Scottish National Gallery

Another big walk about today. Close to 25K steps! What better way to see a city with so much of interest to see though, eh? Our plan for today had been to walk up the castle and tour inside. Unfortunately, we weren’t the only ones with that in mind. So, admission tickets were sold out for the day and we couldn’t get in! Everyone had bought them online beforehand. Now you not only have to book accommodations and transportation beforehand, you need to do that for popular tourist attractions as well, it seems.
Sometimes things happen for a reason that isn’t always immediately apparent. After finding out that we couldn’t tour the castle, we walked back down the hill and came across the National Art Gallery. It is free of charge so we decided to check it out. Turns out that the museum contains a very large collection of paintings and art including from the likes of Rembrandt and Matisse. It was more than you could possibly appreciate in one visit, but it was enjoyable to take in a sampling for a few hours.
From the museum we walked back to our place of stay for lunch and a rest before continuing the walk about. Our next destination was Dean’s Village, a picturesque area of town with a small river where there were once several mills for grinding grain to supply the city’s bakeries. We followed a path along the river all the way to our next destination, The Royal Botanical Gardens. That was also very enjoyable. There are several areas, organized into themes such as Chinese Medicinal garden, Rock Garden, Woodlands Garden … each with a huge collection of plant species, many we had never before seen.
We had by now covered a lot of area and it was time to pick up some food and head back to our room to make dinner. I had a tasty East Indian curried chicken with rice meal. Laura and Emma had pasta.Lue lisää