Trip summary --- Previous day --- Next day

Monday 7/2

Drove to St Giles Cathedral on the Royal Mile for a tour and practice before our last concert.  Just as we turned onto Princes Street, I saw the Berkeley Casino and knew I had to take a picture for our daughter, Joanna, at UCalBerkeley, who recently did a study of casino architecture in Europe. I walked back twice to get the picture, once by myself after choir practice when I couldn’t find it and a second time in the rain with Chris after the concert.  The other interesting comment from Robin was that close to there in what is now the Princes Street Gardens used to be a sump or swamp where they would put people who never came up.  Sounded a bit like the Cal Berkeley graduate school (or any other graduate school).  Edinburgh is famous for surgery, and chloroform was first used there.

A volunteer led us on a tour of the cathedral. He showed us the chapel of the Knights of the Thistle, an order begun by King James VII of Scotland in 1687. The order consists of sixteen knights and the monarch. Queen Elizabeth II arrived in Edinburgh that afternoon to invest the new first minister of Scotland. We wondered if the Knights of the Thistle would meet while she was there.

In the tour of St Giles, we learned that the Scottish Parliament had been held there, and in 1637 Jenny Geddes had thrown a stool and started a riot when a new Catholic prayer book was introduced to the Protestant church.  The book was not read. 

The noon concert had 400 in attendance, and the cathedral resonated wonderfully. Mike dedicated our concert in St. Giles to Clayton’s father, who had studied in Edinburgh; Bishop Ben Oliphint died on 7/7 right after we returned.  

We then lunched at the Deacon Brodie Café, where William Brodie had his locksmith shop by day.  At night, he robbed banks, providing inspiration for the Robert Louis Stevenson story ‘Dr Jeckyl and Mr Hyde’.  Brodie was hung in 1788 on the same town gallows that he designed.  He tried to circumvent death by designing a metal collar for the hanging and having a surgeon on standby, but it didn’t work.

We toured Edinburgh castle, overlooking the  city and seeing the various exhibits on war and imprisonment. 

Then we boarded the coaches to drive past Holyrood Palace, where Robin speculated that the Queen was in residence to install another Knight of the Thistle in honor of good works. (Chris found later that the occasion was installation of the Scottish Minister rather than a new knight.)

We continued up a hill, Arthur's Throne, an extinct volcano on the outskirts of the city, where Mike, Mary Kennard, Daniel, Catherine, and I started climbing to see the view.  A heavy rain and hail storm overtook us as we were more than half way to the saddle, but we persisted onward to the saddle, not to the hilltop, getting thoroughly drenched.  Coming down, Mary slid down twice, not having good shoes, and I pronounced her ‘safe.’  She then took off her shoes.  Robin wanted to take us back to the hotel to change clothes, but we insisted that we didn’t need to.  He solved the problem by asking us whether anyone wanted to go back, and none did.  So we went to the restaurant, where I dried shoes and socks somewhat using the hand drier and then using the hair drier later at the hotel.  Mike’s shoes didn’t dry for four days.