Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland. It is the seventh largest city in the United Kingdom and the second largest Scottish city after Glasgow. Edinburgh is one of Scotland’s 32 local government council areas.

Located in the south-east of Scotland, Edinburgh lies on the east coast of the Central Belt, along the Firth of Forth, near the North Sea. Owing to its rugged setting and vast collection of Medieval and Georgian architecture, including numerous stone tenements, it is often considered one of the most picturesque cities in Europe.

It forms the City of Edinburgh council area; the city council area includes urban Edinburgh and a 30-square-mile (78 km²) rural area.

It has been capital of Scotland since 1437 (replacing Scone) and is the seat of the Scottish Parliament. The city was one of the major centres of the Enlightenment, led by the University of Edinburgh, earning it the nickname Athens of the North. The Old Town and New Town districts of Edinburgh were listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995. There are over 4,500 listed buildings within the city. In the census of 2001, Edinburgh had a total resident population of 448,625.

Edinburgh is well-known for the annual Edinburgh Festival, a collection of official and independent festivals held annually over about four weeks from early August. The number of visitors attracted to Edinburgh for the Festival is roughly equal to the settled population of the city. The most famous of these events are the Edinburgh Fringe (the largest performing arts festival in the world), the Edinburgh Comedy Festival (the largest comedy festival in the world), the Edinburgh International Festival, the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, and the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

After the Palace and the Scotish Parliment, we headed down town to see Edinburgh proper. Its a really beautiful city. Anywhere from the city you can see the beautiful castle up on the hill. There are tons of statues on almost every round about, loads of shops too. There is a nice park which used to be a moat, and every now and then you see somebody wearing a kilt playing the bagpipes. Its truly a beautiful city, but the lack of sunlight and showers during the day I was visiting made it rather hard to take photos that truly reflect its beauty. I will definitely come back to Edinburgh one day.

On this day in History..

• Shattered Glass - 2003
• Homesick Nick - 2003
• Lunch Time Woes - 2003
• Blast from the past.... - 2005
• Mutton Pasta - 2005
• Its my blog and I can cry if I want to... - 2005
• I wanna visit Bermuda... - 2005
• Another Night, Another Dream... - 2006
• Can you tell I am cold? - 2006
• Whats Your IQ? - 2006
• Of Garden Pictures - 2007
• The Opera House at Night - 2007
• JJCM :- Modern Nomads, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia - 2007
• Seing Nick Tay everywhere? - 2008

Tags: edinburgh, Photos, scotland, Travel

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 25th, 2008 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.