[Photos] UK 12 - Edinburgh, part 2

[moonvoice]

Edinburgh is beautiful, I'd recommend it to almost anyone, but it's a terribly accessible city. Between the spaced out cobblestones that had me rolling my ankles (thank's hypermobility), the absolute abundance of steep hills and more, along with narrow footpaths that aren't really designed for wheelchairs or mobility scooters (though this wasn't as bad many other places we visited in the UK), it was distinctly unfriendly to the disabled.

That was its biggest drawback, because everything else about it was a dream.

We were in South Edinburgh, and didn't make it over to New Town. But there's so much to explore. SO much.








This monument is visible from so many different places, it's pretty amazing. The lighting here is terrible, but you get the idea.



A lion



Spread Peace Amongst Yourselves - the street art near the Mosque where we stayed.









Lots of roadworks! Also this view just reminded me that Edinburgh is expensive, which shouldn't be surprising, but today a friend was like 'Edinburgh seems like it'd be cheaper than London' and NOT necessarily e.e





A friend who saw these photos was like 'these people never seem to have balconies.' And at first it was like, I think I dashed off some quick response. But in retrospect, it's COLD, and I don't think balconies in tenement buildings and so on is really on the top of a person's list in a COLD place.

There's probably other reasons but that one came to me later, lmao.



I loved this little bifurcation but I've just realised that's a nasty turn lmao





Next: the Prince Street Gardens!

Comments

[silverjackal]

When I said "cheaper than London" I was specifically thinking of the housing market, which is of course insane in London. :D According to one aggregate site (which means it's likely not completely accurate, but also not likely completely wrong) the COL in Edinburgh is roughly a third cheaper than London with the big divergences unsurprisingly being housing and transportation.

I'd say Europe as well as the U.K. are generally terrible when it comes to accessibility. So much cobblestone, so many ancient, twisty streets (well, with the exception of places like Paris, which was consciously rebuilt to be broad historically), and so many dreadful connections. More than one place will, for example have streets that fan out and up from the harbour with very few (or no) cross streets. Everything was designed with foot traffic, hand cart, or donkey cart in mind in many places, so getting even a single vehicle through is fraught, much less the concept of actually accommodating pedestrians, and while other places are very walkable (again, because they were designed before cars, and people don't need them) they're only intended for the able bodied. The idea of having a ramp instead of steps up to a door is an unheard of concept in many places.

I can explain your little split/deadly interchange too. It dates back to when the property on the left was an intact estate -- hence the small building, which would have been a carriage house, or gardener's house, etc. The original street ran by. And then more of the land was sold (or expropriated) and the city put in a new street. Voila! Strangely angulated intersection. I once lived near a seven way intersection (yes, seven) that arose from a similar splitting and resplitting as land was further subdivided and developed. The concept of "urban planning" wasn't really applicable when the divisions occurred literally centuries apart, though they should have known better with the newer ones.

Edited to add: on the subject of balconies, they're generally not part of the architecture in a lot of older places in the more northern parts of Europe (and I'd guess that extends to the U.K. as well). In general you are very correct about how cold it is, but also historically the air was heavily polluted so you didn't want to be sitting out in it. Also many places receive large quantities of very cold rain. Balconies and verandas are generally things found in more fortunate southerly climes.

[moonvoice]

Edited to add: on the subject of balconies, they're generally not part of the architecture in a lot of older places in the more northern parts of Europe (and I'd guess that extends to the U.K. as well). In general you are very correct about how cold it is, but also historically the air was heavily polluted so you didn't want to be sitting out in it. Also many places receive large quantities of very cold rain. Balconies and verandas are generally things found in more fortunate southerly climes.

Ah, of course! That makes sense re: the pollution, especially in the dense cities / industrialised areas. Tbh, you can see the pollution on a lot of the stones even now, because cleaning the sandstone varieties degrades them over time. I think one of the only places they can keep really clean re: pressure cleaning the stones, is in Aberdeen, because most of their buildings are made out of grey granite and that's pretty indestructible.