Hollyrood...

A gorgeous sunny day today - it may be the only one we get, we shall see. Went for a long walk from the condo to Hollyrood Park, marked by the rocky volcanic cragginess of Arthur's Seat and other high rocky things. Mum was keen to walk up to Arthur's Seat until we saw what the walk would actually entail - we took a slightly less strenuous (but still mildly treacherous) walk that still gave some fantastic views of the hills, old city and castle (the picture of Tui and Mum has the hill we walked up in the background). Despite attempts to throw family members down the side of the hill we all made it down to ground level, rewarded by vanilla ice cream topped with Flake bars.

Then on to the Palace at Hollyroodhouse, the Queen's official Edinburgh residence. We wandered through, then through the gardens. Pete tried a coffin out for size once he figured out he couldn't convince Mum to get in. After a snack we went to the gallery associated with the palace, which had a great exhibit of works from Durer and other great Northern artists. Jan discovered she really does need her reading glasses at that point.









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We then caught a cab to a Tesco in Leith (looks like Leith is worth exploring) where we bought a giant cart of groceries (ooh! gluten free bread that isn't frozen!! oooh wine for 5 pounds a bottle!!! ooh scottish oat milk!! ooh black tights!! - feel free to assign the exclamation to the family member) then caught a cab back home, tired but having had a good day of exploring.









The final photo is perhaps the most touching one I have taken - a composition perhaps inspired by the 15th century art we were viewing earlier: Pete sniffing the shea-butter infused toilet paper we picked up at Tesco (Mum felt she required shea butter). Lovely.






And a shout out to my iPad - the happy blinking blue dot of the GPS on the map has helped us avoid more than one wrong turn. And it has allowed me to FaceTime with the Boy, which has been nice too (even if the connection is weird and freezy most of the time - the Scots may not have mastered wireless quite yet).

That's it for now.

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Location:McLeod St,Edinburgh,United Kingdom