Europe Holiday 2015, August 18 (Hollyroodland)

After another big breakfast I got on a different bus that went to Hollyrood Park for some much needed exercise. At the bottom of the park is Hollyrood Palace, which unlike Buckingham Palace is open to visitors. The palace grounds were quite funny as on the inside they had a grass slope with a gradual incline that went all the way up to the top of the wall, not the best security measure.

The size of the park was pretty daunting, the goal was to reach the top of the highest hill, known as Arthur's Seat lookout. The path to the peak took a few twists and turns, but there was nothing too treacherous about it. From the top there was a pretty good view in all directions, in particular the city centre and the east side with the palace, Calton Hill and Leith Walk - the street which runs all the way from the city centre down to the waterfront.

The front hill.

Hollyrood Palace and other stuff.

About half way up.

Almost at the top of the rear hill.

Arthur's Seat lookout.

After returning to the bottom of the hill I saw that the Scottish Parliament building across the road had public access and some journalist photo exhibition, so it seemed worthy of a quick, unplanned visit. Just before going through the security station I remembered that Jason had put a bread knife and some metal spoons in the bottom of the backpack I was carrying, so I went back out and dropped them on a bench rather than having them get picked up on the x-ray machine and causing a panic.

The World Press Photo exhibition had some great stuff, it was the top three prize winners in a series of different categories, such as sports, animals and so on. A few of the rooms of the building were also free to roam around, the debating charmers was brand new and hi-tech but there was no parliamentary session for the day. On the way out I got ambushed by some woman asking a bunch of questions about my visit, the first was "why did you decide to come here today?" - I said "just passing by" but shortly after thought a much better answer would have been "I just wanted to use the toilets".

Beckham Junior.

Another photo.

Next I walked up The Royal Mile, which is the main street in the "old town" part of the city. I think it gets it's name because there is a castle and palace at either end. Besides that it was just a really busy street with lots of souvenir shops, as well as the famous John Knox house, which just looked like an old house - still need to find out who that guy was.

I'm Johnny Knox, welcome to Edinburgh.

Time for lunch, and I got a Greggsnut to go with it - it's a cronut from Gregg's! It sounded great, but had a really sweet caramel filling that ruined it. While having lunch the rain started up again, instead of the predicted 21 and sun it was 16 and never ending light rain, so not a good day for shorts and a t-shirt then.

I stopped off at Saint James shopping centre to escape the increasingly heavy rain, they had a Poundland store - everything for a pound! - which is more like $2.20 so not necessarily a great bargain. There's also Poundworld, 99p Store and countless other smaller chains - they even have a reality TV show called Pound Shop Wars now.

Because it was still raining and my foot felt like it was starting to blister from the dampness I decided to go to the modern art gallery next. Well that's what I thought, but I mixed up the addresses and it was actually just the Scottish National Gallery. Instead of modern art then it was lots of old paintings. The portraits were pretty boring but a few other paintings were alright, the landscapes were interesting as it showed the city had not changed much in 150 years.

Hollyrood Park, looks about the same but with less horses.

With the weather improving slightly we walked up to Calton Hill. They have two monuments at the top, Nelson monument and National monument - one is the columns and one is the dome. There's also some more decent views of the city, and a lot closer than from Hollyrood Park.

The monuments at Calton Hill.

I had found out about a used video game store which sounded promising - particularly since we use the same format as Europe, so I tracked that down on Leith Walk. They had a collection of most of the old consoles for sale in the front window, but inside it was mostly Sega from the older generations. I was hoping to find something unique for N64, GameCube or even Wii but came up empty.

I got dinner from a local burger place called Wannaburger, the prices were reasonable and the spicy bean burger was pretty good, not too spicy. Afterwards I went running again along the Water Of Leith path which runs for about 15 kilometres beside the city. I went too soon after eating again so had crazy stomach pain going the whole way, since I was preoccupied with that I just about tripped over and landed on my face while jumping over an obstacle on the way back.

Wannaburger.