Edinburgh Castle

Posted on 9 May, 2007 by Matthias Scheler

As I was feeling much better this morning my wife and I decided to resume our original plan and visit the castle today. Instead of walking up the Royal Mile we approached from Grassmarket. This provided us with an impressive view of the castle from below.

Edingburgh Castle

After climbing up a lot of stairs we reached the Esplanade and entered the castle via the drawbridge. We went up the mainroad inside the castle to the gallery and were overwhelmed by the view.

View over the City

We spent many hours in the castle, observed the firing of the one o’clock gun, …

One O'Clock Gun

… admired the architecture, visited all the museums and exhibitions and finally took a look at the Honours of Scotland.

We had a really good time and can only recommend visiting the castle.

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(Not) Exploring Edinburgh on a single day

Posted on 8 May, 2007 by Matthias Scheler

My wife and I had a lot of plans for our first visit in Edinburgh. We wanted to visit the castle, walk down the Royal Mile, climb on Arthur’s Seat and do many more things. But there is an old saying that no battle plans survive first contact with the enemy.

The enemy in this case was a nasty cold that I had been fighting with for two weeks already. Besides a blocked nose I developed a cough during the weekend. Flying in that condition yesterday made things worse and I had a(nother) rough night. In the morning I still felt tired and exhausted after almost ten hours of sleep.

We therefore had to take things slowly and only walked from our Hotel to The Palace of Holyroodhouse.

The Palace of Holyroodhouse

When we were back in the Hotel I collapsed on the bed and fell asleep almost immediately. After one and a half hour of extra sleep I felt somewhat better and we went on another excursion in the late afternoon.

We walked all the way down to New Town and strolled along George Street and enjoyed the lovely weather. Just when we considered having dinner we found a great restaurant, The Sizzling Scot. Good and friendly service, a nice venison burger and one of the best steaks my wife ever had (her own words) made it a very worthwile visit. Stuffed and happy we went back to the hotel and decided to put off further sightseeing for today.

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The Ten Hill Place Hotel

Posted on 7 May, 2007 by Matthias Scheler

After an uneventful journey with easyJet from London Stansted my wife and I arrived in Edinburgh early in the afternoon. We took the Airlink 100 bus service from the aiport into the city centre. During the bus ride we enjoyed the view on the interesting mix of old and new architecture in the outskirts of Edingburgh. We finally left the bus at the stop next to the main train station.

After walking through the hilly city centre for about twenty minutes we arrived at the Ten Hill Place Hotel. It’s a modern building which blends in nicely with the surrounding old architecture. The interior decoration matches the elegant exterior.

Ten Hill Place Hotel

Besides that the hotel room provides services I fancy: a very comfortable bed, a nice bathroom, a flatscreen TV and last but not least free high-speed Internet access via ethernet.

After a relaxing break (we had after all to get up at 7:00 am on a bank holiday) we will now take off and have a closer look at the city.

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