Ruins and Fish (Again)

This is a long time coming, but at last I have completed the blog for my second day trip out of Edinburgh.

After my successful adventure in St Andrews, I decided to set up another trip outside of the city. I looked online and in my guidebook for some nice local ruins which would coincide with the train line. I found some quite nearby, in Dunfermline just over the Firth of Forth - a connected abbey and palace, in a town full of history. The descriptions and pictures in my sources made the site very appealing, and there was a train station right in town. It was definitely a place worth going to, in my mind.

But upon turning the page of my book, something else caught my eye - a much more modern site, but quite suited to my tastes in a very different way, and also in close proximity to my present location. That's right - the national aquarium, Deep Sea World.

So then, what to do on Wednesday?

I'd like to say I was unanimously in favor of Dunfermline, to voraciously pursue the object of my undergraduate studies. But to be honest, I was completely torn, because the aquarium website advertised some really cool features, namely an underwater tunnel, so you can "walk" on the tank floor with the fish. I've always wanted to see something like that; I only knew they existed because I know there is one in Japan - it features in more than one date scene in those spectacularly fun and sappy Asian dramas of my high school days.

What to do, what to do...well, you can imagine my pleasure when I realized that in order to get to both locations, I would be using the same train line. So my eager self pounced on this and thought, why not do both in the same day?

So I did.

Upon arriving in Dunfermline, I had to find my way to the abbey. I knew it was west about two or three blocks, and it wasn't quite 9:30, when the site opened, so I took it slow and observed my surroundings. I had landed in a residential area, and it was nice and peaceful. Modern, though. Rounding the first bend, however, I got a first taste for the town's history - the Andrew Carnegie Museum. He was born and raised in Dunfermline before making his fortune in America. It was nice to have a taste of home, however distant in the past, and I circled the museum to see if there was any information lurking about outside.

Instead, I found a path leading into a bit of a park. I later figured out that this was the Andrew Carnegie Park, which he had gifted to the town after his success. It was a beautiful clear morning - I have really lucked out with weather on these excursions - and the trees and plants still had a touch of dew on them. There was a river as well, which made the scene very idyllic. I passed by a sign at one point, informing me that William Wallace was thought to have stopped here at one point. Looking up, I saw the palace for the first time, looming over the glen on a high bank.

I kept walking, figuring I would eventually make my way up and run into the entrance. Going through what appeared to be the abbey garden, I found some stone stairs leading to the top of the ridge. Following some signs, I discovered the ruins of a tower, inhabited by a king in the Middle Ages. Only the base was left, but, being the third indication of a long history I had come across by accident in under an hour, I was quite impressed.

I moved on up to the current church, which still looked rather old, and was very impressive. After stopping to chat with a local about his cute puppy, I went inside, and was, as usual, humbled by the beauty of the interior. Grand old churches always make an impression on me. I walked around the outside a bit, to see it from every angle, and saw that the tower, on the top, reads "King Robert the Bruce." How cool. A sign said he was buried in the church, but when I inquired as to its whereabouts in the abbey gift shop, I was told that the section of the church where his tomb was happened to be closed until April. Oh well, at least I saw the outside.

I then went into the ruined abbey and palace, which was amazing, not only because of the history (apparently even Mary Queen of Scots spent some time here!) but also because of the amount of structure still intact. I could go on to describe the buildings, but I think pictures would do better justice in this case. Click on the photos to see them at full size.





After exploring for some time, I found my way into town, and strolled the streets for a while. It's a very lovely little town, and the first one I had been to without a university, so there wasn't a studenty feel about it. The buildings were mostly old, and I walked down a couple of side streets to look at the houses as well. I found a little place called Cafe Alba, where I ate lunch - a cheese and bacon panini, very tasty. By then, however, it was 1 PM, and time to move on to my second destination of the day - North Queensferry.

North Queensferry was only about a 12 minute train ride, so I was there before I knew it. I had seen loosely where Deep Sea World was located on a map, but again I was left to my own devices to find it. Fortunately there were signs for it straight away, so there was no trouble there. On my way, I crossed under the Firth of Forth train bridge, which is an impressive piece of structure, and I spent some time admiring it from my front row perspective.

I was practically the only one in the aquarium, so it was nice to have it almost all to myself. The exhibits were fabulous; I stopped to see the seals first, because they're so cute. They seemed to have a nice enclosure, and the signs said that Deep Sea World provides shelter for injured seals during recovery, which I thought was quite nice. There were a wide number of fish, sorted by location in the world, so I spent a long time wandering through that, and managed to catch part of a fish feeding that was going on at the tidal pool tank. The fish in the Amazon exhibit were absolutely huge, I had no idea they could get that big.

I lost myself in the aquarium for some time, so that I completely forgot about the underwater tunnel, until I saw that the exhibit ended with a ramp leading down. According to the website, Deep Sea World is actually an old abandoned quarry, which was sealed up and made into an aquarium some years ago. As a result, their main tank is quite large, and that's where the tunnel runs. And let me tell you - that tunnel was amazing. Half of the walkway was regular floor, but the other half was a slow moving walkway, so that you didn't have to focus on walking while looking at fish in every direction. I went through four times, and spent the better part of an hour down there. The tunnel allowed you to be a part of the environment, and the fish were literally inches away from you on the other side of the glass. The sharks were too, which made me a little nervous at first, sharks being a rather significant fear, but soon I was captivated by their grace as they wound their way through the water.

This is a stone fish; it's very good at camouflage.

After viewing the fish for as long as I could (I left as they were closing), I hopped on the train once more to return for Edinburgh. Another day well spent!