Edinburgh
I spent my first day in Edinburgh making loud oohhs and ahhs punctuated by the zink-flash! of the digital camera.
The capital city of Scotland is a world heritage site, and to quote my Lonely Planet guide “An architectural wonderland dispersed among the rocky crags of brooding volcanic hills”.
It is a beautiful, old, stone city set in such a dramatically grand location that it reminds me of the model cities that you would make out of paper mache in grade five (though you know, the BEST model in the class). There is a huge extinct volcano (Arthur’s seat), a crowded old town (called The Old Town) with secret lanes, nooks and crannies, and a swanky grand new town (called *New Town) with posh squares, circuses and greens. The best bit: a huge rock (Castle Rock) smack bang in the middle of it all with a castle (Edinburgh Castle) on top and a train running around it’s base. Coooool.
As an Australian, I was amazed at the age and grandeur of the buildings. In Australia, you may have a nice old church here, or some impressively grand mansion there … but to make a city comparable to Edinburgh’s “architectural wonderland” you would have to employ the talent of a (rather clever) grade fiver to carefully prise off all of Adelaide’s gorgeous old churches, Tasmania’s convict-era stone buildings and Melbourne’s memorials and cathedrals, and then deposit them (lots of blue tac) in a model with the prior mentioned “rocky crags of brooding volcanic hills”. Oh, Oh, and the train! Don’t forget the train.
The buildings are brilliant; stone monuments to an age of craft and classic design.
Timshel got terribly excited about the stairs of the flat we are staying in, and his letter home describes them (and the craft of the buildings here) very well.
“Like the majority of buildings here, Marie and David’s flat is a sandstone construction, which must have taken countless man-hours of painstaking labour to build. The spiral staircase which ascends to the flat is an amazing piece of work – each step is a single piece of bluestone supported at one end by the wall, but the remainder of the step is only held up by 2-inches of overlap on the step below. I can normally walk under an arched doorway with the confidence of knowing that the weight of the stone wall above only aids the work of the keystones, but when I climb this staircase I tend to hug the wall-end of the steps a little. But its masterful engineering is a striking reminder of the skill, care and effort required to build in a truly lasting way, especially in our present economy of cost minimisation where concrete and pre-fabricated steel abound.”
P.S. I mistakenly thought the Queen would stay at Edinburgh castle when in the mood for a touch of haggis and tatties but was put right a few days ago when we passed a glittering palace with serious stone walls.
“That’s Holyrood Palace, which is where the Queen stays when in Edinburgh.” Timshel said.
“What about the lovely Edinburgh Castle?” I explained.
“Not enough mod cons.” He said.
* New meaning 18th century!