Edinburgh's main drag is called The Royal Mile. I stayed in a hostel near here many years ago.

The architecture here is wonderful. This is the heart of the old city, which is quite old, though there are not many medieval buildings remaining. Much of it seems to be Georgian or Victorian.

Narrow closes run off the Royal Mile in both directions.

...

Seen here from a distance, Edinburgh Castle rises up above the center of the city on a hill, which is actually an ancient extinct volcano. It can be seen from all around, and commands a great view in all directions.

To the north is the Firth of Forth, which connects to the North Sea.

In the foreground here is Waverley Station, where we arrived, and rising above it is Calton Hill with its distinctive monuments (see below). At left is the Scott Monument, a memorial to Sir Walter Scott (it's the one shaped like the castle from The Dark Crystal).

...

...

To the southeast is Holyrood Park, one of my favorite places. It's an absolutely huge park that contains a long, inclined rock ridge called the Salisbury Crags, set in front of a mountain called Arthur's Seat. (That set of stadium seats you see in the foreground was erected in front of the castle for the Royal Tattoo, an annual military display that draws huge crowds.)

...

...

This was the castle's Victorian jail.

At the base of the hill on which the old town sits is a valley that divides the old town from the New Town, which hasn't really been new since Georgian times. In this valley is the rail station and a couple of Edinburgh's major art galleries, the National Gallery of Scotland and the Royal Academy of Scotland. The museums appear to have had a recent renovation, as they are attached underground.

Looking back from the New Town.

As we wandered into New Town, we started to ask ourselves: "If we had to choose one or the other, should we buy a kilt or a towel? Because we can't easily buy both." That's when we fortuitously came across this cardboard sign.

Walter Scott looks over the New Town from his monument. Incidentally, this is right where they filmed the beginning of the robbery/chase sequence in Trainspotting.

I mentioned above that from the castle you can see distinctive monuments at a place called Calton Hill. I'm standing on one of them ...

It's called the National Monument, and it was meant to be a Greek-style temple that would have made Calton Hill look much like the Acropolis in Athens ... except they never finished it. Only one side is complete.

Looking between the columns we can see The Salisbury Crags and Arthur's Seat again, dominating the south of the city.

Looking the other way we see a tall tower next to the National Monument called the Nelson Monument, which is dedicated to that Trafalgar guy. It seems to scream, Scotland expects every man will do his duty.

Between the columns to the east is the New Town in the distance, and you can pick out the Scott Monument on the left.

In general it's a great place to view the city, as you can see both Arthur's Seat and the castle, plus everything around.

...

...

You can even see the Forth Bridges peeking over the hills in the sunset. The Forth rail bridge is an amazing engineering feat, as it is a very large steel structure though it was built in Victorian times. I would have liked to have seen it close up.

I'd never been in the cemetery on Calton Hill, but it's very atmospheric. Perhaps its most prominent memorial is one to the philosopher David Hume.

The next morning we walked down to Holyrood Park.

Again, these cliffs are the Salisbury Crags, and they are visible all over the city. There is a path running up the hill alongside them.

We pause for a photo ...

And here is Edinburgh Castle towering over the old city.

As we climbed Arthur's Seat we got more views of the castle beyond the Salisbury Crags. On the back of the crags is a wide, sloping valley.

...

Looking up at Arthur's Seat.

At the top is a large flat guide to the surrounding area.

Another view of the castle and everything else.

Yes, it's a Danger Mouse T-shirt.

Zoom in here for some scale. In the foreground you can see some of the rocky peak of Arthur's Seat, with the distant valley of Holyrood Park beyond.

...

Just on the edge of the park is the Palace of Holyroodhouse, a major royal palace where Bonnie Prince Charlie briefly lived. His story is worth recounting briefly, as we saw his name everywhere we went. He was the heir to the Stuart kings, a family of Scots who gained the English throne when Elizabeth I died in 1603. The Stuarts had a tough time of it - Charles I fought a war against Parliament and was ultimately beheaded, and James II was ousted and fled to France. His supporters were called Jacobites (the word being a derivative of the name James). Bonnie Prince Charlie was a later Stuart heir whose real name was Charles Edward Stuart. A favorite of the Jacobites, he would have been Charles III of England, and he tried to become Charles II by traveling up to Scotland and enlisting Highlanders to help him fight the English. He didn't succeed, but he did spend a short while in the Palace of Holyroodhouse.

I had never been here before, despite having been to Edinburgh a couple times. Our audioguide explained that the stone towers on this wing ...

... were built to mimic the towers on this wing, which were actually a medieval fortress. Matching them gave the resulting palace symmetry.

...

The ruins of an abbey are attached to the palace.

...

...

Many views of the palace are dominated by the nearby Salisbury Crags.

Next to the palace are the new Scottish Parliament buildings (seen here from the Salisbury Crags). They're very unusual, and the landscaping around them draws its inspiration from the shapes of the hills.

Up close, the building is severely modern for a parliamentary building.

It wasn't going to be that way originally. If you look at Calton Hill, the classical building just beneath the monuments was the original choice for the Scottish Parliament, but they decided it was too small and built the more modern one instead.

I wandered out that evening to take some last photos of the Royal Mile.

...

...

This is a closer view of Waverley Station, where we boarded a train the next day for the nearby city of Glasgow.

Glasgow is situated on the River Clyde, and is Britain's fourth largest city, after London and two other cities.

Bits of it are rather nice ...

...

This is near the modern art gallery, and is part of Merchant City, a major center of the industrial boom that seems to have been revitalized.

Glasgow Cathedral was probably once at the center of the city, but today you have to walk about a mile from the city center to find it. Despite having lost significant chunks to development over the years, it's actually one of the finer gothic cathedrals I've seen.

...

...

The famous Necropolis sits on a hill above the cathedral, and offers fine views of factories.

In general we found Glasgow to be a bit of a puzzle. On the one hand, there is a lot in it. But there is something slightly worn about it. Hard to put your finger on it, but we weren't entirely sure we liked if after the first day.

The one thing we did notice in our guidebook that we found interesting was a reference to an architect named Charles Rennie Mackintosh, who supposedly has a lot of famous buildings in Glasgow. And we found one: the Lighthouse. Though he designed in the late Victorian era, his designs were ahead of their time.

We made a point the next morning to go to breakfast at the Willow Tea Rooms, which was designed by Mackintosh and his wife. Their designs might be considered art deco, but thirty years early.

That afternoon we visited the Hunterian Art Gallery in the west end of the city, which is very different from the city center. Mackintosh and his wife Margaret lived nearby, and left their house to the nearby university, but it had to be demolished. It was later reconstructed at the Hunterian Gallery (which also has a fine collection of Whistler paintings). This is the dining room of the house.

The neat thing about the Mackintosh House is that the gallery entirely emulated its original shape and internal layout, including all doors and windows, but it is actually in a different location and from the outside is only vaguely shaped like the original building.

Though we came to like Glasgow once we saw enough good bits of it, we were eager to get out of town. We drove up by Loch Lomond and into the Highlands.

This is Glencoe, a massive half-pipe shaped glen running from east to west, with smaller glens stretching to each side.

...

...

The scale and severe slope of the treeless mountains is spectacular.

We stayed at a B&B on Loch Linnhe. It's a wonderful place to stay.

In the afternoon we drove to Kinlochleven for a hike that the proprietor of the B&B recommended. Kinlochleven is home to the Atlas beers, which I discovered as we traveled around the Highlands. Atlas Nimbus in particular is a fine ale. Over the brewery we witnessed this reenactment of a scene from M*A*S*H.

This spectacular pano of the mountainous terrain surrounding the loch involved a number of individual shots, but Hugin handled them rather well.

...

Look - see what the sun's doing? Something about the bare hills in the sun was utterly fantastic, and I got a lot of photos of it. The day was partly cloudy, but when an opening let the sun play across the mountains it was really wonderful.

...

...

...

...

Look, the sun's doing it again.

Check out the green color of the nearby fields. This photo is not overexposed.

At the end of the trail was a secluded loch called Loch Eilde Mor.

...

We drove that evening to Kyle of Lochalsh, not far from the Isle of Skye. We probably should have stayed on Skye itself, but I wanted us to be within reach of the island and also within reach of more eastern areas in case we decided to stop at Loch Ness or something. This is the famous Eilean Donan Castle, within walking distance of where we stayed. It is the most photographed castle in Scotland.

Eilean Donan Castle the next morning. It was rather foggy and wet.

The castle was destroyed in a Jacobite uprising, after Spanish troops who supported Bonnie Prince Charlie (there he is again) used the castle as a base and stored gunpowder there. The English sent ships to attack the castle, and they detonated the gunpowder to destroy the castle. The castle wasn't restored until the early twentieth century.

The loch in which the castle sits is Loch Duich, but it actually commands views of three lakes, which is why it was of strategic importance. If you think the weather is too dismal, take a look at the castle a couple days later ...

... on our last morning in Kyle of Lochalsh. This is what the famous view of the castle should look like.

...

And look what I saw when I turned the camera around. We saw a few rainbows in Scotland - an indication of the variety of weather we encountered.

After visiting the castle we drove over the Skye Bridge to the beautiful Isle of Skye. After a few minutes we were greeted by the massive Cuillins, a mountain range in which many of the individual mountains look like conical piles of sand.

The only single malt whisky distillery on the Isle of Skye is Talisker.

Their malt has a very peaty, smokey flavor compared with many Scotch whiskys. I rather enjoyed it, though I think I prefer the Highland malts which are milder.

Andrea has a different opinion about Scotch.

The biggest town on Skye is Portree, and this is its harbor.

It's very quaint and holds an open air market in the summer.

Look, the sun is playing along the hills again.

...

We elected randomly to drive to the westernmost point on the Isle of Skye, where there is a short walk to a lighthouse at a place called Neist Point. The landscape around Neist Point is very beautiful.

...

It is also an area rich in sheep.

...

...

This is the lighthouse, which is privately owned. If you look very closely at the horizon you can see the hills of the distant Western Hebrides, Scotland's outer isles.

...

This was unexpected. If you look along the rocky shore, people have built cairns, or small stone towers, all over the place.

There are hundreds of them.

...

...

On the way to and from Neist Point we drove on some of the smallest, most winding roads on which I've driven. On the way back we paused a few times for photos of the amazing terrain. These flat mountains are called MacLeod's Tables.

We drove again through the Cuillins, which are breathtaking in the low clouds.

...

...

Check out the door to this newsagent. If it doesn't look familiar, look slightly to the right.

We took a cruise around the harbor from cruise on a boat called the Argus

...

The cruise guarantees you will see harbor seals, and we did. They're adorable.

...

We saw a number of other harbor dwellers, like this flock of shags, which are related to cormorants.

...

Though it was sad to leave the Highlands, it was a pleasure to drive back along the A82 through Glencoe again, and on a sunny day.

...

...

Our last visit in Scotland was to the city of Stirling.

I visited Stirling in 1998, and climbed the National Wallace Monument, which sits on a hill outside town overlooking the fields on which William Wallace defeated the English at the Battle of Stirling. This is that monument from afar. The battle centered on a wooden bridge, so it was somewhat different than it was depicted in the film Braveheart.

I remember finding this facade interesting. It's Mar's Wark, the front of a medieval manor house. The construction of the house was abandoned when the owner died, and the facade now serves as an entrance to the old town cemetery.

It's an interesting cemetery, with a craggy lookout hill in the center and a number of interesting monuments, including this pyramid.

The nearby Church of the Holy Rude is where James VI of Scotland was crowned (he later succeeded Elizabeth I as James I of England, the first Stuart king).

A medieval hospital.

...

I remember when we were in Bermuda years ago that there were stones all over the place marked with the letters "WD."' I've wondered what this means for a long time, but I think I finally figured it out. It might stand for "War Department" and represent surveys that office performed (they later became the Ministry of Defence).

This is one of the last surviving medieval alleys, called vennels.

Read this. Now you don't have an official tartan.

That statue at the upper right is William Wallace.

The Back Walk is one of my favorite parts of Stirling, for some reason. It runs up along the outside of the medieval town wall.

Here's another WD marker.

...

We toured Argyll's Lodging, which is a surviving medieval manor.

...

And we also went into Stirling Castle, which is a fine castle to tour, and I think better than Edinburgh's.

You can see the old castle grounds, where the outline of the old garden is called the King's Knot.

The Great Hall was recently restored.

...

Much of the castle was built by James V, who was known by the nickname "the Gudeman of Ballengeich." He would dress up as a commoner and wander around the city and country, posing as a man from Ballengeich, and find out what his subjects thought of him. He is depicted in common clothes in this statue.

...

Just to prove we were there.