Last morning in Edinburgh

About to set out for our last few hours in Edinburgh before we head over to Glasgow for our flight out in the morning. It's a rainy kind of day, which means alternating sprinkles and just clouds. I went for a walk, mostly in the rain. First I walked up to the hill next to our hotel, Craydon Park I think it's called. There's a bunch of monuments here. A tall tower dedicated the Admiral Nelson, who must have been very well endowed to deserve all these pillars.

There's also a little unmarked house and a strange-looking thing called the National Monument. This picture captures a lot of what we've seen here. They have this grand, Greek-looking thing, but in the foreground there's a fine supply of litter, and the monument itself is grey and dingy.

All the big, impressive things in Edinburg are sooty. The National Monument looks the way it does because they lacked the money to make the complete Greek Temple. So there you have it. Great views though; the vistas in this place are unreal in general. The setting and the topology couldn't be much more striking.

Just a scooch to the left and I think I can take out the clock in that tower over there.

From there I thought I'd try to walk down to the Leith, which looks like a stream of some sort, but it seemed too far for this kind of day. So I turned and walked through New Town, which was mostly deserted (not really meaningful, because it was 8:30 on a rainy Sunday morning). There are all kinds of architectural styles jumbled together. And there are a lot of developments with these weird dormers that look like converted water towers. They also seem to have been very careful to make sure everyone has their own chimney.

Eventually I ended up back in the center of things and and ended up at the west end of a lovely little park right beneath the castle. It had some great views too and a floral clock at one end that seemed to be keeping very accurate time.