Walks

For those of you well versed in British history, the words "Orange Order" may sound familiar. On Saturday, we witnessed an Orange Parade. Fi had noticed signs around town warning of closed roads due to the parade. However, it wasn't until we were in a shop purchasing a bottle of water before our ascent of Arthur's seat, (more later) and heard the shop clerk mentioning the words "catholics" and "pub" that I realized which parade they were talking about:it was an Orange March. At that point, we were down by the Scottish Parliament in an area of Edinburgh called Holyrood. Our plan was to climb Arthur's seat, the famous hill seen from most areas in Edinburgh. The word was that the parade of ten thousand people was to come down the Royal Mile (which ends at Holyrood) in about 1/2 hour. Feeling that this was a phenomenon Brian ought to witness, we hung around. For Fi, to stick around and watch felt a little odd. I'll not say too much about what this is all about - you can judge for yourself by googling "Orange Order" or linking to the Wiki entry by clicking "Orange Order" above. All that is to say that the Orange Lodge is a protestant fraternal order which originated in Ireland. Actually, the parade itself is the closest to a marching band I have seen here - pipes, flutes and drums make up the musical sections. The march could be heard all over Edinburgh for the rest of the afternoon.

Onto something more cheerful. After a few minutes of watching the March, we set off to climb Arthur's seat. It's just a little hill, but within five minutes of the first steep climb, we were sobered by a reminder of how little we've exercised over the past few months! However, if skinny little Italian girls with knee-high boots and 6 inch heels can climb Arthur's Seat (I kid you not...) then we can huff and puff our way to the top, and so we did. It was a wonderful walk and fun to see Edinburgh from the peak. We could even see the May Island sitting in the Firth of Forth, which means that we were looking across to Anstruther. After we descended, we treated ourselves to a cup of tea and a snack at Clarinda's - a famous tearoom on the Royal Mile.

Here are our pictures from the day: