- 1. 8/25 Arriving in Edinburgh
- 2. 8/26 Edinburgh
- 3. 8/27 Scotland – West Highland Lochs & Castles
- 4. 8/28 Edinburgh Castle
- 5. 8/29 North England – Holy Island, Bamburgh & Alnwick Castle
- 6. 8/30 Edinburgh – Palace of Holyroodhouse
- 7. 8/31 Scotland – Loch Ness, Glencoe & Highlands
- 8. 9/1 Edinburgh – National Museum of Scotland
- 9. 9/2-9/7 Family Visit in Dawlish
- 10. 9/8 London
- 11. 9/9 The Tower of London
- 12. 9/10 London – Westminster Abbey
- 13. 9/11 London – Buckingham Palace
- 14. 9/12 London Museums
We had our breakfast in the lovely dining room of our hotel, where I reached my final conclusion on two kinds of British food, haggis and black pudding. They’re both some form of sausages, but too greasy for my taste.
We spent the morning at the Royal Botanical Garden, hoping that the outdoor sunny environment would help us recover from jet-lag. Unfortunately, it turned out to be more about exotic plants than about design aesthetics, at least for half of the garden we saw. For example, there was a plant nicknamed “Monkey Puzzle”, because someone thought it was weird enough to confuse monkeys. This did not engage our brains as much as we had hoped, so we decided to do something more exciting before we fell asleep in the garden.
We went back to the Royal Mile in the Old Town where we walked along the previous day. Before doing anything, we treated ourselves to a piece of Strawberry Mille Feuille.
Afterwards, we visited St. Giles Cathedral and the Real Mary King’s Close.
The Real Mary King’s Close was a underground network of streets and houses that has remained frozen in time since the 17th century. The guided multi-media plus acting tour showed you what it was like to live, work and die in the crowded city more than 300 years ago. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures inside, but the biggest lesson we learned there was–watch out when someone shouts Gardyloo!
We left the Old Town in the dusk light.
I feel I want to say that I had a rather higher opinion of the Botanic Garden. Even though, to the non-botanist, it’s just a nice garden with the odd plant that makes you go, hm, that plant is odd, I still found it nicely varied and with a number of interesting areas each with their own flavour. Pleasant, I agree, rather than spectacular, but I enjoyed it a lot. It must be lovely for the locals.
To be fair, the Royal Botanical Garden has a very large green house. There must be many interesting plants there, but it wasn’t free of charge. Complicated Rain was unwilling to pay money to see plants, so we didn’t go in.