All a-board!

 Today, we boarded our ship, Le Champlain, our home-away-from-home for the next 7 days.

But before that, we had one last look at some of Edinburgh’s sites, starting with a tour of the 5 “new” towns, focusing on the Georgian architecture, and the many famous people who lived there. I don’t remember them all, so I’ll just mention Walter Scott, whose Waverley novels are the only ones famous enough to have a train station named after them (Edinburgh’s main train station), Robert Louis Stephenson, who wrote Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and and anthology of children poems, including “the Lamplighter” based on this very lamp post (he was a sickly child and did not have much to amuse himself). 

We admired the architecture of the house of the first minister of Scotland (just across from our hotel- indeed, we saw him step out of there yesterday), and the organized way the new town streets are laid out, particularly in comparison with the “ messy” old town. The striking differences between the two sides of town are said to have influenced the Jekyll and Hyde idea……

We passed the house of Dr. Simpson, whom Queen Victoria knighted for introducing chloroform during childbirth, and who invented the forceps…..

We then headed for the National Museum of Scotland, a large and diverse museum:  it has a huge wing dedicated to Scottish history, which was interesting, a science area that includes the taxidermied Dolly (the first cloned mammal) and, my favorite,

the Millennium Clock, which is hard to describe and worth googling.  It chimes every hour, so I went twice.

It also has a roof garden with unique views of the city.  

The museum is so broad in its exhibits that for a moment, I thought this sign pointed to technology improvements in toilet designs….  (It did not….).   

We then went back to the old town, to the Grassmarket area, under the cliffs of the castle, and had a lovely lunch at a French bistro.

I also stopped at the burial site of Greyfriars Bobby, the most famous dog in Scotland, and the only one with a famous burial site….  After his master died, Bobby spend 14 years at the plot where he was buried, in all weather conditions.  His devotion was rewarded with his own burial site as near as possible, and with a statue at the cemetery and another one on the Royal Mile  

Finally, we headed out to the botanical gardens, which are great, and where I wished we had much more than one hour to spend. I power walked my way through the gorgeous rhododendrons, the fabulous trees, and the many other flowers (more pictures at the end of the blog).  

Finally, we traveled across the Firth of  Forth (yep, that name is confusing…..), getting a good view of the bridges we would soon sail under.

Of course there was the obligatory safety drill, and then our first dinner on board, not pictured, because I was busy eating……

We sailed under the three bridges of the Firth of Forth…… it was cool….

Below are more pictures from the botanical garden.