Edinburgh, July 7

Photos: The visitors' center, the green houses

Photos: the water lilies, flowers that I liked

Photos: Monkey puzzle tree, the Alpine Rock Garden, Slate Wall Well

Photos: The yacht Britannica, an old building in Edinburgh, Scotland's National Gallery --not real keen on photography of the old masters.

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

OK, just a note: once again the blogspot is being difficult. I have double spacing in the compose section that I don't have here. I put in the spaces between paragraphs and it ignores it. I do believe this thing is trying to annoy me. Maybe I have spent too much time doing this because I think it is beginning to have annoying characteristics.

After doing those very untourist chores of laundry, making breakfast, and cleaning, we headed to Edinburgh. To get cheap train tickets we need to leave after 10:00 and returning after 6:30, and we are indeed cheap, so we catch the 10:15 train. We had a nice little train ride—about 40 minutes. Two gentlemen in suits sat across from us. They must have been very important. They each had two Blackberries which they used constantly. At one point they were each talking on a phone and texting on the other. No, I was not staring, but it was hard to miss them.

Our plan was to go to the Scottish Museum, but it was such a nice day we decided to do outdoor things. Not particularly a fan of guided tours, we have discovered they have their place in very busy cities with bad city bus maps. Paying for a ticket on one of the double decker tour busses allows you to travel between their bus stops and get on and off for a twenty four hour period. Much less expensive than taxi cabs and actually fairly entertaining.

Anyway we chose one of the three routes, paid our money, and saw a bit of Edinburgh. We decided to get off at the Botanic Gardens. Since Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, this is the national botanic garden. The visitors/education center is brand new. It is designed to be extremely ecofriendly and even has a growing roof. We paid our 50 pence for a guide to the gardens…admission is free. We went to the Glass Houses, which are not quite free, which has tropical plants, palm trees, cactus, and, of course, orchids. I took lots of pictures of orchids and other flowers. I can’t grow them, but I can take pictures. There were lots of weird plants and weird flowers….all quite beautiful. We saw some of the biggest water lilies I have ever seen.

From the Glass Houses we decided it was time for lunch. We found some really weird trees along the way. They call them Monkey Puzzle Trees. (see pictures) Lunch was quite good for museum food….not the usual hot dog, pizza, hamburger fare of American museums. We found a wonderful treat to be a fruited scone with clotted cream (whipped cream), butter and jam….sinfully delicious. We walked to the Chinese hill where obviously, they have planted plants, trees, and bushes indigenous to China. This area has been under cultivation for many decades. After one of the sets of troubles in China, the Chinese government actually came to the Botanic Gardens and asked for plants so that they could be reintroduced into the Chinese ecosystem.

Our next stop was the Rock Garden. This area was designed to mimic an Alpine mountain area and contained plants that are found in the Alpine areas of the Earth. I really don’t understand the climate of Scotland well enough to know how they can grow absolutely gorgeous roses and Alpine plants at the same time in the same outdoors, but they do. The gardens are quite inspiring. We even found beds that had been dug up because of an invasive species taking over the bed. It was a lot like Creeping Charlie in miniature. Guess weeds are weeds no matter what country it is.

Having spent four hours in the Botanic Gardens, we decided to get our bus to another stop. We went through a neighborhood of Edinburgh where the narration explained that the people married so much within the community that it eventually ended up with only five surnames, at which point women just kept their own surnames. Strange, but ok. Shortly after that we reached the docks where the Royal Yacht Britannica is moored. A whole shopping center (three stories with floating escalators) has built up in front of the yacht. It is certainly big. We found a deck on the first (2^nd) floor from where to take pictures. The ship’s souvenir shop and tour entrance was on the second (3^rd) floor. We decided this was not something on which we wanted to spend 20 pounds ($30) for an hour’s tour. We can pretty well guess it is opulent. Many of the museums in Edinburgh seem to charge an entrance fee as opposed to Glasgow where only special exhibitions are for fee.

We finished the tour on the tour bus and decided to go to Scotland’s National Gallery. We were nearing the closing time for the museums and the Gallery was easy to get to and free, so we figured we could go back another day easily. The Gallery was amazing, Titian, Van Dyke, Rembrandt, Renoir, Monet, Degas all along with many other artists inhabit the gallery. We did not see it all and were ushered out at the appropriate time.

With some time to kill we crossed Princess Street to Jenner’s Department Store an old fashioned store much like Marshall Field’s many years ago. An old fashioned store for old fashioned money; it wasn’t cheap. We did find a stuffed toy Highland Cow—but for forty pounds; it was too pricey for a stuffed animal. We saw lots of pretty things especially a table that could be made for the kitchen back home. We took pictures for a possible future project.

We discussed the dilemma of dinner and decided to eat when we got back to Glasgow since we knew good places there but were unsure of our immediate surroundings in Edinburgh. So we had some coffee, read a book, and boarded the train for home. The train ride was nice except for the 5 youngsters who boarded for the last 15 minutes. They were in a party mood, some alcohol was involved, and they were loud and obnoxious as a group—individually some of them may have been quite ok, but not tonight together. In Glasgow we walked to the “Chippy doon the lane,” for dinner. The fish was even bigger than before, and we had a side salad. The meal was good and to top it off Nancy convinced the waitress to stamp our loyalty card, even though I had forgotten it at home. We arrived back at the flat at 9:00. It seemed like 7:30 as we had just had dinner, and it was still light out.

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