No blog posting from me yesterday, since it was just a tiring and difficult travel day for us as we made the journey from Southampton to Edinburgh by coach, taxi, train, and taxi again, with endless delays all along the way.
Our hotel room in Edinburgh, which is clean and functional, naturally suffers by comparison with our ship stateroom!
I was on the hunt today to see memorials at Edinburgh Castle to some of my famous Scots ancestors who are connected to me through my 7th-great-grandmother, Helena Lindsay, who lived from 1643 to 1698 in Bristol. I have traced my line back to Helena personally; her ancestors have been researched by others, and they include more and more historical figures as we go farther back in time. [My other ancestors were labourers and farmers and weavers and such, and have proven impossible so far to trace back much farther than Helena Lindsay's time.] I have had a great time in the last couple of years learning about these very distant noble ancestors of mine - I certainly didn't pay much attention to their "life and times" in history classes at school.
Katherine hadn't visited the Castle for awhile, so off we went this morning. We took a hop-on-hop-off tourist bus as an easy way to get there, and that worked out very well for us.
My 20th great-grandfather met us at the Castle gates. King Robert the Bruce was the great-grandson of William Marshal who I visited at the Temple Church in London two weeks ago.
A little farther into the castle grounds we saw the plaque commemorating Thomas Randolph who took back the Castle in 1313 after 20 years occupation by the English.
Then we came to a beautiful chapel dedicated to Saint Margaret of Scotland who was a Queen of Scotland who lived from 1045 to 1093, so we are really getting far back in time. She was King Robert the Bruce's 4th great-grandmother, so I get to claim her too. It was her son King David I of Scotland who built the chapel in his mother's honour.
As well as visiting the relatives we took lots of pictures that I can't post because the hotel has only very low speed Internet. We had lunch at the Castle, and visited all the Castle gift shops, and then made our way down the Royal Mile. I can't show you that either, but I encourage you to look at the Royal Mile pictures my nephew posted on his blog here. Alex is spending the summer travelling in Europe and he was in Edinburgh several weeks ago.
At Katherine's suggestion we visited St_Giles'_Cathedral, which proved very interesting. I have seen it from the outside on several earlier visits to Edinburgh, but this was the first time that I can remember going inside.
By late afternoon we were back on the tourist bus and happy to be off our feet for the rest of our sightseeing. We saw a guard of bagpipers in full dress milling about outside of the Holyrood House and the Scottish Parliament. We've just learned on the TV news that the Queen is here today and that she inspected them shortly after we passed by. Apparently she will be opening the Scottish Parliament tomorrow.
So that is it for our first day in Edinburgh. Tomorrow we are off to Dumfries-shire to track down some of Katherine's ancestors.
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