Exploring Edinburgh – Hiking Arthur’s Seat, and walking through portraits.

Thursday, 29-Dec-2016

We’d spent a lot of time with the family… so Sarah and I took this chance to split off from the group and do a bit of exploring and hiking on our own. Serious hiking. Or at least as serious as Edinburgh had to offer.

And what was on offer was a hike up Arthur’s Seat – a cliff near the center of the city. From the distance, it looked massive; a huge mountain surrounded by cliffs. The map, however, showed a much different story – a walk barely 3 miles from the apartment.

The best way to rectify this difference was to walk up. So, we did.

We walked in via the Wojtek statue and Holyrood palace, two seriously cool places to see. But this is Edinburgh, so we were a little oversaturated with seriously cool places at this point, and so we went through them pretty quick. The neat details of the hike, however, were definitely memorable…

• A small ruined abbey for skin conditions – turns out, they knew about skin conditions back around 1150, which was the first record of the abbey. A record detailing repairs, so… who knows how old it actually is?
• The hiking was really fun, and even had some mini bouldering sections! Sort of… not full bouldering problems, but still enough to keep us busy.
• Sarah took the pack… awww… I wanted more training weight… but that meant I got to run around and scramble a bit extra, which is always good.
• The summit is packed with random people, because it’s super pretty! Amazing views of everything, though the intense wind keeps us from staying too long.
• Take pictures and enjoy said intense wind, before heading down and enjoying some more intense wind! It’s amazingly pretty. Also windy. Intensely windy, in fact.

• Hike down via another mini-summit, saying hi to some people in a sumo suit and a lemur costume. Because that’s normal, right? You see people in inflatable sumo suits and lemur onesies all the time in Scotland, right?
• Find a cool ancient well body, which is cool. And by ancient, I mean it was moved there in the tenth century sometime. As in, it had already existed for who knows how long before then.

After our hike, we linked up with the rest of the family for a relaxed lunch of bangers and mash. Or at least, a relaxed lunch at a fancy bangers and mash place. I had beef ribs. Relaxingly. Extremely so, we learned, because while the food was amazing, the service… well, it was super relaxing. Barely any intrusions by the staff at all, in fact.

Then the national portrait gallery!

Again, more awesome galleries and views and things to look at. So many. Ohh my lord I couldn’t even anymore.

• We saw an amazing portrait competition, where the winner was clearly chosen because of their social connections instead of their talent. Though the rest of the portraits in the gallery were amazing to look at, especially one called “Three oncologists”.
• I learned about a young king, who looked kind of like a jerk in his painting. Turns out, he wasn’t all that bright in real life, either. In battle (The one the painting was about) he accidentally rode into the enemy lines, trying to find his generals. He then had to be rescued.
• Scotland has super cool historic rock climbers! Ladies from so long ago that they climbed (technical, vertical rock climbing) in heavy dresses and pettycoats, using hemp rope and fancy boots. Holy… badass!
• There was a cool library. It had medallion portraits (small ivory carvings), but I enjoyed the feel of the old area, full of many leather bound books.

The rest of the night… meh, it was fun. But nothing too special after the hiking and paintings. We ate at an Italian place that doesn’t hold a candle to Boston’s North End, though it was really nice to have after a whole day of exploring and walking.