After
leaving Copenhagen, we arrived in Dover to let off our passengers and pick up a
whole bunch of new ones. We spent the
day wandering around the town of Dover.
Yes, there are really are white cliffs .... unfortunately we had English
weather ... wet, cloudy, misty, and rainy.
Otherwise, the weather was perfect.
Dover, a major port for England, was bombed unmercifully during the war. Much of the industrial part of the city was
rebuilt, but it has not returned to its position as a vacation paradise as it
had once been.
After we
left Dover, we had a sea day and an art class on our way to Edinburgh. We arrived at Edinburgh early in the morning
on the 27th. What an
incredibly beautify city. My brother
says that Edinburgh is as beautiful as, if not more so, than Prague. We’ve never been to Prague, so we’ll take his
word for it. On the first day, John
escorted a cruise to the Malt Whiskey
Society ... how appropriate. This
Society is a group of, 24,000 individuals some of whom who go about Scotland
tasting specific barrels of scotch whiskey at different distilleries. When they find a cask they like, they buy the
whole cask, bring it back to their headquarters and bottle it. Their bottles have only the number of the
distillery and the number of the cask.
We had a tasting of three different whiskeys and a nice lunch there.
John was impressed by the third whiskey tasted, quite peaty with great body and
a cask strength of 64.9% (about 125 proof or more) so he bought a bottle for
his bar.
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| Edinburgh street |
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| Typical Georgian Style Home |
Gail
escorted a tour of the Royal Mile, the road from Edinburgh Castle to
Holyroodhouse Castle where the queen and her family spend their summers.
Unfortunately, while the walk was scenic, the guide was quite incompetent and upset
most of the guests on the tour. This
guide won’t be hired again.
On the
second day, John escorted a tour to the Edinburgh castle, an incredible
structure that dominates the skyline of the city. Getting to the castle is a very steep climb,
as is the walk through the place. One of
the guests wanted to know why they built these castles so far from the parking
lots. Anyway, walking through the place
is a challenge, especially when one of the guests kept having breathing
problems so John would have to go up with the group then head down again to
help this one man catch up. Running up
and down this mountain at John’s age is not much fun, especially the next
day. The castle is very impressive,
especially St. Margret’s chapel, which is the oldest standing building in
Edinburgh, dating back to the early 1100’s.
Edinburgh castle is the place where Mary Queen of Scots gave birth to
James IV, the future king of England and Scotland. We also learned that Mary was a good 6 feet
in height, especially important since Henry VIII was about 6 feet 4 inches, and
that William Wallace, played by the 5 foot 10 inch Mel Gibson in Braveheart, was actually 6 feet 9 inches tall ... a huge
man. The rest of the tour involved looking at the architecture of “old town” and
“new town”, built in the early 1800’s.
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| Edinburgh Castle |
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| 11th century St. Margret's Chapel |
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| View of city from the cstle |
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| Some serious swords in the castle |
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Gail
escorted a tour to Scone Palace, home of the Earl and Countess of
Mansfield. This is a sumptuous neo-Gothic
palatial mansion with wonderful gardens.
The site is where the Stone of
Destiny was housed and where Scottish kings were crowned. The tour also went to the ruins of
Dunfermline Abbey, the remains of the Benedictine abbey founded by Queen
Margaret in the 11th century and the place of birth of Charles 1st.
These ruins resonate with the souls of those who walked through the halls eons
ago.
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| Gail with Scottish guide |
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| Scone Palace |
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| Dunfermline abbey | | |
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| Scottish Countryside | | | | |
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| Some local colour |
Later in the
day, after the tours, we went by
shuttle-bus back to Edinburgh to walk around.
We found a modern shopping area underground that had a number of unique stores. One of great interest to John was a whiskey
store that sold scotch whiskey out of barrels.
He bought a 500 mL bottle of a very tasty 12 year old poured from a
barrel and bottled on the spot. One more
for the bar, to go along with a 16 year old Mortlach that he bought at
Edinburgh Castle. That`s it for duty free until our next trip.
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| Typical Gothic Architecture | |
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| An example of a public school |
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| One last view from the castle |
That
evening, the ship left for Belfast for another day at sea and another
successful art class. Unfortunately, the
seas have been more than a little ``interesting`, as they are wont to be in the
North sea.
