The Palace of Holyroodhouse is one of the oldest but also the most rarely used royal residences. The Queen spends there a week each summer and then moves on to Balmoral for her holiday.

The palace is built next to the ancient Abbey, now in ruins, and it stands right at the end of the Royal Mile as you walk downhill from Edinburgh castle. Across the street from the palace there is the Scottish Parilament, a modern building, and right in fromnt of the palace there is the Queen's gallery. If you want to go inside the palace, you buy tickets in the Royal Collection shop (as well as doing some shopping on the way, judging by the majority of visitors there) and walk on to the palace gate. With your tickets checked, you move on into the palace yard. The peace and quiet there is amazing, you immediately forget that you are in the middle of a tourist area of a large city. On your right there is a mountain, and on your left there stands a monument to Edward VII. In front there're tourists having their pictures taking, so it's not easy to take in a good view of the palace. Photography is allowed only outside the palace, so no pictures could be taken inside, but this seems to be almost the only restriction there is. As you come into the palace, you expect to see lots of security cameras and lots of guards everywhere, but in fact you don't notice any cameras and there are several guides inside, but not in every room. Almost all tourists rent audioguides where you can choose your preferred language, so you just move from room to room, dial the number you see on a small stand inside the room and the audioguide tells you about the room. Invariably, every recorded story ends with the words "If you'd like to learn more about this room, the guide will be happy to help you".

The guide walks into the room a couple of minutes after you've appeared there and stands patiently and very quietly in the corner. In many rooms there are chairs you can sit on while you're listening to your audioguide, and only some chairs are roped off because they are too old for the general public to sit on them.

The tour is designed in such a way that you proceed from the "everyday use" rooms like the dining room with the table fully set, a couple of drawing rooms with Victorian furniture and drapings, through the Throne room to the older rooms. The guides are really eager to help you. On the two thrones in the Throne room there are the monarchs' initials: GR, which obviously stands for Gerogius Rex (King George in Latin), and MR (the Queen's name and the first letter of the word Regina, "Queen" in Latin). I couldn't remember which of the Georges had a wife whose name started with an M, so I asked the guide when the thrones were made. He told me that they were made around 1922 for George V and his wife Queen Mary (do I hear you say "duh"?) and asked me whether I'd like to know what firm made them. Of course I said yes, so the guide took the rope off, walked to the thrones, brought back the Queen's footstool, turned it over and showed it to me. There was the label and the hallmark of some London firm which made the throne. I touched the hallmark and the footstool, thanked the guide and walked on through the long portrait gallery to the historical chambers.

The portrait gallery is interesting in itself. It is very long and the walls are hung with portraits of all Scottish kings. Now, the portraits look strikingly alike, and the audioguide tells you that they were all painted by one and the same artist and his task was not to convey the true looks of old kings, but to show that the reigning monarch (Charles II) was a true successor of the old Scottish kings, so every portrait looks a lot like Charles II.

From there you move on to the Royal Apartments. You go past the Queen's drawing room and then take a steep stair up through the room where Queen mary of Scot's private secretary was murdered. From there you get into Queen mary of Scots' bedchamber. The Royal Apartments are maintained in the same style as they used to be from the beginning, so the bedchamber reflects the yesra that mary spent at the French court in her youth. In the bedchamber you see some of Queen Mary's needlework and her scissors, as well as her purse. Then you get into a small museum, although every room is already a museum in its own right. The only thing that reminds you that this is a working royal residence and that the Queen actually lives there for a small part of the year is that the pictures there have no plaques under them, like you wouldn't really put up plaques underneath pictures in your own home. Now, this museum room is full of rather gruesome exhibits, such as a medallion with a lock of Queen mary's hair, a button in which you can see a tiny part of a handkerchief with the blood of the executed King Charles I etc. The room is darkish, but still you can spend hours there.

Telling about the other rooms would take up too much time. I am working on an article about Scotland now, so there you will find more information, stories and photos. What I'll say for now is when you leave the palace, you get to go past the Abbey. The Abbey was built in the 12th century and many Scottish kings are buried there, but since it was a catholic abbey, a riotous crowd destroeyd most of it in 1688, and the roof fell in in the 18th century, so now the Abbey is a picturesue ruin. From the Abbey you go through the palace garden (a small but still nice one), past the large white tents where the Queen had given garden parties just a few days before our arrival, and there you are, right next to the exit. You can do some shopping in the royal collection shop if you want, but to tell the truth, your head is still so full with the things you've just seen in the palace that you feel that a lunch in some quiet place would do it more good than any other activity.