Reading this week:

• Virunga, Archives and Collections of an Outstanding National Park edited by Patricia Van Schuylenbergh and Han de Koeijer

Our final day in Edinburgh began with some light shopping, first of all for donuts at Kilted Donut. That place was great. Between the two of us we got three donuts and couldn’t finish them. We ate them on a bench in the shadow of the castle, looking majestic (the castle, not us, we were stuffing our face with donuts). Though feeling a little bit like we shouldn’t be there (maybe like the Edinburgh Seven did), we popped into the Edinburgh Futures Institute to check out some more tapestries before heading to Victoria Street for my super amazing wife to buy a tweed bag, and finally to a vintage store where I got a tweed jacket. With our new wares I don’t think anybody could tell we weren’t Scottish.

These adventures brought us to our final must-do while in Edinburgh: The Writers’ Museum! This place was really neat. It is tucked away in Lady Stair’s Close, one of Edinburgh’s many steep alley-like little streets (if you were well-to-do back in the day I guess you got yourself carried around in a sedan chair so you didn’t have to hike up the stairs yourself), in a narrow and winding house. The museum is dedicated to the “three giants of Scottish Literature;” i.e. Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, and Robert Louis Stevenson. The museum houses a variety of artifacts from each of them. As far as I could tell, the museum was three for three on having locks of the writers’ hair, but only had the writing desks from two of them, Burns and Scott (they did have Stevenson’s Samoan headrest however, and I learned at the museum that Stevenson lived on the islands for the last five years of his life, which is the way to do it if you ask me). The museum doesn’t have a particular narrative, but via the artifacts they have on display they effectively explain the impact that these men had on Scottish literature and culture and it is well worth stopping in. No lapel pin in the gift shop though, their only oversight.

This being our last day in Edinburgh we had to make sure to hit all the other places we hadn’t quite managed to get to. Up next was a visit to the National Library of Scotland. We didn’t see the stacks but they have an exhibition area and they had some really interesting stuff out, by which I mean old stuff, including a lot of medieval and early modern navigation texts and treatises on how the world is put together. Fantastic. As we continued down the hill the next stop was the Scottish Parliament building. Yet again this is a place I remember visiting on my last visit to Scotland (my dad got a silver quaich from their gift shop), and again I was stunned to learn that last time I visited it was practically brand new, the building having only opened up in 2003. Oh how things change. But yeah they have a wonderful little exhibit on the history of democracy in Scotland and then we went up to see the Parliament chamber itself. Since there wasn’t anything going on we were allowed to take pictures.

Then speaking of government it was finally time to head across the street to the Palace of Holyroodhouse, this being the King’s official residence in Edinburgh. The admission was more than we expected BUT the visit was better than we expected (no pictures here, what are they hiding). They had the most advanced audio guide we had seen, and we were unprepared for the amount of history that had happened in the place. I mean for example it all started with David I founding the abbey to Mary Queen of Scots suffering through her secretary being murdered by her husband. They still got the bloodstain on the floor. They had a lot of artifacts from Mary and it is worth visiting for those items alone. My favorite part was the Great Gallery. Charles II had commissioned Jacob de Wet to paint all the real and legendary kings of Scotland, but to cement his right to rule of Scotland all the portraits share Charles’ very particular nose. They just don’t do statecraft like they used to. I was also interested that they referred to all the royals by their Scottish titles, since this is Scotland, but it took me a sec to figure out who like the Duchess of Rothesay was. But then the real treat is the tail-end of the tour, when you walk through the palace’s gorgeous gardens which have the benefit of being backdropped by Arthur’s Seat. David I had good taste in real estate.

From there I dragged us into the Museum of Edinburgh since it was free and open for 40 more minutes. Another place with an eclectic collection of artifacts, including Robert Louis Stevenson’s golf ball and nutcracker, a basket made by Adam Smith’s (the economist) mother, and in my favorite genre of things in museums, “a bit of oatmeal cake made by Mrs. Burns, wife of the poet” in 1832. To cap off our Edinburgh experience we had dinner at The Witchery in the Secret Garden. We had the best table in the house, right on the balcony. An absolutely fantastic Edinburgh experience and I am excited to go back, hopefully sooner than in another 20 years.