Today it was raining a lot.  I even broke down and bought an umbrella.  After that, the rain stopped, of course.  But it didn’t matter.  I’d already decided to spend the day touring inside at the Palace of Holyroodhouse.

The Palace at Holyroodhouse stands at the end of Edinburgh’s Royal Mile and is the official residence of the Queen when she is in Scotland.  The State Apartments are renowned for their magnificent plasterwork ceilings and beautiful tapestries.  One of the most impressive rooms in the Palace is the Great Gallery where you find portraits of real and legendary kings of Scotland.

The Palace is probably best known as the home of Mary, Queen of Scots, and was the setting for many dramatic episodes in her short reign.  It was here Mary witnessed the brutal murder of her secretary, Rizzo, by her jealous husband.

On the grounds of the Palace are the ruins of the 12th-century abbey.  According to legend, King David I founded the abbey on the very spot where he had a vision of a stag with a cross between its antlers. 

Tomorrow is my final day in Scotland.  I’m heading for the Royal Museum and the Museum of Scotland.  I’ll report in when I can.

Until then,

--Gerri

Edinburgh is a very big city, and very crowded at present.  Usually there are half a million people that live in the area.  Currently there are over a million people in town.  Why?  Someone thought it was a great idea to have every festival the city hosts during the month of August.  The streets are packed with people attending the International Festival of Music and Drama, The Fringe Festival, the Film Festival, Jazz and Blues Festival, the Book Festival, the Arts and Crafts Festival, and the Military Tattoo, that alone attracts 10,000 people each night.  Lots and lots of people. 

It is kind of fun though to walk down the streets and everywhere you look there are venues of the Fringe Festival.  These are the acts that want to participate in the Festival of Music and Drama but didn’t get into the more traditional venues.  Yesterday I got to hear several music acts and witnessed a play being performed in the doorway of a men’s restroom.  Unique to say the least.

The big highlight of the day was touring Edinburgh Castle.  Everywhere you look in the city center, the castle is there, perched atop a rock bluff.  You enter through the front gate, cross the stone bridge, then proceed through five gates and an iron portcullis before you reach the lower level of the castle.  Very impressive and effective security.  And still the castle was taken over at least twice in its history.  Another highlight of the castle tour for me was seeing the Honors of Scotland—the crown, the scepter, the sword, and the Stone of Destiny that I featured in my first book, The Warrior Trainer.  It looks exactly as I imagined.

The afternoon found me at Roslyn Chapel.  The guide at Roslyn Chapel said two miracles have come to the chapel.  The first being that Cromwell did not destroy the place during his campaign through Scotland.  He housed his horses in the chapel, destroyed the nearby Roslyn Castle, but left the chapel untouched.  The second miracle was Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code.  So many visitor have flooded to the chapel since the launch of the book and the subsequent movie, that much needed funds have come to the chapel that have allowed for massive restoration efforts to preserve what was starting to decay.

Tomorrow, I get to stay put in Edinburgh for a while and do some necessary research.  Check in with me tomorrow to see where I’ll be.

--Gerri

The tickets are almost impossible to get.  They play to a sold out crowd every performance.  Who or what am I referring to?  No, it is not the latest pop singing group.  It’s the Edinburgh Military Tattoo.

As you arrive, the streets are a throng of people all heading up the Royal Mile to Castle Hill and Edinburgh Castle. 

Every year the tattoo has a theme.  This year the theme celebrates the centenary of Queen Victoria School at Dunblane.  The children from the school participated as did acts from America, Singapore, New Zealand, His Majesty The King’s Guards from Norway, pipes and drums from Australia, as well as a military band from the Indian Army. 

The show was spectacular.  Not only were the sounds and performances magical, so were the images displayed directly onto the entrance to Edinburgh Castle.  Magical is the only word that truly describes the night.  It was an incomparable show of sights and sounds in an incomparable setting.