Ireland/Scotland, Day 10: Edinburgh

For our first full day in Edinburgh, we focused on some of the big-ticket tourist items from the guidebook, including St. Giles Cathedral...

St. Giles Cathedral

And Glastone's Land, which is an old home / business building that has been preserved as a way to show how people lived in the 1500s to the 1800s. I was glad we started with this, as it showed a lot of general Edinburgh history.

We needed to get some Swatch watches repaired, so Dave and I visited the Swatch store, where we not only got those watches fixed, but Dave got a beautiful new Swatch. The Edinburgh Swatch was cute, but not cute enough for me to spring for it.

We enjoyed lunch at Whiski Rooms, which had a nice fish and chips, and more whiskies for Dave to sample. 

After lunch, we went down to Dovecot Studios, a weaving and fiber arts cooperative (the rainbow spiral above right is from a stairwell).

Dovecot Studios

The main exhibition room had beautiful textiles on view, plus you got to look down at weavers making beautiful things.

A textile at Dovecot Studios

Their gift shop is super cute, too, even if you don't want to look at the exhibitions.

Then we walked over to Parliament, where we took a tour, and we were not able to take a tour of the Palace of Holyroodhouse because there was a royal visit or something (I guess that happens when you're in the UK!). So we hiked up the trail to Arthur's Seat. Although we didn't go all the way up to the crazy high part, the part we did complete was fun and we had very nice views of the city.

Hiking up to Arthur's Seat

As we were descending from Arthur's Seat, chilly air and mist blew in, obscuring everything. Glad we got our photos when it was sunny and clear!

We stopped for a few beer samples at Holyrood 9A, which had a nice selection from all over Scotland. 

On our way back to the hotel to change before dinner, a shop caught my eye: Scottish Textiles Showcase. I was going to buy a beautiful woven zip bag and some yarn, and then saw the most beautiful coat in the whole world, Harris Tweed and A-line. It was expensive and I wasn't sure how I was going to fit it in the bag, but I couldn't not buy it. And luckily I had bought a lot of goodwill with Dave with all the scotch.

We had dinner at Wedgewood the Restaurant, which has a tasting menu, but we weren't feeling up to it after really going to town on breakfast and lunch. One of our waitresses was American and we asked her a lot of questions about how to emigrate...you know, for a friend...