So this is going to be another post dated entry about my visit to Holyroodhouse. Holyrood Palace is the official royal residence of the Scottish monarch, and its located at the bottom end of the Royal Mile.
On route to Holyrood in a double decker bus!
First glimpse of the palace. What it is now was build in the late 1600s. Its very old.
Since we got there in the afternoon, the first thing we did was eat in the teahouse/cafe. The food was delicious. I had some sort of cream cake with strawberry preserves, a risotto, and some tea (of course).
Here is where we bought our tickets to get into the castle. They had discounts for students! I am glad most places accept my Canadian student card.
The port where you enter into the palace grounds. The Queen doesnt usually enter into the grounds from here, she has seperate gates that she enters through when she visits. Shes only in Scotland for one week per year, and its usually in the summer.
First glimpse of the inside of the palace grounds! This is a real princess castle. I was amazed. Its so pretty.
When the queen or a member of the royal family visits, that fountain runs and they put flowers all over the place. I think the lady said there were around 30-50 gardeners just to make this place pretty every year.
All of the lawns were pristine. They fix them up every 2 days.
Entrance into the quadrangle of the castle. This castle is built in a square shape around a small lawn area in the middle called the quadrangle.
We began an outside tour of the gardens from this lady, her name is Rebecca. She was really well informed about all the meanings and symbolism of the different plants in the garden and the history of the different garden ornaments.
The ground was cobbled, as is normal around in old parts of Scotland. This cobble is crazy. Sometimes I see ladies walking around in high heels and it astounds me, because I'm wearing hiking boots and I nearly bail onto the ground at least once a day due to the uneven nature of the cobble.
Garden pathways.
This is a sundial that a royal person had put into the garden. It was in a different location previously (obviously it would be useless under a bunch of trees). The thing I thought was most interesting about this sundial is that it was made for the sole purpose of seeming important in society. With the up rise of science, royals wanted to seem important and involved in scientific discovery. So someone put this sundial in their garden to show how powerful and involved they were.
More garden path.
The main grounds. This was my favourite are because you got a good look of the castle and abbey ruins through the gardens, but you also got a lovely view of Arthur's Seat.
This area of the garden is dedicated to the Queens different jubilees. It changes colour with the different jubilee themes.
This is the queens favourite flower. This is also my moms favourite flower. There's a correlation there (my mom is a diva). Speaking of divas, when the Queen is in Scotland, a bagpiper wakes up early in the morning and plays in the gardens to wake her up inside the royal chambers. Because thats how she prefers to be woken up.
Arthurs Seat in the distance.
The Abbey ruins. This abbey was originally built in the 1100s by King David I.
The explanation of these little excavations that the guide gave us was that they were storage areas with stairs going underground. There was also an area for composting for the palace kitchens.
When the queen comes, a huge garden party happens here with tents and thousands of cakes and teas.
This part is another interesting part of the palace. This small grass hill was built so that the royal people inside wouldn't feel inhibited to go about as they pleased, while also actually serving as a sort of gate around the back garden areas. So a gradual slope was built and suddenly cut off like a cliff. So its still difficult to get in.
Entrance to the inside of the palace.
The quadrangle. I really liked this area of the castle.
This is the inside of the palace, where the Queen lives when she is here in Scotland.
I had to stop taking pictures of the inside after this area. Not toooo sure why we weren't allowed to take pictures, probably just because someone actually lives there sometimes, not sure. But the entire place was very gaudy and exactly what you'd expect of a palace.
Going into the abbey ruins.
The inside of this place is just a cemetery now.
These windows must have been lovely at one point, before they were mostly destroyed.
Ancient coffins! Not sure where the bones went. I think this place was grave robbed at some point.
Stables for horses. These horses pull the royal carriage around,
Apparently this is Mary Queen of Scots little bathhouse just outside of the palace, but it hasn't been verified that this was ever a bathhouse.
Toward the end of the day, we visited a little Italian place for dinner. :)
They have strange little bottles for Schwepps drinks. Also Schwepps has carbonated lemonade in the UK.
To finish the day, we went out on the town in the evening for a ghost tour. There's a lot of ghost tours in Edinburgh because as I've talked about before, Edinburgh has a very dark and twisted history.
This is the place where we paid for our tour. It was called Mercat, and they purchased very old underground storage areas for tour atmosphere.
Before our tour, we waited near the Royal Mile, which of course was singing with the Edinburgh festival again. Let me just say that I loved it.
This was our tour guide, Mark. He was really funny, and knew a lot about old scary stories about Edinburgh. He also threw some historical fact in there, like how people in Scotland responded to witch trials. I like learning about that kind of stuff.
We walked through a lot of old backalley areas of Edinburgh. Apparently a bunch of people were murdered in these areas, and many of the cases went unsolved.
After walking around Edinburgh, we went to the underground vaults. When these were put in, people of Edinburgh were allowed to use them for shop storage. However, after about 10 years, they all shut down because these vaults are damp and dark and were unsuitable for the shop owners. So, debauchery began to set into these caves: drug dealing, prostitution, murder, etc. Mark told us all about these stories and what ghosts they suspect to be in each of the vaults.
We ended the tour in an old graveyard where Mark told us stories about how Charles Dickens went there and was inspired by a grave with the name "Ebenezer" on it to write his stories. He also told us about how common grave robbers were, since Edinburgh was a capital city for medical learning and the students needed cadavers.
When the tour was over, we walked down the Royal Mile, and because the festival was still running into the night, we were stopped by a man who was advertising a free comedy show in a small Scottish pub. So we decided to go in.
This characters name is Steve. The show worked by these comedians going up and reading from some books. But then they'd offer commentary or sarcasm about the book that was actually really funny.
There wasn't a huge crowd there, so Steve decided to introduce himself personally to each crowd member (there were like 10 of us or so), and ask us where we were from. When we told him we were from Canada, the entire crowd cheered, and Steve was really excited. He kept saying how we were nice people and not "evil like the Americans". It was funny. We got a lot of welcoming just for being Canadian. :)
This is the little pub where the comedy show was. This is a pretty typical Scottish pub. They're all old-timey.
Anyway, I'm off to explore Glasgows old-timey areas today. :) Feel free to comment or e-mail me!
Much love,
KM
