Scotland Day 2 - Royal yacht Brittania, Military Tattoo.

The Royal Yacht Brittania (retired)

Today was a busy day. On the bus by 9am for a bit of a city tour, then a stop for a tour of the Royal Yacht Brittania. 

The retired Royal Yacht was both larger than we expected, and less opulent. It's been well looked after since retirement, and gives some sense of what it would have been like for royal tours.

Here is a link if you'd like to see more of the ship: <Brittania Link>

 

 

The bedrooms seemed especially modest:

A small bed in the Queen's suite

Likewise for Prince Phillip's spartan adjoining room

The largest bed (a full double) was in the guest suite

Lots of immaculate woodwork:

Provision for some deluxe dining:

OK, which glass gets used first...

 

A cosier room, normally for casual entertainment, family games etc, but could be fancied up for guests as needed:

Sleeping facilities for military support personnel:

There was provision for a small well-equipped hospital, in case it was needed in wartime. It was never used for that though:

They could even carry a runabout or limo for queenly use:

Easy to fit the Landrover in the parking spot

Harder to fit the Rolls when it was taken instead

There was even a large laundry room, with one day per week reserved exclusively for the Royal laundry.

 

After the Brittania tour it was back to the bus for a bit more city touring, then a stopover at George St square for a non-guided walk and lunch. We found a good lunch at an Indian restaurant and really enjoyed it:

2 different curries, and Naan bread

Then back to the hotel for a rest, and prepare for the evening at the Military Tattoo. We were going to the 9:30 pm performance, so a really late night by our standards. Luckily for us 9:30 Scotland time is only 4:30 Ontario time, and we didn't need any dinner after that large lunch we had.

The bus got us close to the Tattoo grounds, which are in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle. Then we had to walk, joining lots of other people swimming upstream against the thousands leaving the earlier show: 

That's the base of part of Edinburgh Castle

Those stadium seats up there were for the Tattoo

A fairly orderly crowd

The Tattoo area is a field surrounded by tiered seating. The seating is all disassembled after the Tattoo, and rebuilt starting next spring. Since the area is part of the Castle grounds, no permanent structure is allowed, so this assembly/disassembly happens every year.

A small sampling of the bands:

Here's a link to a short video (3 1/2 minutes) of some of the action:

 <Tattoo clip link>

If you'd like to see more and better videos, go to Youtube and search for "Military Tattoo 2024".  

The show was well worth attending. It's one thing to see the videos, and quite another to be there and feel the performances. We thoroughly enjoyed it, in spite of the windy cold night.