In the afternoon we went back for another look at the National Museum. I just love the Grand Gallery.
This is the Millennium Clock sculpture.
This is a goofy little jar lid.
And, of course, I found some needlework. Yaaa!
There were also lace examples.
These two are bobbin laces made from precious metals.
This will be my last post for this trip. Tomorrow we head for home.
We spent our last day wandering around Edinburgh catching a few more sights. Our first stop was the Grassmarket. It has a colorful history. It has been a market place and a place of execution. It was a market place for hay, corn, and seed from the 15th century until the early 1900s. In 1650 the area was chosen as a site for public execution. Hangings continued on an almost daily basis until 1784.
There are some interesting pubs. The Beehive Inn ...
And the Last Drop.
Other interesting architecture around Edinburgh include:
This is part of Victoria St.
The World's End Pub:
We also visited Hollyrood Palace but couldn't go inside because the "monarchy was in residence".
The new Calton Burying Ground was opened in 1820 complete with a watchtower to guard against grave robbers , known as "Resurrectionists".
This building commemorates Scotland's national poet, Robert Burns (1759-1796), and is modelled on the ancient Choragic Monument of Lysicrates in Athens.
We then trudged up Calton Hill which was established as one of Britian's first public parks in 1724. There are some great views of the city from the top.
Located in the park is the Nelson Monument. Built between 1807 and 1815, it is a commemorative tower in honour of Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson.
And the National Monument, an exact replica of the Parthenon.
Our tour ended today after breakfast so we decided to take a field trip to see the Falkirk Wheel and The Kelpies. [info from Rick Steves' Scotland guide book]
The 115-foot-tall (35 m) Falkirk Wheel, opened in 2002, is a modern take on this classic engineering challenge: linking the Forth and Clyde Canal below with the aqueduct of the Union Canal, 80 feet (24 m) above. Rather than using rising and lowering water, the wheel simply picks boats up and—ever so slowly—takes them where they need to go, like a giant waterborne elevator. In the 1930s, it took most of a day to ascend or descend through 11 locks; now it takes only five minutes.
Here is a boat in the lower gondola of the Wheel.
Then it slowly gets lifted up to the canal 80 ft above.
We signed up for a boat ride which took us from the lower canal to the upper one, turned around, then took us back down again. It was great fun.
This is the view out the front when we got to the top.
And this is the view after we turned around.
This is the view out the front just before we started back down.
We also visited the Kelpies. Unveiled in 2014 and standing over a hundred feet tall ("the largest equine sculptures in the world"), these two giant steel horse heads have quickly become a symbol of the region. They may seem whimsical, but they’re rooted in a mix of mythology and real history: Kelpies are magical, waterborne, shape-shifting sprites of Scottish lore, who often took the form of a horse. And historically, horses were used to tow heavily laden barges. The sculptures are 300 tons of steel apiece, sitting upon a foundation of 1,200 tons of steel-reinforced concrete, and gleaming with 990 steel panels.
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