Scotland - Day 4: King For A Day

Maybe, quite possibly, I might have gotten enough sleep last night.  Granted that sleep is sometimes more of a concept for me than an actuality.  That's a fancy way of saying sleep and I don't always get along.  Anyway, I actually got something along the lines of 8 hours of sleep.  That's a good start to the day.  This was needed as today we spent a few hours at Edinburgh Castle.  

As we were waiting outside St. Giles Cathedral, we heard an actual Scottish street preacher doing this thing catercorner to the church.  

I almost feel guilty burning up a posting photo on the guy (due to posting size limits, I can typically fit about 5-6 high resolutions per posting), but it's worth it.  There's something unqualifying interesting about a man yelling the name of "Jesus Christ!" in a thick Scottish accent at one of the busiest corners of Edinburgh.  He was literally fighting a losing battle against traffic.  Some nice soul in a passing taxi was even kind enough to take of one his pamphlets.  All in a day's work I suppose.

On to Edinburgh Castle, which is many things, including amazing.  A few points of interest.

St. Margaret's Chapel is one of the oldest buildings in the U.K. dating back to around the year 1130.  It's also the oldest surviving building at the castle, here basically because King Robert the Bruce was afraid of creating bad mojo with the Pope.

You can get married in the chapel, which is why I couldn't take any interior photos, as that was actually happening during our visit.  Congratulations to the groom and bride, whomever they are.

I didn't go into many of the castle buildings, mostly because it was nice outside and many of them don't allow interior photography.  I did, however, get to see the changing of the guard.  Fun fact:  Edinburgh Castle is a real U.K. military base, with a garrison of troops stationed there at all times.  One of the places they guard, in addition to the actual castle entrance, is a building dedicated to those from the U.K. military who lost their lives during their service.

The above was right before the changing of the guard.  A side note:  One of the other tour groups had a guide that was speaking loudly as the ceremony began. Very, very disrespectful.  Thankfully, I think she got the hint and stopped.

I have about a dozen castle exterior shots that I'll post on the Facebooks, but here's one of the nicer ones.

The view from the castle can best be described as jaw-dropping.  Here's a sample:

If you look carefully at the photo, towards the top right, you'll see a rather new-ish building that is actually shaped like a turd.  I am not kidding.  Said building is not on the graphic at this location of the castle that points out city landmarks.  This could be for two reasons:

1. The building came after the graphic was installed.
2. No one wanted to actually include in the graphic the description of the "Turd Building".

Either explanation seems plausible to me. I'll post a larger picture of the Turd Building on the Facebooks.

Our day of exploration ended with a second trip through the cemetery where Greyfriar's Bobby is buried.  And yes, I get that it seems like we're spending a lot of time in cemeteries during this trip.  Actually, I'm not quite sure what to make of that myself, come to think about it.  In any event, here's one more cemetery picture.

Finally, when I was thinking about castles and kings, the Thompson Twins song "King for a Day" came to mind.  That's a fine way to end things...

More to come.