A closer look at Edinburgh, occa­sion­ally viewed from the top of a double-decker bus. The road design often doesn’t make any sense, or fol­low any kind of grid, facts that belie it’s medieval his­tory. Some streets are espe­cially wide, so that horse car­riages could make a full turn in them. Keeping these old tra­di­tions may add to the char­ac­ter of the city, but I ques­tion whether it’s worth the added con­fu­sion and frus­tra­tion when try­ing to navigate.

One of the inter­est­ing things about this city is that it can be divided down the mid­dle into dis­tinct Old Town and New Town sec­tions, where the dif­fer­ence in archi­tec­tural style is very striking.

bagpipe player

There’s a bag­pipe busker on this cor­ner out­side the Princes Mall at all times. I think a few of them share shifts; it must be the most lucra­tive cor­ner in the city.

Edinburgh street 1

 

Calton Hill

Calton Hill. The obelisk is the Political Martyrs’ Monument in the Old Calton Cemetery, and the cir­cu­lar tower that stands tallest is Nelson’s Monument, which has a giant 1500-lb ball on top that’s raised and dropped at pre­cisely 1pm every day to allow ships to syn­chro­nize their chronometers.

It’s inter­est­ing to see rail­road tracks going straight through the heart of a major city.

Edinburgh street 3

The Last Drop Tavern is located directly next to the city gal­lows, where peo­ple would come to watch pub­lic executions.

Craig's Close

There are many alleys with the suf­fix “Close”, and it’s said that they got this name due to the fact that peo­ple were trapped inside and left to die as the only means of quar­an­tine and con­trol of the bubonic plague. This one is par­tic­u­larly narrow.

Edinburgh street 2

 

Edinburgh street 4

One thing I’m really not used to are the changes in ele­va­tion through the city, where flats and pubs are built on steep hills.

Fleshmarket Close

 

Jenners

Jenners Department Store was once the old­est inde­pen­dent store in Scotland, main­tain­ing it’s posi­tion on this street since 1838. There are beau­ti­ful carv­ings of women as pil­lars on the façade, used to show that women are the sup­port of the house.

North Bridge and Old Edinburgh

North Bridge, lead­ing from New Edinburgh to Old Edinburgh, with the Balmoral Hotel the most promi­nent part of the skyline.

Scott Monument

The Scott Monument in the Princes Street Gardens. I think you’d be hard pressed to find a more impres­sive mon­u­ment to a writer.