Scotland - Visiting Edinbugh

Day 1 in Scotland involved merely getting north of the border and finding our accommodation in Edinburgh. That went fine, even with major construction on the roundabouts just where we had to turn off the M720 and having to wait for almost 2 hours for someone to show up and let us in to our room at the Guest House.

Day 2, however, we spent the day walking around Edinburgh. Surprisingly for a city of over half a million, it is quite possible to walk most places. A day bus pass helps connect more distant locations, but otherwise, you can walk everywhere.

One place we visited was the Botanical Gardens. The Gaelic for Edinburgh is Dun Eideann and that made me think of Dunedin in New Zealand, a city we visited over a year ago. That NZ city had quite wonderful botanical gardens and it was interesting to compare the two. Dunedin is considered the “Scottish” city of New Zealand (Christchurch being the “English” city). The botanical gardens we visited here were very nice and I’d probably say the NZ version was more spectacular, but that could be the setting and the terrain. Rhodos and many other flowers were out, the rock garden was very nice and it was generally just a pleasant place to wander around in for awhile.

Sir Walter Scott is recognized with an impressive statue/monument on Princes Street (named after the sons of George III) and we walked by a pub named the Conan Doyle. Continuing the literary theme, we note that JK Rowling lives/has lived here, along with other notables as Ian Rankin and Alexander McCall Smith, all authors I’ve read recently.

The city has a reputation of being somewhat chilly, located as it is on the edge of the North Sea, but it was almost hot the day we were there. Walking down Princes St in the afternoon, I was really too warm and I regretted not having my hat along.

We finished off the day visiting with a former student of mine who lives and teaches in the City. It was good to catch up after 18 years.

Tomorrow we’ve decided to head north and have a driving day. The plan is to get to John O’Groats on the northernmost tip of Scotland. Maybe a day trip to the Orkneys might work too.