Our Last Day In Scotland (for a while)
Trip Start
May 22, 2005
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36
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Trip End
Aug 09, 2005
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Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Saturday, July 30, 2005
The rain today was not as severe as yesterday, but still made exploring difficult. Our first stop of the day was Rosslyn Chapel, just 7 kms outside the city and accessible by public transportation -- on a normal day. The bus drivers in Edinburgh are on strike today, and will be for some time by the looks of things. Bus service was limited, so the regular bus was replaced with a shuttle bus that picked up passengers from the last stop of a different bus -- none of which was explained to us until one helpful bus driver cleared things up. We had waited an hour at the bus stop, with people giving us various answers, until this one nice driver told us he was the bus we were looking for. During this time we met a nice American girl who was also headed for Rosslyn and was glad that we had sorted the whole bus problem out. We finally reached our destination and had a great time at the chapel. Rosslyn is a neat place as the carvings and decoration are unlike those in any other church we have visited. There are carvings of sweet corn, found only in the Americas, which is odd because this chapel was built in the early-mid 1400s. There is a tradition that Henry Sinclair, one of the ancestors of the family that built the chapel, made a voyage to the Americas around 1398 (almost 100 years before Columbus). The visit was great, but on our way out there was an American fellow (from the South somewhere) who was asking the ladies in the souvenir shop if they had any books on building with stone (you know, masonry). He figured they must since the Rosslyn has long been associated with Freemasons! He has lots of fieldstone that I guess he wants to build a chapel out of, or something. Americans are funny. Our American friend, Kate, was a great person and we all went for coffee and cocoa after we got back in to Edinburgh. We visited the Elephant House, where J.K. Rowling penned the first Harry Potter book, and enjoyed some hot beverages before going our separate ways. They were filming, we all supposed, the fifth Harry Potter movie up on the Royal Mile (the main historical street in Edinburgh) as Kate told us that she saw the actor who plays Ron Weasley doing some shots involving a car. We figure that maybe the Royal Mile will double for Grimauld Place (Erica, what do you think?). It was a wet day, but great and we are sorry to be leaving Scotland so soon. We will definitely have to come back and check out the highlands in the future.
