Walkin' up that Hill

Having rejected the opportunity to spend twenty pounds apiece on a tour we didn't want, we turned back up the hill.

Straight away we found something totally appropriate for a blog that is, ostensibly, about knitting:

No, that forbidding door is not to a gaol, it's to ...

The Scottish Craft Center!  (Okay, peering in the window revealed a courtyard that showed no signs whatever that knitting, spinning, or weaving ever took place there.  Indeed, I'd suspect this served potters more than fiber workers.  But still...)

We wandered uphill a bit more, and ran into what looked like a wee museum -- the Museum of Edinburgh. In an old part of an old city surrounded by old old buildings and such, this free museum had things in it that made that Craft Center and the castles that surround the town look positively young.  As it turns out that only the ground floor is wee ... upstairs turns into a maze full of old, and sometimes historically relevant, china and silver and glass and armor and....  But I think the oldest things were on the ground floor --

Oh sure... a coin you say...

The sign is a tad confusing, for I get AD 69-79 as being in the FIRST century AD, but still that sucker is nigh onto 2,000 years old! Yes, that's the right number of zeros. I really meant two thousand years. 

These don't look to be in as good a shape as the orichalum above, but they're still pretty darned old.

They also had the clock movement from a bell tower that has since been upgraded.  That was very cool to look at, but impossible for me to get decent picture of.  Alas, Golf Pro is not as fascinated by all this old stuff as I am, so I didn't spend a lot of time in the museum. 

By now, it was getting on to hot and thirsty, though after that breakfast, I clearly needed no more food.  Luckily, Golf Pro happened upon this practically modern pub.

Though not nearly as old as some of the stuff in the wee museum, it has definitely been around (and continuously serving pints) for quite a while.

While I did not partake of any pints (or half-pints) of ale, I did thoroughly enjoy a pint of cider. 

What?  of course I had knitting with me.  I always have knitting with me!  And I thoroughly enjoyed a bit of sock knitting while sipping my cider. Cider, by the way, is an alcoholic beverage... so I had only one.

Perhaps the alcohol explains why the next stop was in a wee gift shop in which I finally parted with some pounds to buy pressies for the girls.  Perhaps not (they were different from the drek I'd seen in other shops).  But thereafter, we turned to and hiked right up that road towards Edinburgh Castle.  ...

Comments

[Cgirl]

Wait a sec, you went all the way to Scotland to go to the White Horse? There's one in town, you know.. ;)

[kmkat]

I love hard cider -- mmm!

[NeedleDancer]

But they dont serve cider in the one in town. Besides, I thought
theyd closed....