Scotland Travels: Royal Friday

I had a very different view to start the day than I have on my other days here. I decided to go to the Port of Leith to visit the Royal Yacht Britannia. I'm calling this post "Royal Friday," and I will try to link each thing to royalty somehow. I think the connection here is obvious.

Britannia was decomissioned in 1997, having been used by the royal family since 1953.

This is the state drawing room.

The piano in the state drawing room has been played by many famous people, including Noel Coward and Princess Diana.

This is the state dining room. Up to 96 people can be hosted here, and many famous people such as Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton and Rajiv Ghandi dined here.

Setting the table for a state event takes 3 hours, with the placement of each place, each glass and each piece of silverware being determined by exact measurement.

Around the state dining room are treasures that have been gifted to the royal family in places they have traveled.

This is Queen Elizabeth's bedroom. For a royal yacht, things are relatively spartan rather than opulent. All beds on the ship, including this one, are three feet wide.

The bed below was brought in by Prince Charles for his honeymoon with Diana. It is the only double bed on the ship.

Below is Prince Philip's sitting room. The model ship above his desk is of the HMS Magpie that he had commanded beginning in 1950. He had planned to serve for much longer and live a more "normal" life with his family, but the Queen's father died in 1952, and Prince Philip had to give this up, along with so much else - hence its prominent place here.

I also saw the lounges for the various crew members - different spaces for different levels of position in the pecking order.

This tour took about an hour and a half, as there was so much to see - including the hospital, the laundry (which served for hundreds of people per day), and the engine room.

I was particularly interested in the games and game closet which were displayed.

Again, just a very different view from all of my other days. I thought of John Napier while here. He would have set sail for the continent at age 13 from this port and returned at age 21. Of course things have changed a bit in the last 456 years . . .

Even from down here at the port, you can see Arthur's Seat!

My next stop was related to mathematician Napier (tangentially) as well. In 1594 he was contracted by Sir Robert Logan to use his "sorcery" skills ('cause, you know, mathematicians are magic!) to search Fast Castle for treasure. No one is sure what the treasure is/was, but it could easily have been Templar treasure, as the Templar's did use the Port of Leith and also had a connection to Fast Castle. There are other possibilities as well. Logan died in 1606, and this is the church in which he was buried. However, Logan was implicated in the Gowrie Conspiracy to abduct James VI of Scotland. This implication came in 1609, and he was summoned to appear before the court. No matter that he was dead; they exhumed the body and laid him before the court. Since he had a rather hard time defending himself, he was convicted, and his estates were forfeit.

Technically I'm not over here researching during this trip, but, you know, I'm always researching.

And you know I can't help myself when presented with a kirkyard!

I had never seen a tombstone with an hourglass on it before, but today I saw TWO - seems like appropriate funerary art, and I'm surprised not to have seen any previously. Tempus fugit, as they say.

Above and below were on opposite sides of the same gravestone - a skull and an angel.

I took the bus back toward The Palace of Holyrood House - quite a walk yet from where I'm staying, but I've been wanting to walk along Salisbury Crags, which are nearby.

The Palace of Holyroodhouse is the residence of Queen Elizabeth II when she is in Scotland on official business. Mary, Queen of Scots, once lived here.

The view to the south just outside the west entrance to The Palace of Holyroodhouse. You can see the Salisbury Crags, Dynamic Earth, and the Scottish Parliament.

Scottish Parliament - directly across the street from the official royal residence - very handy.

Grounds of Scottish Parliament

Salisbury Crags

I've been running around so fast and furiously that I'm not taking a moment to just be still and realizing I'M HERE. I'm where I'd been looking forward to going since September or October of last year. I decided to sit down and take it in, and I took a selfie of myself sitting down and taking it in. Yea! It's really happening!

I had wanted to walk along a trail known as The Queen's Drive, but it looks like going up there wasn't a good idea, so I walked along a path at the base. (Actually I'm not entirely sure that the path I was on wasn't The Queen's Drive; there are so many paths that I'm kind of unclear as to which is which.)

The gorse is blooming beautifully!

After six days here I hadn't spent any time at the castle esplanade. I was hoping to hit it up on the way back to my flat. Since it was quite late in the day, I was also hoping to find it kind of empty, but then I realized that in May, unlike in November, the sun doesn't set here until after 9pm, so as I hiked up the Royal Mile, I was certain this place would be crawling with people, especially on a Friday night. And then . . . it started pouring rain. As I approached the esplanade, everyone was else was fleeing it because of the rain. The castle itself is no longer open at this time of day anyway. So, the good news is that I had the castle esplanade to myself. The bad news is that one cannot keep one's camera lens dry in a downpour, so the pictures aren't great . . . alas . . . but I finally got pictures of the front of the castle, and there aren't any people in the pictures!