We left Blair Atholl by coach around 8:30 on Friday morning, arriving at the 88th Craigalmond Scout Group's Scout Hall around 10:00AM.	After we dropped our gear off at the hall, we hopped a tram into the city.
We got off the tram at Princes Street, to be greeted by Edinburgh Castle looming over the Princes Street Gardens.
Flower Clock	The Royal Mile runs from Edinburgh Castle down to Holyroodhouse Palace. We didn't have anything in particular planned for the day - we had no idea when we'd arrive. Having arrived on the Mile after lunch, it seemed like a perfect opportunity for the Scouts to visit the numerous gift shops and get the shopping out of their systems so that we could devote Saturday to more serious touring.
There's always time for an ice cream break.	One of the many closes and wynds leading down off the Royal Mile.
View from Dean Bridge About a year before our trip Mike Homrighaus found an old albumin print at a garage sale which had the caption "View from Dean Bridge Edinburgh - 6968 GWW" along the bottom edge. The picture was intriguing - what did it show? Where and when was it taken? Who was the GWW who took it? I did some research, and it turns out that "GWW" was George Washington Wilson (1823-1893), a Scottish photographer from Aberdeen who started in photography in 1852. By the time of his death in 1893 his company was one of the largest in the world. Over 40,000 of his prints survive today, according to Wikipedia, and Aberdeen University has a collection of about 38,000 of them. I looked at the collection, and while there were several images of the view from Dean Bridge in the Midlothian Subcollection, including GWW 973 and GWW 1524 (both listed in his 1877 catalog), our picture was not among them. Looking at the foliage and development, it's likely that our picture was years newer than the ones in the Aberdeen collection. At a guess, it would date to at least ten years later - maybe between 1887 and 1893, not long before Wilson's death. He retired in 1888, which might narrow the date down a bit further? We decided to try to reproduce the picture with today's view. Our first day in Edinburgh gave a perfect opportunity to wander over to Deans Bridge before dinner and see what we could find.
George Washington Wilson's View from Dean Bridge Edinburgh - 6898GWW found in a garage sale in Dryden, NY.	Dean Bridge was easy to find, but it's a fairly long bridge crossing over the valley of the Water of Dean, and the trees have grown up a lot in the last 130-plus years. Where on the bridge was the picture taken? The Greek Temple folly of St. Bernard's Well in the center of Wilson's photo, which we'd hoped to use as a landmark, was completely hidden. In the end, the only real clues were the church in the far distance and the terraces on the far right and left - both had been added onto since Wilson took his view, but with a little imagination we could see which parts were original to the picture.
Our version of View from Dean Bridge We tried several spots, but in the end the only place the picture could have been taken from was the southeast end of the bridge. Wilson's 8"x5" glass-plate negative camera had a wider angle of view than would be considered "normal" today, so we had to stitch five vertical images together to replicate the earlier print. The weather was a bit clearer when Wilson took his photo, so the details in the far distance are a little less distinct, but they're there. The result is as accurate as we could get it, but in the end a bit disappointing. I'm all in favor of trees, but the view was so much better in Wilson's day more than a century ago...	Map of Edinburgh. The Water of Dean can be seen flowing through the valley, and Edinburgh New Town is off to the right. The red pin shows the spot on Dean Bridge from which the photo was taken, and the blue arrow shows the direction of the view in the photo.
Our home for the next three nights - the 88th Craigalmond Scout Group Hall Our thanks to Archie and the group for their hospitality.

July 30th - Edinburgh - Royal Mile

Edinburgh Castle We started out our day on the Royal Mile at Edinburgh Castle.
	Whenever we've visited Edinburgh, the Esplanade in front of the Castle was surrounded by stands for the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, blocking the view from the Royal Mile. As ou pass under the stands, the Castle comes into view.
The Castle is no longer offering live tour guides, but everyone got an audio guide which was keyed to numbers posted all over the Castle. When you see a sign you enter the number into the guide and it tells you what you're looking at. You can also ask for more information at most spots. This allowed each of the patrols to progress at their own pace, and we arranged to meet up at the cafe for lunch at the end of the touring.	View from the Castle over New Town to the Firth of Forth, with the Kingdom of Fife in the distance.
Scouts looking northward over the Forewell Battery battlements of the Castle and across Princes Street Gardens to the New Town and the Forth.
View toward Calton Hill - the Greek columns of the never-completed War Memorial and the upturned telescope of the Nelson Monument can be seen behind the Waverly Hotel with its clock which is nearly always set fast so that patrons won't miss their trains at Waverly Station next door (it's reset to be on time at New Years Eve - Hogmanay - so as to greet the new year correctly).	The Dog Cemetery where the soldiers stationed at Edinburgh Castle buried their faithful companions.
Foog's Gate leads into the upper portion of the Castle	St. Margaret's Chapel is the oldest standing part of the Castle, dating to the 11th century. It's still used today for weddings and other ceremonies.
Mons Meg The 20" bore cannon was a gift to King James II in 1454.	Field Marshal Haig's statue outside the National War Museum
Crown Square is at the top of the Castle. The Crown Jewels are in the Palace on the extreme left, then the Great Hall, the Queen Anne Building in the center of the picture and the National War Memorial on the right.
The National War Museum has an interesting collection of recruiting posters. From the images, you'd think that the Army was a sports team or a travel agency, not a military force.
Panoramic view from Butts Battery - the battlements outside the National War Museum. The three bridges over the Forth can be seen in the far distance.
Camera Obscura The Camera Obscura and World of Illusions is on the Royal Mile, just outside the Castle Esplanade. It's a great collection of optical illusions and other stuff, with the Camera itself on the top floor.
	Anamorphic picture - look at it in the reflection from the cylinder, and you see a portrait rather than a landscape.
The Camera Obscura building is ringed by cameras which can be remotely controlled by visitors.	Thermal Imaging
Plasma Generators - the Scouts discovered that if they put one hand on each of several generators, then touched their other hand to another Scout connected to another generator (perhaps through a third Scout) they would get a shock.	Facial Merger
A spherical mirror creates a three-D image in space, allowing you to shake hands with yourself. Creepy...	The Flash Wall retains the shadow of whatever's in front of it when a strobe fires.
Change from one person to another by dimming lights.	The top level of the building is surrounded by a viewing balcony.
The Camera Obscura itself is a bit of Victorian high tech. A lens on a periscope at the highest part of the building projects an image onto a white table. The operator can rotate the lens and pan up and down to give a guided tour of Edinburgh. Picking up the buses on a card and swatting tourists on the Royal Mile are perennial favorites...	One of the best mirror mazes I've ever seen. You have to wear plastic gloves to avoid leaving finger prints - but at some point you will leave a nose print as you walk into one of the mirrors.
Nicolas, the Decapitated Scout...	Triple colored shadows...
The Ames Room shows how much taller Chris is than Nick...	...or is it the other way around?
The rotating tunnel of lights is truly weird. No matter how much you know the path through the center of the rotating cylinder is completely solid and secure, you have the feeling that you're lurching around from side to side.	View down the Royal Mile from the top of the Camera Obscura
As I was waiting for the Scouts to come out of the Camera Obscura, I amused myself taking pictures of the Royal Mile reflected in soap bubbles blown by Camera employees to attract tourists.
Museum of Scotland
The Museum of Scotland is made up of this older section, patterned after the Crystal Palace from the 1859 London Exhibition, and a new section dedicated to Scottish History.	The older section of the Royal Museum has exhibits dedicated to technology, design, the natural world... all sorts of stuff.
	One of the striking parts of the museum is "Windows on the World" - the walls overlooking the open hall area are stacked with a truly eclectic collection of stuff. This section ranges from plates to sharks to racing cars and rockets.
	We had dinner at ButtaBurger in the New Town. I think at least one Scout was ready for bed before we were done...

July 31st - Royal Yacht, New Town, Royal Mile, Ghost Walk

Royal Yacht Britannia Our first stop for our last day in Edinburgh was the Royal Yacht Britannia, which is moored outside the Ocean Terminal shopping centre in Leith. The trams don't run all the way to Leith, yet - the extension is under construction - so we caught a bus near the Scout Hall instead. The Royal Yacht Britannia was in service from 1954 to 1997, carrying Queen Elizabeth II more than a million miles around the earth. As she was built in Clydeside, it's appropriate that she's spending her retirement in Scotland.
Ocean Terminal Shopping Center	The Royal Yacht Britannia is moored in Leith Harbour across the quay from the shopping centre. Bridges link the centre to the ship at at various levels. At the topmost level you get an introduction to the ship and an audio guide before you cross over to the yacht itself.
You enter the yacht at bridge level.	The binnacle houses the ship's compass.
The Flag Locker, housing the signal flags.	A view along the port side of RMY Britannia
	Despite the luxurious appointments, the Britannia is still a working ship. I was fascinated by the many technical details throughout the ship.
Corgi dogs are scattered around the ship (and, of course, in the Gift Shop)	The Queen's Bedroom
The Queen brought her Land Rover along on the Britannia	The silver in the Officers' Mess
The Sitting Room	The Verge Inn - a bar for the Petty Officers
Any working ship needs its laundry...	The Royal Barge sits on quayside next to the Britannia
The tour finishes with the Engine Room (if you don't count the Gift Shop, of course...)
Back to The Royal Mile (again)
We took a double-decker bus through the narrow streets of Leith back to New Town.	We had lunch at the food court at the brand-new billion-pound St. James Quarter Shopping Centre. In typical Scottish fashion, the resemblance of the curling top of the structure to a certain emoji has led to its nickname "the Golden Turd". The food was good, in any case, and there was more than ample variety to satisfy everyone's taste.
Walking back to the Royal Mile from St. James Quarter, we wound up climbing Calton Hill, which provided nice views of Salisbury Crags and Arthur's Seat, the volcanic peak behind the sloping Crags. We then descended a set of steps to emerge opposite Holyroodhouse Palace on the bottom end of the Royal Mile.	The Scottish Parliament stands opposite Holyroodhouse
"Thistle Do Nicely" is one of my favorite shop names in Scotland. They have several locations up the Royal Mile.	Old buildings tell stories... look at the closed-off doors and windows, and you can see some of the history of the Royal Mile. Clearly, the pavement was once lower, and this building evolved over the years to fit.
Paisley Close The twelve-year-old boy in the sculpture was trapped under a building on the close which collapsed in 1861due to improper construction work by, of all things, a baker expanding his ovens. He was found by rescuers because he kept shouting "Heave awa' chaps! I'm no deid yet!", a statement which is immortalized next to him in the entrance to the close. Mercat Tours has the story in more detail on their website.	On our way up the Royal Mile, we stopped to watch a street magician who was setting up his show. He enlisted Drew and Brennan to help out. Oddly, he looked very familiar and I vaguely remembered seeing the trick he opened his show with before - some closeup magic involving a rubber band. When I had a few minutes to relax later in the day I looked up our old web pages and discovered that he had done exactly the same thing in 2008 with Brad, one of our Scouts.
Back to the Museum of Scotland Since we had time to spare, and hadn't had much time at the Museum of Scotland on Saturday, the Scouts decided to head back there for a few hours before dinner.
The top of the new part of the museum is a Roof Garden with spectacular views of Edinburgh. This is the back (south) side of the Royal Mile, from the Castle on the far left to St. Giles Cathedral on the far right.
The Chimney Pots of Edinburgh from the Roof Garden	A framed view looking eastward to Calton Hill and onward to North Berick Law and Bass Rock in East Lothian.

More of Windows on the World - teapots...
Grassmarket
Candlemaker Row is across the street from the Museum of Scotland. It leads down from George IV Bridge to Cowgate and Grassmarket below the volcanic ridge forming the Royal Mile.	We had dinner at The Black Bull, a pub on Grassmarket.
There's always time to stop off for ice cream after dinner. Scotch Whisky Ice Cream was on offer at this kiosk.	West Bow curves back up to the George IV Bridge and the Royal Mile. Typical of Edinburgh confusion, by the time West Bow comes to an end at George IV Bridge, it's called Victoria Street. Victoria Terrace is a sort of pedestrianized street-in-the-sky halfway up the buildings above West Bow.
Doomed, Dead and Buried... We took Mercat Tours' "Doomed, Dead and Buried" walk for the evening, meeting our guide at Mercat Cross on the Royal Mile at 18:30.
Michael, our guide, greeted us by putting on his Scout neckie - turns out, he was a Scout leader.	Going down the steep and narrow Stevenlaws Close from the Royal Mile. In the past, with no sewers or running water in the buildings on either side, this path would have run with all sorts of unpleasant material, waiting for the rains to wash them downhill to Cowgate and eventually to the Forth. If you hear "Gardyloo!", duck into shelter - there's the contents of a chamber pot about to be dumped out a window.
The South Bridge Vaults - when the bridge was built to lead from the Royal Mile downward to the south, buildings were immediately constructed next to the bridge on both sides. The arches of the bridge were thus closed off into a series of vaults. Because the roadway above wasn't waterproof, these vaults were damp and unpleasant - thus perfect for the lower strata of society to call home or use for businesses of all sorts, licit and illicit. Today, they're allegedly haunted by many different ghosts, and our guide told us about them as we were led around by candlelight. One of our Scouts saw a form ahead of us, watching our tour, where there wasn't supposed to be anyone... who knows?	Coming back above ground, our tour ended at the graveyard behind the Cannongate Kirk on the Royal Mile. After finishing up with some ghost stories in the graveyard, we said farewell to Michael, our guide, and headed back to the 88th Craigalmond Scout Hall to pack up and get ready for our flight home the next morning.
August 1st - Back Home
We got up early and took the tram to Edinburgh Airport. It wasn't too much trouble to check our baggage and go through security, and then we just had to wait to board the plane. It turned out to be overbooked, and Delta was up to offering $2,700 a night in a hotel in Edinburgh, and a free ticket on the next available flight to anyone who would switch... I was so tempted... if I only didn't have to drive the Scouts back to central NY...	North America appears under our wings at the end of the flight, and our trip was over. We picked up three rental cars and drove back home. So, what are you doing in 2024?