Aug 24: Edinburgh Assorted, plus Glasgow

We awoke and ate breakfast at our hotel. Di Yin left for Glasgow (about an hour away by train) for a meeting; I had most of the day to myself before I was to meet her in Glasgow in mid-afternoon.

After dropping my baggage off at the train station, I began a series of walking tours that covered a wide swath of Edinburgh. It was a beautiful day, and the sights and pictures stood out much more than the previous day. These pictures capture the highlights of what I saw, but I won't bother in either the pictures or this post to mention every little spot I visited. Given the breadth of my exploration, I wish I recorded a walking map of my day -- it would look impressive and give a sense of the amount of Edinburgh I covered.

I first stopped by the University of Edinburgh's Old College to visit its art museum, the Talbot Rice Gallery.

Later, after hitting more of the University and two nearby parks, I stopped by the National Museum of Scotland, which covers Scotland's history. It's a large museum, and I was impressed by the scope and quality of its objects and the quality of its displays, but found the museum's building's design, with no natural flow, so disorienting that I quickly left. This is surprising and particularly disappointing, as the building was designed specifically for the museum.

Finishing my first walking tour in my guidebook and starting my second, I visited the Princes Street Gardens. Nestled under the cliff by Edinburgh Castle, these gardens are beautiful. I know where I'd bring my lunch every day if I lived in Edinburgh.

I found and briefly browsed a large craft fair by a church.

Then, I ventured north, into Edinburgh's New Town, which was designed and built in the 18th century. My first stop there was Charlotte Square, one of its main parks and with many notable historic buildings surrounding it. Just as George's Square (a park I stopped by in the morning) was taken over by a festival, so was Charlotte Square, this one for a book festival. I wandered through. I observed that the bookstore at the book festival was primarily organized by publisher. Interesting.

I rambled a bit far north of downtown proper to the neighborhood of Stockbridge. It was like downtown in architecture, but has fewer pubs and more regular shops and markets.

I then walked through the neighborhood of Northern New Town, consisting of long blocks of nearly identical (though pleasant-looking) granite buildings and similarly up-scale stores.

I trotted back to the train station, picking up a quick lunch on the way, and caught my train to Glasgow. In Glasgow, I needed to transfer from the Glasgow Queen Street Rail Station to the Glasgow Central Rail Station. This required a walk through downtown, mostly on Buchanan Street and other large pedestrianized streets. It's a nice area of Glasgow to see, and I wish all transfers could be like this.

In Glasgow, I met Di Yin, and we caught a train that would take us all the way back to London. To get back to London, we actually returned past Edinburgh first. heh. (This made my Glasgow excursion a bit silly.)

Anyway, the train rides were pretty; for the journey through Scotland, we followed the North Sea (and hence had water views) but even without the sea the vistas were appealing. We passed fields and fields and sheep and cows and Christmas tree farms and sea and other farms and more. In addition to my pictures from the journey, Di Yin also took some as well, starting with that one. If you're in slide-show mode and see pictures of buses to Scotland, you've cycled back to the beginning of her album and have exhausted all the pictures from the train trip.