a guy carrying a cow carcass, some crinkly looking seafood. Not too appetizing.
I also got to see the guard's house which was later turned into a prison. You got to see into the cells, and there were some records that you could read about what prisoners were fed, what they were allowed to do, and how they had ended up in this place. By
the way- there were only two rooms for prisoners 😊 But it was used well into the 1800s.
It was a great time. I loved getting to see all the artwork and neat artifacts- and to think that I wasn't going to go back after having stopped there on a short bus tour. It was definitely worth it, and even the bad weather couldn't have made it bad.
This weekend I'm sticking a little closer to campus. Tomorrow there's a Scottish-English rugby game, which means big time rivalry in all the pubs in Stirling- gott be there for that 😊 And I'm thinking I'll go to Bridge of Allan to poke around a little bit- it's a small town right down the road from campus- maybe a 10-15 minute walk. Very quaint with little shops and restaurants. It became popular when word spread that the water up around here would add many years on to your life- so there are tons of bed and breakfasts lining the streets. The William Wallace Monument is also on the list, but that's pretty dependent on weather. I bought Braveheart the other day- while not even daring to look the very Scottish
salesperson in the eye- so that I could watch it before I climb The Monument.
So even though I'm not going out of town again this weekend, I'm really hoping to learn a lot more about Stirling. I'm also working on plans for a tri-country tour over spring break in a couple weeks. Just got to get these papers done first 😊
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