Edinburgh: Day 4

Today we reached the halfway mark in our trip. We can't believe how much we've already done and yet how much we have left on our itinerary to do!
Our adventure today involved hoping on a bus for a day trip to Hadrian's wall!

Our first stop on the trip was Roslyn chapel. This Catholic chapel survived the Reformation after falling into disrepair and is here for us to view today because Queen Victoria fell in love with it and thought it should be "preserved for the country." Many of you may know of this chapel from Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code. The chapel has long been rumored to be connected to the Knights Templar and Free Masons. Russ was excited to see and learn about those connections. It was a beautiful medieval building, but I was more interested in the cat, William, who lives in the village and comes to the chapel everyday for a nap and pets!

The next stop was the small village of Melrose to view the ruins of Melrose Abbey. We only had an hour for both lunch and viewing the Abbey so we quickly found a restaurant to grab a bite and it turned out to be a good choice. The potato, leek, and thyme soup was so delicious and the strawberry shortbread dessert was amazing.

 

 

 

With a half hour left we made our way to the Abbey. We didn't have enough time for the audio guide, so we opted just to walk around and admire the architecture of the ruins. We also saw the site where Robert the Bruce's heart is buried.

The third stop on our trip was the Scotland/England border where we stood in two countries at once. A Scottish piper was playing and the mood was so jovial. It was so much fun!

 

After an hour/ hour and a half drive into England we reached our final destination: Hadrian's Wall! We stopped at Housesteads Roman Fort  and hiked up to the wall and Milecastle 37. When the wall was constructed, one of these Milecastles was placed at every Roman mile along the wall. It is 80 Roman miles long! (73 modern miles.) It was so fun to be able to walk along the top of the wall and look at the sheer drop off the other side! This was one of the things I was most looking forward to on our trip.

We then hopped back on the bus for the long drive back to Scotland, stopping for a quick rest stop at Jedbergh and a look at their Abbey ruins. Fun fact: Mary Queen of Scots had a house in Jedbergh.

We arrived back in Edinburgh just before 8:00pm and decided to grab some pizza. I discovered Pizza Express with my best friend, Claire, five years ago when we were in London. It is so good! Since we had seen a few around the city over the past couple days we decided to go there and it did not disappoint!