Remember Adam Smith the economist? Apparently he is from Scotland! When I read about him in my textbook, I just know that he was some western guy, but never mapped it to a country. Glowing up, the Western World was somewhere I never imagined I would ever step foot on. Oh how my life has changed since then. From my travels, I learnt so much! I even know now where Nichola Tesla is from (Croatia), and where World War 1 started (Bosnia). Travelling is awesome!
After checking in, my next target was to walk the Royal Mile to see how long is a mile, as well as to see where the castle was. And since it was free and easy on our first day in Scotland, I decided that we should go take a walk before dinner. And mine mine, there is so much to see in that one mile! This post will try to show all that we saw on our one brief walk of the old town area. For a start, the very first landmark we came across was John Knox's House. His name sounded familiar, but I had to google him to really know what he is most famous for (Presbyterian Church founder). Here at the house, was also found the Scottish Storytelling Centre. Scotland, the land of stories!
Here is more official information about Knox's house.
The Royal Mile is just one straight road, and almost everything famous in Edinburgh can be found here. For example, we walked passed Mary King's Close, but didn't quite realised it until I filter through my photos. We didn't went in on our first day, but eventually we did went in up to the gift shop area to browse around. I am still wondering whether it's worth to pay almost 50SGD for 1hour of story telling in the underground city that was once Edinburgh.... thinking, thinking.... will probably go for it if I have too much time, and enough cash in my upcoming trip.
We also found the Supreme Court, which isn't really a tourist attraction, but still as beautiful a landmark to me. It was situated near St Giles' Cathedral. It was while we were exploring the outside of St Giles' that we found it slightly at the back of the church. We saw some tour group walking around and decided to wander around them.
It was quite a huge square, and in the middle of it was this beautiful statue of a man on a horse. This is what I imagined a European country would looked like. So it was nice to capture this in my adventure here.
Of course there was also St Giles' Cathedral, the famous church of Edinburgh. Entrance is free, so do go in and take a look around. I'll have more detailed posting coming up about this church, as well as what's inside of it.
The view of the church at sun set. I love the little building in front that has all those design around it. It kinda reminds me of the different houses in Harry Porter. Oh yeah, Edinburgh is definitely a place for a Porter Fan! I will do one post just on it. I'm not really a fan, dropping off half way along the movie series. But just for this trip, I did managed to read up some of it's location and significants of certain places. So it was fun when I do actually visit the spot :)
Next we came across this lovely church in the middle of what looked like a city center? Googling it, it says it's known as a Hub, and used to be St John's Church. What I love about this church is the colour of the building. It looked so dark, yet there are splashes of colours on it, like the bright yellow door!
Or the bright red coloured doors and window as view from the side angle. And it's location in the middle between two roads do make it such a lovely sight. I wonder why it isn't equally popular as St Giles'. Since our visit, I've seen many lovely photos of this building on my social media. I really appreciate that Scotland actually preserved all these wonderful buildings in their city. Walking here, I can imagine that I've stepped back in time, to a different era :)
Lastly, very near our hotel but I only spotted it on our way back is Tron Kirk. It used to be a church, but now it's a place for handmade souvenirs from Scotland. I did went in to take a look, but as beautiful as some of the items were, I didn't really needed anything, and the price was quite expensive for me well. By the way, I learnt from this trip that the word 'Kirk' means 'Church'. And through out this trip, I also picked up so words in Gaelic, and local Scottish slangs. The Scottish slangs were easier for me as they are found quite a bit in Terry Pratchett's book, especially when he writes about the Free Wee Men, which is basically Scottish Faeries :P
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