Edinburgh day 1

We spent two full days and an evening in Edinburgh, a very busy city, second largest in Scotland. We spent day one in the old town where we walked the Royal Mile, visited the Edinburgh Castle, and did the Whiskey Experience.

But first, we were able to find a sports bar on Sunday evening when we arrived that covered NFL games. The Steelers were on the big screen. We shared a table with a couple (Aaron and Cloie) from Denver who were Steelers fans. He was originally from the Cranberry area.

The old town dates back to the 1500's when England and Scotland were fighting over control of the land. The Royal Mile is a 1.1 mile of buildings that were tenements - mostly very crowded one or two room flats in the center of town. At the top of the hill is the castle and at the bottom is Holyrood Palace, the official residence of the British monarch in Scotland. The street is lined with touristy shops, restaurants, and pubs. But if you look up, the architecture is amazing. In the 1500's there was no running water or sewage so people would dump their wastes in the street leading to a lot of diseases. Along the street there are also a lot of closes, little, skinny alleys leading to a maze of little streets between the buildings. Our air BnB was in Riddle Court Close. We stayed in a building that was only 300 years old, on the 5th floor - no elevators, of course.

The castle, built into the hill, is fortified on three sides. The fourth side is a sheer cliff of rock. The Scots thought that no one could attack from that cliff but one night the English scaled the cliff and took charge again. The views of Edinburgh from the top were awesome. We also had fun watching the cranes and disassembling the grandstands that are used for the tattoo (music festival) that takes place in August. 6 weeks to assemble, 5 weeks to disassemble.

The Whiskey Experience talked about how whiskey is made and how and why different areas of Scotland produce different tasting whiskeys. There are five main areas of whiskey producing in Scotland. We were able to sample whiskeys from all five areas and all whiskeys do not taste the same. Eileen even found some she likes! It was a very high tech presentation and their collection of whiskeys was massive.

We had dinner at the Ensign Ewing. Live Scottish music was just getting started but we didn't stay for much of it. The music scene starts get at 9:00 some places, even later in others.Läs mer