Up at 8A and breakfast around the corner at City Café when they opened at 9A.  City Diner-esque in décor and menu.  Meh.  But did get us back onto the Royal Mile quickly where we hoofed up to the Castle Esplanade (in light misting rain) to begin our travels.  At the Esplanade there were a couple of giant cranes at work dismantling huge temporary grandstands left over from the prior month's Edinburgh Festival.  These would have been used for folks to view the nightly military tattoo.  For use, however, they do little other than spoil of views, unfortunately.

The Castle Esplanade, complete with an eyesore of a construction crane impeding our view of the castle.

We ended up buying a cheap umbrella immediately, mostly with intent to shield the script we were using for our walk down the Royal Mile.  The script was the mash-up I'd created of the Rick Steves narration and the local "Close Encounters" narration.  Of course, after 10 minutes of use the rain – which the 8A weather report said would continue until noon – stopped entirely for the rest of the day.  Anyway, made our way down the RM, which stops at Camera Obscura and St Giles Cathedral before lunch (at Café Edinburgh) for too much food around 1230P.  

The Camera Obscura museum is a bit pricey, but they do have a lot of interesting stuff across the six floors, including (of course), the actual camera obscura that allows viewing of Edinburgh via their rooftop mirror.  Lots of interesting exhibits of optical illusions.

Aaaargh!!!

The upper half of the Royal Mile is packed with kitsch.  There's tartan shops and whiski bars and souvenir shops and, of course, busking bagpipers.  As Rick Steves points out, so much of what is on display on the Royal Mile isn't really about Edinburgh itself, but about Scottish culture, imported into Edinburgh to be put on display for the benefit of tourists.

The statue of David Hume, with his shiny foot.  Legend says that rubbing his foot brings good luck.  It seemed to bring mostly tourists there to take picture of themselves rubbing the foot.

St Giles Cathedral, where John Knox preached and where English Catholicism morphed into Scottish Presbyterianism during the Reformation.  We entered about 12 minutes before the noon service, so hustled through without benefit of any decent information to guide our lap around the church.

Statue of John Knox

Post lunch we did the lower half of the RM, stopping at Museum of Edinburgh and Museum of Childhood (free entry, and definitely priced right.  Not awful, but wouldn’t have been worth any kind of entry fee, either).  We also did all our Scotland shopping here, buying socks for the kids (at Soctopis), our traditional travel Christmas ornament at Ye Olde Christmas Shop, a shirt for me and scarves for E and a friend from a random gift shop.  We also stopped at a fudge shop and bought a (giant) slice of Dark Chocolate and Sea Salt fudge for later.

The lower half of the Royal Mile is definitely different than the upper half.  The upper half is much more vibrant and welcoming, even if much of it is touristy.  The lower half is much less dense in attractions and has much tattier shops.  It looks to me like the lower half also has a lot more residential stuff (apartments).  For the most part, most of the lower half seems like stuff you simply will pass by on your way to Holyroodhouse.

This view on the Royal Mile, looking down Cranston Street, reveals portions of the the cemetery on Calton Hill.  The Obelisque (on the left) called Martyrs Monument remembers 18th century Scottish Patriots exiled for their politics by London's dangerous ruffians like those who founded Australia.  The big turreted building in the center was the jail master’s house.  Today, the main reason to go up Calton Hill is for the fine views.

During our exploration of the lower half of the Royal Mile we came across this Close.  Clearly, this was a highlight for me.

The new parliament building

Interesting note: down at the end near the parliament building was a street sign saying something like “Can you spot our undercover officers?”  It was for the police and also said something along the lines of “a security action could start at any time”.  I guess it was supposed to make us feel safe, but both of us had the same “holy shit – what happens around this place that this kind of thing is needed?” moment

Got back to the hotel around 345P, tired and with sore feet and backs.  As I type this up, sounds of a piper are wafting up from the street – now sunny and blue sky outside, of course.  We’re heading for dinner at La Locanda on Cockburn Street for a 630P reservation.  Also made reservation for tomorrow night’s dinner at Howie’s (on Victoria Street).  They only had openings at 545P and 730P, and since dinner is blocked for 2 hours of service (i.e. could be slow) we decided to take 545P and end our night earlier, given that we have to catch a cab early (i.e. around 5A) the next day.

Dinner was at La Locanda, a small (10 tables?) Italian restaurant on Cockburn (“Coburn”) street about 3 minutes away from The Inn.  Delicious!  I had a spicy mussel soup starter with the BEST mussels I’ve ever had, while E had a salad.  For the main, I had lasagna and she had paperdelli in a meat ragu.  Again, both excellent.  We were too stuffed to have dessert – plus, of course, we had a giant slice of fudge back in our room.  So we stepped out of the restaurant around 745P where the weather was a very pleasant balmy temp and walked back to the hotel. 

Looking towards the west (Castle) end of the Royal Mile around 830P