We thoroughly enjoyed our time in Edinburgh. This morning we still had several things we wanted to do before heading to York, a two-hour train ride south.
We were up early, packed our stuff and checked out of Kildonan Hotel, which agreed to store our luggage until we returned for it. We hopped bus 3, as we have every morning and went to Town Center. Hopping off the bus, our main goal was to tour Holyrood, the residence of the English royal family when they are in Scotland.
We were second in line when it opened at 9:30. We already had purchased tickets so were able to go right in and pick up our prerecorded tour device. With that device we can move at our speed through the rooms. As you might imagine, the mansion is elaborate but even more it has so much history within its walls.
The palace is located at one end of the Royal Mile, which runs from Holyrood (which means Holy Cross) and rises steeply up to the other end at Edinburgh castle. It has been the royal residence since the 1500s. King Charles spends one week a year in July at the residence where he holds a garden party for about 8,000 local dignitaries.
The palace has 289 rooms in the 87,000 square foot building. We got to view 18 of those rooms as well as the remains of the abbey adjoining the building. The abbey was built in 1128 by King David 1 of Scotland. It was heavily damaged in 1688 when a Protestant mob looted the hutch and destroyed its roof.
Mary, Queen of Scotts, lived there until she left and went to her cousin in England who after 19 years had her beheaded. Mary’s second husband, who thought his wife was having an affair with one of the royals, had men burst into her bedroom, drag her out and then killed the man he was suspicious of. The palace was in turmoil much of its early life even having British soldiers entering it and slashing 96 paintings inside. The palace also has some secret doors and would be a great place for our grandchildren to play hide and seek.
We finished the tour and our last bit of business was to walk the Royal Mile, which is lined on both sides with shops and restaurants. We wanted to look for a Christmas souvenir, which we found—one with Holyrood displayed and the name Stewart at the bottom. The clerk said as we purchased it, “I’ll wager your name is Stewart.”
We went back to the hotel, gathered our belongings and returned to the train station, which is massive by the way, with some 20 different loading platforms. We saw our train listed but it didn’t have a loading platform. One was not assigned until just 15 minutes before the train departed. We were on it.
It was our first train ride of many that we will be taking on our European journey. The train departed on time. Our car didn’t have many riders. It was clean and comfortable. An app on my phone showed me that the train maintained about 115 miles per hour speed. The landscape was great. We saw thousands of sheep at pasture. And, we saw thousands of acres of farm land, which appeared to have been planted with hay. It was all harvested and huge bales were stacked along the fields. Much of the journey we also could see the North Sea but could not see anything that looked like a beach with sand, just lots of rocks.
We arrived in York right on schedule and took a 12 minute walk to our hotel, The Queen Hotel on the River Ouse. It is much newer than the Kildonan of Edinburgh. It also doesn’t have wash cloths. And another feature we found interesting—one of the plastic credit card-like keys must be inserted into a holder on the wall before electricity is available in the room.