Day 11 – Edinburgh

Edinburgh Castle

Today was the day we looked forward to – Steve arrived here in Edinburgh!!! His flight was early so he even made breakfast with us. And after that, we headed to the downtown part of Edinburgh to do some touring. We rode the Hop-On Hop-Off bus with the first stop at Edinburgh Castle. The castle sits on an extinct volcano high over the city of Edinburgh and has been a royal residence from the 12th century until the middle of the 17th century.

Cannon Facing the Firth of Forth

The castle overlooks the town and the Firth of Forth to the north. We stayed to watch them fire the one o’clock gun, which since 1861 has signaled the time to ships in the Firth of Forth.

Steve and John (Merchiston Tower)

We did some Scottish shopping along the Royal Mile, which is the street that runs from the castle to the Holyrood Palace, toured the John Knox home, finished the Hop-On Hop-Off tour and took an Uber to Edinburgh Napier University. Part of the reason for our visit to Scotland was to see some sight of our Napier ancestry and Napier University is the site of Merchiston Tower, which was the home of John Napier (1550 – 1617). John Napier is best known as the discoverer of logarithms. He also invented Napier's bones and made common the use of the decimal point in arithmetic and mathematics. Not sure if we were allowed, but we took a self-directed tour inside the tower, which is now part of the university.  It was pretty cool to see our family insignia on the tower, the John Napier Conference Room and a bust of John Napier.

Napier Road (Edinburgh)

Afterwards we walked a block away to take a walk down Napier Road.