July 13: Last Day in Edinburgh

We've been talking about how glad we are that we scheduled a long stay in Edinburgh instead of trying to cram more places into our trip.  We've had time to really get to know this wonderful city and a bit of the area around it too.  We spent this last day wandering the Royal Mile and just generally enjoying the city.

The Royal Mile is the main street of the old city, stretching from Edinburgh Castle to Holyrood House.  That's about a mile on the map and when you walk it you feel like there must be a good fraction of a mile in altitude between the two as well!  One could get cynical and say that besides some beautiful churches most of the Mile consists of pubs, hotels and souvenir shops.  That's somewhat true, but the appeal for me is the lovely old buildings housing those things.  Ignore the signs and you could have gone way back in time.

Here are some of the pictures I took on our walk down the Royal Mile:

Plus this more homey close-up:

And the following doorway fascinated us.  A "close" is a little alleyway sort of thing running between streets, often with shops or homes coming off it it.

See this page for the story behind the carving and inscription.  The sign sounds an awful lot like a certain Monty Python sketch, and some of the Python cast did go to the University of Edinburgh....

After a lot of walking, we cut across to a nearby neighbourhood and had an excellent lunch at the Conan Doyle Pub:

 It is named for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes stories, and the decor is full of Holmes references.  The reason for the pub's theme is that Conan Doyle himself came from Edinburgh and was born across the street from the pub.  There's a statue nearby with a plaque stating Conan Doyle was born "nearby":

The waiter in the pub told us that the author was actually born in the house that's now part of a famous rental-car chain.  What would Holmes have thought of that?

Another piece of Edinburgh trivia: the character of Sherlock Holmes was inspired by one of Conan Doyle's professors in medical school in Edinburgh, who approached each medical mystery in a very methodical, evidence-based way.  So even though Holmes is very much associated with London in our minds, he has Scottish roots!