Scotland: The Royal Mile and a Cool Parade . . .

On Saturday, I decided to explore around the Royal Mile (Castlehill, Lawnmarket, Canongate and Abbey Strand) and visit some of the sights there. This famoust stretch referred to the Royal Mile is on (High Street) and starts at the foot of the Endinburgh castle and extends for not quite a mile down to the Royal Abbey and palace. First I visit this cool Kilt Weaving Museum where you can see how the wool kilts are made. It was pretty cool. I crashed into William Wallace (a street performer who has done this for 15 years raising money for children with Leukemia). He was very funny! Along the Royal Mile, there are these narrow and small alleys (For some reason Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde stories came to mind) that lead to interesting courtyards like the Lady Stairs Close where there is also a Writer’s Museum. There’s a tour of these City Streets built below Edinburgh that sounded really interesting but it included all these ghost stories which always gives me nightmares so I passed on the tour.

I visited a magnificent church, St. Giles Cathedral, with beautiful stained glass windows. Right by St. Giles Cathedral in Parliament Square the cars for the Art Car Parade were being set up so I stuck around to view some of the cars and enjoy the festivities. The architecture is really interesting along the Royal Mile. It was great fun to just take my time and browse around with no set schedule.

 

 

 

I then walked down back to Princess street where I just grabbed a sandwhich to take back to the apartment. The art car parade will make its way down to St. Andrew’s Square and is literally one block (short 2 minute) walk away from my apartment. Yay! They have a stage set up for entertainment and all these interesting informational booths about Scotland, which I browsed around. It’s all part of the Homecomming celebration.

At about 5:00 I head out to snag a good place for the parade. The street soon became crowded with people lined up to see the parade. They had these cool big puppets and little robot things to come out and entertain the crowds along the parade route. They gave our Scottish Flags to everyone along the route too. Then the cars came and it was a blast. It was very cool to see them and to cheer them on as they drove by. Very fun!

And for AnnieNC, here are some photos I took of the Art Car Parade…. (It was so fun)!

And here are images of the entertainment that performed after the car parade . .