Side Quest to Edinburgh

We travelled from Leeds to Edinburgh for a few days (partly because it was my birthday :-)) and although the forecast was for nothing but rain, we didn't get a lot of rain over our stay.  But it was raining pretty hard when we arrived!

Here is what a rainy day in Edinburgh looks like:

One of our main plans was for my birthday dinner at The Scran and Scallie (a "modern Scottish pub") in Stockbridge (owned by a Michelin Star Chef or so the rumour goes).  So on our first day we walked to Stockbridge to "case the joint" and we ended up having lunch in a nearby pub called The Stockbridge Tap.

We have a tradition when we travel of taking pictures of Sonya with her first beer upon arrival so here you go.

(Aside: I just realized that I never blogged our Dublin trip, where we started this tradition.  We landed in Dublin and wandered the city for hours before we ended up at one of the oldest pubs in town, and we were both so thrilled to get a local Guiness beer and "toastie" that our grins were almost splitting our heads in half.

End of aside.)

(Also I have to mention that the very first person we talked to in Edinburgh - our server at The Stockbridge Tap - was from Vancouver.  This became a theme for this visit.)

Our next stop after lunch was a tour of the Royal Botanical Gardens.  I didn't take a lot of pictures because we were lugging around all our luggage (our AirBnB checkin wasn't until after 3pm) but here is a photo of some thistles.  Scotland's national plant is a thistle, although apparently no one knows exactly which one.  Other than it's not this one.

Dinner on our first night - some shared plates at Sophie's, a Lebanese resto just across the street from our AirBnB.  (We stayed in the Fountainbridge neighbourhood.)

On our second day we decided to visit a couple of museums.  Rain was predicted all day, although we only got a bit of rain in the morning.  Here are a few photos on our walk to the National Gallery.

Lots of great work at the National Gallery, most of it (of course) by Scottish artists.  However my favourite (of course) was one of the two Monets that they had, this one specifically that I'd never seen before.

(Sonya says that Monet's reflections are better than mine.  I don't feel too bad, I've got one more year of school to catch up!)

Next we decided to visit the Scottish Parliament.  It's in a very modern building with ultra high security.  We emptied our pockets and went through a metal detector and were just in time for a very interesting talk from a young guide from ...  you guessed it Toronto.  Scottish parliament hasn't actually been sitting all that long, I forget exactly how long but much shorter than you'd think.

Across the street, we paid a quick visit to the gardens of the Hollyrood Palace.  Here are some more thistles.  Or maybe these were artichokes, I can't remember.  I'll have to find a Master Gardener to ask.

("Edinburgh Old Town" stretches for slightly more than a mile between Edinburgh Castle and Hollyrood Palace.  This is called the "Royal Mile" but for some reason I keep wanting to call it the "Golden Mile".  I just googled and "Golden Mile" seems to be a generic term and very widely used.)

We booked a tour of the Edinburgh Castle, which was super interesting!!!  (More interesting than just walking around and looking at things.  I find that these kind of buildings are a bit of a let down once you get inside - they're so impressive to look at from afar, imposing up on a big hill etc, and then a bit of a letdown once you actually get inside.  But if you get a good guide - and our guide "Davy" was fantastic - they can really make the history come alive.)

Here is the castle entrance:

... and here is me chillin' after the tour.  Check out the dark clouds!  They were over us for our whole visit.

Our dinner at the Scran and Scallie was fantastic!!!  No food pics, sorry!

Next day we decided to go to Modern One, the modern wing of the National Galleries.  (The previous day covered more "traditional" art, or as Sonya referred to it "normal art".)

One of my favourites of course - Bridget Riley - well known as the third pillar of "Neo-Post-Op Impressionism".

One definitely "not normal" work - a giant ultra-realistic baby statue, just born with umbilical cord still attached.  Check our the tiny Sonya in the background.

We walked back to Stockbridge - again - our third visit to this neighbourhood in three days.  Today we were on a mission to buy cheese, and the recommended cheesemonger was George Mewes Cheese in Stockbridge.  Sadly our cheesemonger (who happened to be from ...  you guessed it Maple Ridge) informed us they didn't have the cheese we were looking for (cue Monty Python) and also they didn't have the ability to vacuum seal cheese!  (All the cheese shops in France had vacuum sealing capabilities to assist with our cheese smuggling efforts.)

So we went for lunch at The Bailie Bar, another great pub that had been recommended to us.  Again the food was excellent and this time, for a change, we had a server from Scotland.

We did a quick visit to another cheese shop in a busier neighbourhood close to "Old Town" (where our cheesemonger was from California) (not quite Canada but at least part of Cascadia) where they also informed us they couldn't vacuum seal our cheese, and recommended we buy our cheese in London just before our flight home.  We'll see but it looks like there may be no cheese for our cheese-loving families :-(

While we were killing time waiting for our afternoon train we did a speed run around the National Museum.  This was very cool and something we will allocate more time for on our next visit!

We have a few more days in Leeds before we break camp for London on Monday.