&....Edinburgh.

&....Oh how I love Scotland. 

After a bit of a mishap trying to find Hadrian's Wall, we made it to Scotland and started out our time in Edinburgh with Rosslyn Chapel. 

The DaVinci Code did much to heighten the popularity of Rosslyn Chapel and while some of that is silly --including people wanting to know where people were sacrificed in the crypt (that may be wrong--I don't really care...sorry Dan Brown)--but the upside of the DaVinci delirium is the money that has enabled a major conservation work on the chapel. While conservation of a beautiful place makes me happy, scaffolding and silly inside photography rules limit my documentation. 

Rosslyn is a romantic and ethereal place. Impressive intricate stonework incorporating pagan symbols with traditional Christian symbols, potentially pre-columbian corn, a twisted fallen Lucifer, and a fantastical story of a stone mason and his apprentice. Green monsters, murder, and charity as one of the seven deadly sins by mistake--what more could you ask for? Oh yeah, you could ask that in an painful 1970s "conservation" decision they didn't whitewash all the interior sandstone with concrete. Concrete.

Please no more of that.    

We finished our tour and requisite wandering and then tick tock the heavens opened up. Dumped. Yet again. Such rain and an inability to leave safe dry confines required good hot chocolate. Rosslyn's no doubt newly acquired barista served up a steamy thick hot chocolate to perfect the moment. (Hence my conflicted relationship with Dan Brown and capitalism.)

&...did I say I LOVE SCOTLAND?

Oh Edinburgh. 

After a bit of an ordeal with parking the car and climbing back Jacob's Ladder (literally) to our hotel, I was able to explore. I walked around Edinburgh thinking about what I could do to spend a summer there--I am open to suggestions. Apparently, useful and correct directions are not Edinburgh's strong suit, so before we could have dinner a couple missing cohorts had to be found. What was lost was found and we had a lovely well-recommended dinner with Mother India and then a semi-creepy and problematically historical tour of the caverns below Edinburgh. Despite the creepy factor and my inability to turn off my historian brain, it was entertaining. Even if it was just B's jumping.

Despite the disingenuous directions and crappy parking, our hotel was fantastic--Princes Street Suites. And it was next door to a cemetery. David Hume and Abraham Lincoln's cemetery. Though I suppose exactness would require noting that though Lincoln stands atop a memorial to Scottish-Americans who fought in the Civil War (the American one), his bones do not lie there. (His bones are in Springfield, Illinois, likewise cool, but not next to David Hume.) 

 The Governor's House was the castle next door to the cemetery.

With three visits in less than 24 hours, I think I liked it.

And more Edinburgh.

St. Giles Cathedral. 

Double double toil and trouble.

Edinburgh Castle from Princes Street Gardens.

Sir Walter Scott.

The Scottish National Gallery with Edinburgh Castle in the background.

The Royal Mile looking out to the sea.

View from Arthur's Seat.

Scottish parliament (the modern boxes) alongside Holyrood House (the Queen's Scottish residence). 

Arthur's Seat.

We planned a full itinerary for Scotland, including A LOT of driving. A ridiculous amount for any Brit, not quite so much for four girls from the America's west--just on the wrong side of the road.