Day 9, Aug 18 (Saturday)

Late wake up.  Diane warned us that Edinburgh is a night time experience, and our schedules have definitely adjusted.  Did the Gladstone’s Land tour (no relation to the pub in Leith).  This was another historical tour and museum of a house from the 1500’s through the 1700’s.  It included a model of the property and how it grew over hundreds of years to be what it is today.  Great context, I wish we had done this at the beginning of the trip.  This also put a lot of things in Craigmiller in context as well.  The furniture was great too, we saw 200-300 year old antique furniture that was in amazingly good shape.  My favorite was the desk with all the hidden compartments; there were something like 5 of them that they had found so far.

 

cool gold bird out front of Gladstone's Land

The original ceiling art from the 16th century.

This clock only has one hand.  Apparently in the 18th century, the fraction of the hour wasn't terribly important.

We then hoofed it North from the top of the mile to the Royal Botanical Gardens.  This is the place where, on a nice Saturday afternoon, one takes one’s shrieking spawn of Satan for a nice outing.  It was crawling with crotch fruit, like a bad noisy infestation.  Fortunately we found some nice places that were actually quiet and took some fun pictures of the gardens, birds, and each other.  Laying the soft grass was very peaceful and relaxing.  Nothing like it here, the grass there almost feels like fur.

Beautiful view from the Botanical Gardens

 

Guess what? Duck butt!

boo likes the grass

Possibly the same huge-leafed plant I hung out by, in 2007!

Diane’s knee was in bad shape by this point, so we walked to a local “chemist” (pharmacy) for a knee brace and some pain killers.  The pharmacist was very nice and quite helpful.

Double Duck Butts!!!

Everything is so very green in the gardens.

Getting a little artistic with the landscaping...

No idea what these shy little birds are.  If someone knows, please leave a comment.  They were pretty hard to capture too; the little fuzzy chick really wanted to stay in the weeds.

Success on our sweater quest!  We finally found a nice little shop towards the bottom of The Mile run by a Sikh gentlemen, eager to score with Diane, sell us wool, and tell us all about his religion and culture.  It was a bit surreal.  He had a thick Glasgow accent that was at times hard to understand which just added to the weirdness.  Anyway, we got the awesomely warm and Scottish sweaters we sought for the past week.

caution! Workmen shoveling shit!

Oink for pulled for sammiches for dinner.  Oink is the new pig craze there.  It was definitely good, although for American BBQ definitely no better than average.  The most unique thing was the haggis in the Sammy.

Another view down one of the many closes in the Old Town.

The golden hart at the top of the church.  Complete with raven.

More inky fingers!

On the way back swung by Tolbooth Market, which has now become our venue home base even though the beer selection is mediocre and the music in the bar is loud.  We managed to catch Sheraz Yousef’s stand up on becoming a man an being “manly” and he was great!  Very funny, and we had a lot of fun.

yet more Fringe tech.