Scotland, Day 9: Edinburgh

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.

4 comments

  1. I can’t believe the “clos­es” were basi­cal­ly alley­ways.… awful.
    And thank you for the Scott mon­u­ment, it sent me off after all the back­ground on him.

  2. you’re incor­rect about why clos­es are named such, close is an old word for a nar­row street.

  3. The ‘clos­es’ were in fact orig­i­nal­ly enclo­sures, i.e. gar­dens, behind the nar­row hous­es lin­ing the High St of the Old Town. Since space was very lim­it­ed on the steep slopes either side of the High Street, build­ings expand­ed onto these ‘clos­es’, leav­ing only the nar­row pas­sage­ways down the side of some of them to allow access to the rear. ‘Close’ has now come to refer to these nar­row alleys. They were nev­er intend­ed for impris­on­ing plague suf­fer­ers, as the whole point of the close was to pro­vide access round the back of the build­ing. I have nev­er heard of a close being used this way.

  4. Hi! Just won­der­ing which the 5th pic­ture from the bot­tom was tak­en? It’s so gor­geous!

Leave a Reply