castles and palaces

Here are a few of the castles and palaces' we have visited since we have been here. The difference between castles and palaces are castles on the whole were built for defense and palaces were for living and therefore had more luxury. Although we have seen some castle's that became luxurious in later years when defense was not longer needed.

 

This is the palace that Queen Mary of Scots was born in. It is a ruin now. It is called the Linlithgow Palace and is in the city of Linlithgow.

This cathedral that is next to the palace. It was built when the castle was and is still in use today although part of it was destroyed in the 1400's and rebuilt in late 1400's and into the 1500's. It is a Church of Scotland cathedral as is many cathedral's in Scotland.  Church of Scotland is a mix of Catholic and Presbyterian according to the pamphlets that we read in the cathedral. They do not have all the crosses and statues. There are beautiful stained glass windows tho. Don't know why we did not get any pictures of those.

This is taken looking out one of the windows of the castle.

This on our way to Culzean Castle. It was a beautiful drive.

 This is outside the castle. Culzean is one of the smaller castles. It has only about 64 rooms. It is still lived in by the family. The rooms that are open for visitors  are not part of the castle that is used by the family.

This is the kitchen. Can you imagine having this huge space to cook with all those pots and pans hung so nicely?  The middle picture is of their ovens of the day. There are like 6 ovens in that half circle.

This was the nursery, cute little boat crib is it not?

This is a typical bedroom in the castle.

These are pictures of the gardens.  The middle picture is of an azalea bush that grows as big as trees here and the bottom picture is of a magnolia tree.  There are many  trees of different types  plus a huge amount of other plants on the property and they are all beautiful.

The Culzean Castle sets on the edge of the ocean as you can see in the first pictures.  These pictures are taken from the castle wall overlooking the ocean.

On this same trip to see Culzean castle we also stopped to see the Robert Burns birth place and museum.

In this long white house one end had two tiny rooms that Robert Burn's family lived in.  A kitchen/bedroom where they cooked ate and sleep. It had one tiny bed in the room where Robert and his three siblings were born. The other room was also tiny but was used as a school type room. There are two additional rooms in the building that housed their milk cow, chickens and various other animals they had . That room was right through the door from the study room. YUCK.  Then in the opposite end from the living quarters was a small room where they stored their farm equipment and their animal feed ie hay, grains etc.  Robert Burns mother kept a milk cow and sold milk to help the family survive. This small Burns home is in Alloway.

This is the Brig O Doon as you can see from the sign. It is also in Alloway and dates back from the 1400's.  It is the bridge that Robert Burn's father walked over to and from work every day to a neighboring town.  I'm sure lots of other people used it in those days also.  It goes nowhere now, just to then other side of the river Doon.

 OK  on to a different castle.  These next few pictures are of Loch Leven, it is a ruin and is on an island about a 10 minute boat ride. 13 people rode over on that tiny blue boat to the castle.

in the second picture i was trying to take a picture of the island across the water but you can see all the bugs in the air.  There was thousands of them, was so gross.

In the orange coat is Sister Teresa Lowery and the other two are Elder Wayne and Sister Sylvia Hansen. They are are office staff.

Lock Leven castle was used as a prison and Queen Mary of Scots was kept as a prisoner here until a boy that was in charge of the boats helped her escape. There are lots of stories of Queen Mary of Scots, she was a very famous Queen and quite feisty it seems. 


A short drive away and we come to Glamis Castle.  It is a huge castle and has over 100 rooms like many of the castles. It is still used by the family. You can rent out certain rooms for weddings or other events at this castle.  In this castle the rooms that are for showing the public the family still uses at times.  We were not allowed to take pictures inside of this castle so the following pictures are of the outside.

This is our touring group for  as many saturday's as we can plan. Starting at the back on the left is Sister Browning, Elder Browning( who join us every now and again), Marshall, Front from left is Sister Alice Wagar, Sister Teresa Lowery, Thelma, Elder Wayne Hansen and Sister Sylvia Hanson.

some highland coo's by the castle
 

Enough for this post.  I will post the other few that we have seen later.

Our words for the post:  Mew = cul-de-sac,   newspaper stand/store = news agent,  bulletin board = notice board,  lines = queques,  passing lane = overtake lane

Starting this post I am also going to add names of cities that I think are fun :  Berwick Upon Tweed and Clackmannanshire

Cherio da noo