MSC Magnifica picture heavy fun review -- 12 days British Isles incl. DIY port trips

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

Greyfriar’s kirkyard (post two of three)

Sir George Mac Kenzie

This is his tomb.

Some ghostly elements are found on the outside of this thing…like this face:

And what the heck are those things to the right? Turtles???

The ornaments on the other side don’t look any more inviting.

What is that bird (dove? falcon?) sitting on – eggs, skulls, marbles? And look at this slightly deteriorated head and the ribcage underneath…doesn’t it look like the clump underneith the breastbone is meant to be a stony heart? And his skeletal feet down below – what on earth are they standing on? So many questions, so few answers.

I wonder who built this thing and when…did Mac Kenzie have any say in it? Did he want to be buried next to the covenanters prison? I’m sorry to admit – I don’t know an answer to any of these questions…but let’s move on.

We had a job to do…appease a poltergeist … remember? So here is our gift to Sir George MacKenzie … may he enjoy it and rest in peace.

We even wrote him a couple of lines in the front cover, so that he knows it is a present for him and not just something somebody lost. We even used a fountain pen to let it look more to his liking.

Too bad that the picture turned out so light, so you can’t read our little message on it anymore.

Another difficulty was to get the book to the ghost, since the tomb was locked. Once again it was real practical to have a slender kid joining us…Tarik slid down the book between the door of the tomb and managed to shove it in a bit. It came to lay on the concrete next to these bars (I imagine leading down to his coffin).

That had to be close enough. Have fun, George!

Stay tuned!

Stef

[Sailing Grandma]

:pyay -- I'm not alone!:p

 

:pThank you for your reassuring posts everybody! Knowing that there are still folks out there following along and enjoying the details lets me continue on with fresh enthusiasm...let's move on then :):cool::)!

 

Stef

 

 

 

I still eagerly await your posts each day, Stef!

[suekay]

I'm in Cyprus at the moment and your review is part of my holiday reading. I look forward to it every day[emoji4] Keep up the good work!

[Irish Cath]

And i'm definitely still here reading along. I wish I had more time at the moment to continue my own review but even when I don't I still make it my business to find time to read your review - it's a daily ritual ! First off I must agree with Windjamming - Tarik is turning into a fine young man. I really hope he had a fantastic time on this trip - how lucky he is to have such great parents.

 

I must admit that although i've been to Edinburgh once i've never been to Greyfriars and so have never seen Bobby. Well your picture of the headstone erected for him with all the sticks for him to fetch has left a slight lump in my throat ( actually i'm really soft when it comes to animals so its a really big lump):o

 

Finally I bet that you have started a new phenomenon and visitors will start to bring Sir George gifts when they see yours! I wonder will it make him happy :D

 

I really appreciate every single detail you put into this review and have no doubt that I will learn something about my own country from you when you get to those posts.

 

Catherine :)

[Johnny Bananas]

I'm reading along and really enjoying it!

 

Got sidetracked for a second by all of the ebola nonsense of the other boards!!! :eek:

[crvng4mr]

I'm here too!!!

[BRACEWELL]

Just to confirm that I am 'staying tuned' as instructed!

 

Enjoying the in depth review and learning lots of new things about Edinburgh. Keep up the good work.

[sofsolnanny]

Hi Stef,

 

back from my cruise on the lovely Magnifica and so relieved to see you have just got to Scotland........phew!! did not want to miss Dublin :D.

 

Had a fab holiday and will write a review when I have more time -so busy catching up with work .

 

Your review is outstanding,so much detail-I dont know how you do it.

 

I visited Edinbrough a few years ago and did not get to see half the things you have. I especially would like to visit Marys Kings Close after seeing it on a program called Most Haunted with Evette Fielding--scary!!.

 

Keep up the good work Stef,really enjoying.

 

Di

[oshmom]

Thank you!

 

I read your Med trip report and have anxiously been waiting for this one. You have a wonderful outlook and I love the attention to detail.

 

I got so many good tips for our upcoming Med trip.

 

Thanks again for the time and effort you put into these reports. It is greatly appreciated.

 

Nanci

[europe14]

I'm here too. Haven't posted before, but loving your review. I keep checking each day for it. 😀

[pinkpanther52]

Loving the review and can't wait for more. Glad you enjoyed your visit to the hometown.😃

[prefercelebrity]

Please carry on! I bought internet time on the Magnifica last week mainly so I could keep reading this :) I sailed from Southampton on Oct 8th for 7 nights on the N Europe itinerary. Brugges, Amsterdam, Hamburg and Le Havre. This post has helped me so much. Cheers.

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

:D:D:DLol -- enough!!!! you're overwhelming me!!! I feel very much loved and cherished by all of you...I'm completely over my little fear of solitude. In fact I run around the house grinning because of all your reassuring posts.

 

Thank you thank you thank you!!!!!!!!:D:D:D

 

 

Stef

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

Greyfriar’s kirkyard (last post)

To sum it up, here are some more impressions of the cemetery.

This is a peek into the locked covenanter’s prison. I just stuck the camera lens through the metal bars.

The church in the background was quite impressive. It was locked though, when we were there.

One thing I really love about Scotland is the color of their stone houses (or heck – the colors of Scotland in general for that matter). This mix of sand, brown and reddish color just appeals to me. Even their gravestones show a dark, brownish glow sometimes.

Amazing how close these tombs are to the houses in the back. Can you imagine living in one of those (the houses of course – not the tombs)?

What a beauty.

Lol – and a fun pic to finish off the cemetery tour:

Even here on holy grounds, there was Fringe stuff going on! I love this city!

Greyfriar’s kirkyard was a fascinating place to see and we’re happy to have strolled around in here. However, there would be another cemetery on our itinerary, that would blow us away to an extent, that we’re still feeling the strong need to return…not so here. But it still was an amazing experience to see it!

Lol -- but enough about the dead for now. We're still feeling very much alive -- that’s why we’re continuing now with the very lively Museum of Scotland!

Stay tuned!

Stef

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

National Museum of Scotland (post one of four)

Right across the street from Greyfriar’s kirkyard you stumble into the Museum of Scotland. Well, to get to the main entrance you have to walk a wee bit into chambers street to the large stone steps.

Did you know that most museums in Edinburgh are free of charge :-o ???

It’s true – they are!

I mean, we could easily spend a whole week in this town, not even getting through the free museums. What an amazing city!

If you think now, boy -- what kind of measly museums that would be, without any charge---let me tell you, you couldn’t be any more mistaken.

Well, I chose this particular museum for our port day because it had three plus points for us: it was conveniently located, it had a T-Rex (and I just knew Tarik would flip when he found out) and Tanja wanted to pay a visit to Dolly. Who Dolly is? Wait and see.

When you enter the place you’re sort of in an underground entrance area. There you find places to eat, a shop for souvenirs and restrooms. To get to the actual museum, you need to ascend the stairs right across this room. If you just keep on walking straight ahead, you stumble right onto them.

Once you walked up those steps you get spit out into this absolutely beautiful, airy, spacy, flooded with daylight hall (lol – can you tell I loved this place?)

In here already, there are many very cool things to explore. Let me show you three of them:

Anybody know what this thing is?

Let me introduce:

“Moby”, the sperm whale (well – at least his skull).

He was beached in the Firth of Forth on Easter Monday 1997. He was over 15 meters long and weighed nearly 40 tons. This doesn’t happen very often. His usual habitat is the Atlantic ocean and the last whale before him to strand in the Firth of Forth met its fate in 1769.

Here’s a side view of Moby’s skull and a happy Tarik, since he already thought this museum to be one of the highlights of the entire journey – and we had just entered!!!

When you usher a happily freaking out kid through a museum in a foreign country under a bit of time pressure, you know how much logistic and concentration this requires. Now you can probably understand, why I took comforting joy in gazing upon this for a fleeting minute:

This animal led the way to the critter’s hall…

it’s not actually called critter’s hall…but you’ll see in the next post, why I named it such. Anyway, behind that -- elk?,-- moose? I saw some pretty large bones peeking through.

“Tarik, look-- I think I saw a T-Rex over there.”

Lol – that’s when he started running :-).

See the chairs on the right? That’s for the free classical music concert starting at 14:00 here each day during the Fringe. We saw the musicians set up later on, but didn’t stay to listen…sigh, one of the few moments when one wishes not to be on a cruise.

But let’s continue to follow Tarik into the critter’s hall.

Stay tuned!

Stef

[posso]

I'm an addict too. Pity you don't visit Liverpool so you can tell me all about the City where I've lived for the past 40 yrs!

 

More please!

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

Museum of Scotland (post two of four)

The critter’s hall

This hall was filled with animals…either skeletal or stuffed. It didn’t smell! In other natural history museums I always hated the mildewy, dusty, rotten smell of the displayed critters. Not so here. This hall again was airy and light. When you enter, you stand right underneath the fangs of a T-Rex.

Oh no – Tanja – run!

Lol – look at that shadow on the wall…doesn’t that sooo remind you of the Jurassic park movie? The part in that kitchen with the kids hiding and the raptors hunting? No? Oh well, it did that for me anyway.

Here’s another cool skeleton:

Know what this is?

It’s a “Riesenfaultier” – wait I’ve got to look this up in the dictionary…aahhh, here we go: it’s a “Giant Ground Sloth”. Wow – never seen one of those for real…it’s almost as high as the stuffed Giraffe next to it.

Tarik, being a fan of cats of course liked this one:

And I thought these two looked as if they were frozen in time right before their battle.

Lol – something I wish to never encounter in real life!

And last but not least an overview of this spectacular hall:

There was so much interesting and thoughtfully arranged stuff to explore here. They did a great job to cater to all ages. There were hands-on experiences for the little ones (okay, okay, we had fun with moving the metal cat-claws too) as well as understandable and interesting info posters about the displayed creatures for the older ones.

We only explored this ground story…not because of lack of interest, but because of lack of time. But I’m 100% sure, that the two levels above us would have shown a ton of fascinating stuff as well.

This hall alone would have been a great museum in itself, but there were more sections to be looked at, so we grudgingly moved on.

Stay tuned!

Stef

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

Museum of Scotland (part three of four)

Cultures

There were several halls with several different cultures presented. We didn’t get to explore any of them in detail, but we saw some pretty fascinating things (good and bad).

This tower scared the crap out of me. Let’s just say that some of these figures are displayed in sexual (so what?) and torturing (some really bad!) scenes, that I thought were so explicit, that I hoped Tarik wouldn’t notice and so I kept distracting him with other things…which was difficult, since this atrocity stands right next to the escalators we took.

But finally I succeeded until we were well past this gruesome thing in the Asian section. Lol- and even if you don’t see any gruesome scenes on this picture I posted…just trust me…it gets much worse on the side facing the escalators (I got a little anxious there) and the backside made me gasp (and I don’t mean in a good way)!

I much more liked these prayer weels in the Tibetan section.

There are many prayers engraved in the heavy rolls. Once you spin them, it is said that these prayers get released into the air and you can even mentally add prayers of your own.

You betcha I spun those suckers!

I loved them!

Lol -- There were lots of kids around to spin them too, so I bet these prayers get released quite often each day.

There also was a hall about ancient Egypt, but since we’ve got some excellent museums on that topic as well close to home, we didn’t linger here.

Off to the technology hall.

This hall was all about science. Engineering as well as space explorations…

… race cars (which was the highlight of the real little ones – they got to sit and “drive” a real formula one car with the picture of a simulated race track in front) and last but not least medical achievements.

This is where we finally found Dolly.

Tadaahh!

I assume you’ve all heard of Dolly the clone sheep?

Well granted but how many of you knew, that she stands here in Edinburgh now?

--- okay – she’s stuffed…but still you can say you saw Dolly the clone sheep.

If you wish, you can spend some time here to learn a whole lot about cloning.

 

But since we didn’t have a lot of time, we moved on to the next section: Historic Scotland!

 

 

Stay tuned!

Stef

Edited October 19, 2014 by Kreuzfahrtneuling

[denisey]

Just got home from a weekend away and ran to the computer right after putting the first load of laundry in.

 

I'm betting that is the only picture in existence of Tarik holding a doll! But it was for a good cause. I wonder if Sir George would like a dram of whisky to go with his book? I love the enthusiasm of your family!

 

You have me convinced I need to visit the Northern countries too.

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

Just got home from a weekend away and ran to the computer right after putting the first load of laundry in.

 

I'm betting that is the only picture in existence of Tarik holding a doll! But it was for a good cause. I wonder if Sir George would like a dram of whisky to go with his book? I love the enthusiasm of your family!

 

You have me convinced I need to visit the Northern countries too.

 

Hi Denisey,

 

Lol -- a dram of whisky was the first we thought of as a present...but then we found out in our research, that he didn't like to drink. Lol -- and the last thing we wanted was to make him even more upset:D.

 

:)Cool -- I convinced you after ONE port day:eek:? Wait for the next ones... there is so much more to tell.

 

Hope you had a wonderful weekend.

 

Stef

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

Museum of Scotland (last post)

Historic Scotland

With this calligraphy on the wall you enter into this new section.

 

 

 

 

 

I loved the details on this harp… lol --and how I finally managed to get Tanja and Tarik into its center in the picture. I think they were looking at some chess figures at the time.

But there were some less peaceful artefacts on display here as well:

This claymore (which comes from the Gaelic word for Great Sword – Claidheamh-Mor) was the typical weapon of the Highlanders. They were the only ones to use such a hilt … he,he…but they imported the blades from Germany :-)

And what do do with the loot after a successful raid? Here’s where the lowlander’s know-how joins in. Look at this complicated treasure chest!

Just kidding, this chest was actually used by trading companies such as the Company of Scotland for trading goods with other countries. It also apparently held the money for the failed try to set up a colony in Central America.

 

 

Meet Mary, Queen of Scots.

This is however only a replica of the original tomb in Westminster Abbey.

Ever wondered why an early culture in Scotland was called the Picts?

Now you know.

 

This museum was plain wonderful. We would have loved to spend a whole lot more time. If we’re ever visiting this city again – which I hope, we’ll try for another, more in depth visit.

But now we strolled back to and across High Street to get back to Waverly Station.

Oh wait… I forgot to tell you about St. Giles Cathedral…how could that have happened? Oh, yes, I remember…no photos allowed….unless you paid money for an extra picture allowance. We didn’t…but I’ve looked up some pics online of the Cathedral and the Thistle chapel. To enter the chapel you were asked to donate a pound or two…We did. Was it worth it?

Coming up: St. Giles Cathedral and the Thistle chapel

Stay tuned!

Stef

Edited October 20, 2014 by Kreuzfahrtneuling

[denisey]

Hi Denisey,

 

Lol -- a dram of whisky was the first we thought of as a present...but then we found out in our research, that he didn't like to drink. Lol -- and the last thing we wanted was to make him even more upset:D.

 

:)Cool -- I convinced you after ONE port day:eek:? Wait for the next ones... there is so much more to tell.

 

Hope you had a wonderful weekend.

 

Stef

 

Oh thank goodness we have all of your research to stop us from making the faux pas of giving Sir George whisky!

 

I can't wait to hear about the other ports....especiall the dreaded Dublin stop!

 

Denise

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

Saint Giles Cathedral

foreign picture:

I’m showing you this picture, because during the Fringe, when we were there, there was so much going on, that you could hardly spot the church anymore!

Anyway…a bit of history:

Saint Giles himself was a French hermit and later on abbot, who lived in France in the 7th century. It is believed that he ended up being the patron of the city of Edinburgh as well as this cathedral because of the close, ancient ties between the two countries. We found evidences of this “Auld Alliance” all through Scotland.

The first church, built in the 1120s was rather small and only few traces of it’s Romanesque style survive in the modern cathedral. The second – already bigger church partially burnt down in 1385. It was quickly repaired and over the next 150 years numerous chapels were added to the point that the church housed the impressive number of

50

altars in the 16th century!

During the reformation St. Giles was partitioned (and I mean physically – with walls inside!) to serve many purposes. During the next 300 years the building housed a police station, a fire station, a school, a prison for harlots and whores and the “Maiden”, which was the Scottish guillotine.

The last partitioning walls weren’t removed until 1873 to finally recreate a single interior space.

 

Phew, so much for the background… lol – watch out – I might quiz you later.

We paid the church only a small visit, yet it was an exceptional experience…Not really because of the church itself, but because of the Fringe stuff going on inside. There was this choir…quite a lot of people, who sang Abba songs right in the middle of the vast room…Imagine “thank you for the music” raging through these walls. It was phenomenal – definitely something to give you goose bumps – in a good way.

And I liked the blue ceiling, which was added in the last renovation. Scotland for me is outdoors…so I thought it quite fitting that they have the image of the sky serving as their church roof.

foreign picture:

The Thistle chapel

Before I tell you about the chapel I’d like to tell you about the Order of the Thistle.

The Thistle (yes – the flower --well some might even say weed) is THE symbol of and for Scotland. You see it nowadays on countless road signs to announce a historic sight coming up. And of course the real thing, the plant is seen everywhere.

Lol – I bought one single souvenir in South Queensferry…a coffee mug with thistles on it and the cross of St. Andrews. I thought that that depicts Scotland better than any kilt could. This cup often stands beside me now, while I spend hours and hours on this review. But I’m side tracking again.

The Order of the Thistle is Scotlands oldest group of knights. Head is always the regent…so currently Queen Elizabeth. There are always 16 regular knights and in addition to that varying numbers of royal family members…Charles and William are in it for instance.

What I liked is that they have one regular knight being a lady nowadays. What bothered me is that I couldn’t find out, what they actually do… besides looking back on a long tradition… I believe they mainly uphold a courtly fashion and look pretty in their green mantles at coronations. If anybody knows of any chivalrous acts of this noble group…please post!

But now let’s get back to their chapel…because that’s the reason we started this whole background story. In the far end of St. Giles to the right you find the entrance to the thistle chapel.

foreign picture:

Isn’t it marvelous?

The regent sits up front in the big stall you see right in the middle. Every stall is personalized for the knight currently occupying it by his or her sword, helm and crest.

foreign picture:

The personal mottos way on top sure looked funny sometimes. I especially like the one on the very left. Doesn’t that globe with the anchor and the rainbow remind you of a cruise vacation? I’m sad to say I have no idea which knight currently resides in this stall…maybe one of you guys can help me out?

foreign picture:

The wooden carvings were breathtakingly beautiful and the ceiling blew you away. I felt the strong wish to lay down on the floor gaping up, like I’d be looking at a starry sky on a warm summer night… but of course I was way too intimidated to actually do that…

but I found this picture online, which comes close to the view I would have had if I would have been braver.

foreign picture:

And with this picture we finish up our first port stop of this magnificent cruise. I hope you enjoyed to trot along with us. I’m definitely open for any improvement suggestions...and open critique of course as well. Go ahead. If not, we’ll continue with our dinner onboard after this long and exciting day.

Stay tuned!

Stef

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

:eek: Oh my God! I just realized it took me 13 days to finish up the first port! Gulp...with 6 more ports to come this WILL take forever. I'm sorry guys. But I do write something every day -- at least I have so far -- I doubt I'll be able to hold that pace in the busy christmas time. But I'll try to hurry up as much as possible. Lol -- since there are few to none British Isles cruises in the winter time, I guess it isn't too catasrophic.

 

Stef

[Pluto_fan]

I'm loving your review, Stef! Thank you for all the time you're putting into it!