2023.10 Edinburgh and London (Part 4)

2023.10 Edinburgh and London (Part 4)

To help summarize what we did while in Edinburgh, there are two parts. One for all the food, and this one for the sights and places we visited.

National Museum of SCotland

Our first stop was the National Museum of Scotland. Located just south of Golden Mile, this is a great museum to visit. One of the first things we did was check out the outdoor terrace, where on good day you have an excellent view of the castle.

There are plenty of exhibits detailing inventions, as well as a section dedicated to emigrants who made impacts in other places, such as Canada:

The design of the building also lends itself to a different perspective on some exhibits, like stuffed animals. Here’s another slideshow of some other parts of the museum:

Something new to me was that three time F1 Champion, Sir Jackie Stewart, owned several racing teams including an F1 team. He sold to Ford, who upon exiting F1 the next owner turned the team into Red Bull Racing. The neat part to me was that, his teams outside of F1 helped to develop drivers, such as David Coulthard, and Dario Franchetti. A nice touch was that the first Red Bull victory was by David Coulthard, and the winning F1 vehicle was part of the display. Here’s a slideshow below of those vehicles:

A cute display was that there was a Lego model of the museum. The model was pretty accurate with the locations of the items on exhibit.

I definitely recommend making time to visit the museum. The day we visited it wasn’t overly crowded (way less crowded than the castle).

Golden Mile

This is the road that connects the Edinburgh Castle to Palace of Holyroodhouse. Along this stretch includes the Museum of Edinburgh (we didn’t visit), as well as St. Giles’ Cathedral. We walked through the cathedral, and unlike every other visitor, both of us put our smartphones away and took in the spectacle of the Cathedral. Stained glass artwork is something I enjoy and this cathedral had plenty to take in.

Another museum that was nearby, but we didn’t visit, was the Surgeons’ Hall Museums. It sounded like a unique museum to visit.

Edinburgh Castle

Easy to spot, as it’s planted right on top of the hill.

If this isn’t the top tourist attraction of the city, I’m not sure which one beats it. The castle cannot be be missed when you are down on Princes Street, or George Street. The day of our visit, the weather somewhat cooperated, with shattered showers.

Make sure to purchase your tickets ahead of time. October weekends continued to be popular, and we were able to find time during the week without issue.

Entrance to the castle
Traffic light for a gift shop?

The view from the castle was great, and we had a leisurely start to the day, so we were still around for the one o’clock. Quite a few people still jumped when it went off, even though they were standing recording it on video. I found that to be funny.

One o’clock gun

View from Edinburgh Castle

View from Edinburgh Castle

Below is a slideshow of things that caught my eye while we went through some of the buildings.

And here are a few more pictures from us walking around the grounds:

Shopping

There were several tourist focused shops along the golden mile and sprinkled around the parts of Edinburgh we visited. One place that stood out to us was that there was an artist’s market, or co-operative-like building on George Street, just east of Tigerlily. Inside was divided up where each artist had a small section. The uniqueness and creativity of some of the artists were superb. We did find some items that we bought for ourselves, as well as finding a few small gifts for others while in the store. Here’s a couple items that caught my eye: