After our brief visit to New Town, we headed back to the main drag. Actually, that's a particularly good way of describing that street (Princes Street). It's a complete drag to get anywhere. The sidewalks are packed, mostly with tourists in groups of 4 to 20, and it's nearly impossible to make progress at a decent rate. There's no way around it that doesn't involve excessive hill climbing.
And maybe it's too many people who don't know where they are, but the pedestrians here are either rude or incompetent. I know, incompetent pedestrians, right? But I can walk up 7th Avenue in New York from Penn Station at 5:30, when half the Midtown population is headed in the opposite direction, and make quicker progress without ever making contact with anyone. Here you can't go 10 feet without someone jostling you or walking straight at you without showing any signs of moving out of the way.
We had a nice dinner down a steep alley (or
close, as they call it here) and then came back to the hotel. We've not watched much TV, which has been very nice. I don't usually watch much TV in hotels anyway, because I don't like to watch in bed, and that's mostly what hotel rooms are made of and the TV is usually at the foot of the bed.
We went to bed reasonably early and I was up early on Saturday as well. That gave me a lot of time to walk around, and walk I did. Up and down hills, up Royal Mile without the crowds, through Old Town all up and down. Little visual treats everywhere
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| Particularly like the little symbols. |
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| Up at the Castle from Old Town |
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| Across the train station to our hotel (middle right- not the turret) |
Made it back in time for breakfast, after which we set out to see an art show at the Queens Gallery. There are probably lots of Queens galleries. This one is next to the Palace at Holyroodhouse. Or some sort of redundant name like that- I know the Holyrood part is right. It was a small exhibit, but beautifully curated and had one exquisite Vermeer painting that was the reason we went, but there were other great paintings by Dutch masters, especially Steen. I'm not super knowledgeable about art, but I know enough to like those Dutch painters. Maybe it's because when you're going through museums in chronological order, they're the first things you see without Jesus in them. Or maybe it's because they're great.
From there, we walked around Old Town and had lunch in a nice outdoor market called Grassmarket. And strolled back toward the center of town, and again endured the unruly hoards on Princes Street. I think that may have been enough for us today. We're still going out to see Jools Holland and his R&B Band later.
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| Grassmarket |
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| Pub humor |
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