Every where is Walking Distance If You Have the Time

With summer school over and the Fall semester not quite yet started, we have had lots of time.  I really liked the quote by Steven Wright, "Every where is walking distance if you have the time."  I love walking without having time pressures and time schedules to follow.  I know this is a unique season of our lives, but I am hoping that even when we return to the States we will remember the benefits of taking strolls and exploring wherever we reside.

On Friday (July 26th) we set off to visit St. Mary's Cathedral.  It is a majestic church that we have seen from a distance, but not yet made a point to visit up close.  With chances of rain looming, we thought this would be a good escape from the apartment.

St. Mary's Cathedral is a cathedral of the Scottish Episcopal Church.  It's foundation stone was laid in 1874 and was paid for by Barbara and Mary Walker, spinster sisters.  We had the church mostly to ourselves as we walked around looking at the carvings, sculptures, and paintings.  Liam enjoyed hearing his echo and we had to work on making him whisper.  Amelie enjoyed "reading" the pamphlets about the cathedral left out for visitors.

This banner says Water of Leith at the top. 

The organ and choir area.  St Mary's Cathedral is the only cathedral in Scotland to maintain a tradition of daily choral services with choristers drawn from its own choir school.  

This painting caught our eyes.  "Christ healing the dumb."

This is the label for the painting above.  Can you believe it's from the 1500's?

Since the rain was holding out, we decided to continue exploring this south part of Edinburgh after we were finished looking around the cathedral.  A local had recommended that we go to Union Canal as it was a great area to walk around with children.  Since we were close by, we made our way to the canal that actually travels from Edinburgh to Glasgow.  The Union Canal was constructed to bring minerals, especially coal, to the capital. It was opened in 1822 and was initially successful, but the construction of railways diminished it's value and so wasn't used as much.  Now, it is popular for leisure purposes. We only walked a couple of miles until we happened upon a nice park with a playground.  After the kids played for a while, we headed home for Bobby's delicious chili.

The boats on the canal were different from any I've seen as they were very long and slender.

Amelie and Liam love to run.  We allowed them to run, but this is also a bike path so we had to be especially careful with Liam.  He was so accustomed to hearing us say "Bike" that he began yelling "BIKE!" over and over again as bikes were approaching and leaving.  At least we knew he was being mindful of the surroundings! ;)

Amelie and Liam talking to 4 baby ducks.

Canal Saint-Martin

In honor of my birthday, we walked along Canal Saint-Martin from Bastille to the Seine River.   This canal dates back to the early 1800s, and has many locks and bridges along the way.  I have been interested in this walk for a couple of weeks.  With the weather being nicer it turned out to be a perfect activity for the afternoon.  There is a portion of the canal that is underground, and a beautiful park runs above it with lots of different little playgrounds along the way.  In addition to playgrounds, there were many bocce ball games transpiring too.  We stopped and watched a couple of rounds.  The gamers were all older gentlemen.  They enjoyed having our kids watching them so intently.  We spent the afternoon walking the 4.5 km canal stopping to play as well as eat a picnic dinner.  Our routine picnics consist of stopping by the local grocery to pick up a tradition (baguette), turkey slices, cheese slices, sausage, cherry tomatoes, pears, and water.  We just construct a little sandwich and then relax while the kids play and eat.

Liam loves boats!!   So we made sure to walk along the Marina first.  We were able to see a boat progress along the canal, and learn about how the locks work.  Because the Seine is a different level than the Canal, there is an area the boat has to enter to allow the water to exit/fill up so that it becomes the same level as the River...very cool!

Enjoy some pictures below of our experience.

We love us some beautiful flowers!! ;)

You can see the Bastille Monument in the background.

Little fruit snack and conversation stop.