Linlithgow Castle

Our first destination was Linlithgow Castle nearby Edinburgh. Additionally it should be said, that our daughter Simone took part in a High school Year in Stirling/Scotland last year. Last autumn we visited her and at this occasion we made a sightseeing trip to Edinburgh. Linlithgow Castle was chosen by Simone, like the most other destinations of our journey. She had read and heard a lot about Scotland and the Scottish history and so she wishes to see a lot of places commonly not easy reachable without a car.

In Linlithgow Castle Maria Stuart the later Queen of Scotland was born and because of that, it is a special historic place to a lot of Scots. We were primarily impressed by the very beautiful location on top of a hill with a view about a small lake and the Firth of Forth but naturally also by the largeness of the ancient building. In the past we had visited a lot of castles, palaces and their ruins but the very high monumental building around a simple square courtyard affected us strongly. The view from one of the corner towers into the canyons between the inner and outer walls of the flank buildings (the wooden floors are decayed a long time ago) tells a lot about the greatness and importance of the palace. The nearly undecorated compact architecture contrasts to the most of the German castles and palaces which are much more structured into different parts (edifices, houses and attachments). To our surprise inside the four wings of this "uncomfortable, cold crate" there are a lot of halls, rooms, floors, chambers and stairways so that we felt sometimes like lost in a labyrinth.
However the view from the towers is so beautiful and does not fulfill in its loveliness the common clichés of a Scottish landscape.     

 The Church outside the main entrance has some beautiful modern windows made of colored glass. Behind the church at the cemetery walls, in the shadow of very old trees, we found an idyllic place for a rest. By the way, the weather was "Non-Scottish" sunny and very warm. And so the lakeside park in the small town Linlithgow invited us to stay a little bit longer as planned. But we had to hurry because we wanted to visit an other attraction today, the Falkirk Wheel.