London Sightseeing Pass: Westminster Palace and Abbey & St Margaret’s Church continue… August 25, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Air Tickets, Cars, Destination, Ireland, Library, London, Museum, Rail Pass, Scotland, Sightseeing, Tickets, Tour, Trip, Wellington , 5commentsA cult developed around Edward. There were accounts of him healing the sick while he was alive, and rumours of cures at his tomb continued. In 1102 it was opened and his body found incorrupt. After a campaign lasting for decades, Edward the Confessor was canonized in 1161. His body was raised from the tomb before the high altar and replaced in a richly ornamented shrine, the key, sacred focal point of the Abbey. (more…)
London Sightseeing Pass: Westminster Palace and Abbey & St Margaret’s Church August 25, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Air Tickets, Cars, Destination, Hotels, London, Rail Pass, Sightseeing, Tickets, Tour, Trip , 5commentsIt is at the first sight difficult to imagine any ancient, geomantic mysteries to be present in the teeming modern metropolis that is London. There is no doubt that what may be there is well submerged both actually, beneath accretions of buildings and earth, and metaphorically, beneath layers of time. We have to look to legend, history, archaeological glimpses and the barely discernible lineaments that have survived in the present layout of streets, sites and place-names. (more…)
Holyroodhouse: The most romantic of all the palaces in the British Isles May 25, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Denmark, England, France, Hotels, Netherlands, Scotland , add a commentIf you walk down between the soaring grey skyscrapers of old Canongate from west to east, you come in the end to the Palace of Holyroodhouse, which lies half in Edinburgh and half in the bald grey wilderness that rises to Arthur’s Seat. It is architecturally perhaps not very exciting to most people, though it is an interesting and an elegant building, but its associations with Mary, Queen of Scots, with the Young Pretender, and with Charles X in his penniless exile, make it by far the most romantic of the British royal palaces. There are several legends about its founding, and historically the most probable is the following: St Margaret, the second Queen of Malcolm Canmore and the sister of Edgar Atheling, brought with her to Scotland in 1068, a gold casket in the shape of a cross, covered by an ebony carving of the Saviour and containing a sizable piece of the True Cross. (more…)
