I took a bus across the suburbs (no tourists around at least) to get to Craigleith Retail Park which had a Nike Factory store! I wasn't sure if I was going to find any bargains, but it wasn't too much of a detour for the day anyway. The shop was pretty disappointing, there were a few running t-shirts that were about $50 each, but the shoes were the worst - the prices weren't great for starters, but every model seemed to end at either 11 or 12 only. Since I usually take a 13 this wasn't much use, I can't believe that 13 is that uncommon they wouldn't have any stock in the whole store.
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| Should have stayed at home. |
Within walking distance was the Scottish National Gallery Of Modern Art, the real one this time, strangely located in some big mansion that looked like it must have been donated by some rich person. Because the location was a little further from the city there wasn't a lot of visitors, they had a Roy Lichtenstein collection which I thought would be good, since I saw a couple of them already at the Tate Modern in London, but the series were all quite similar. The rest of the gallery varied, a few good pieces but a lot of junk as well.
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| Outside the modern art museum. |
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| Roy Lichtenstein is back. |
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| A bit much for an art museum. |
I got a chance to try out the tram back to city centre, then went back to The Royal Mile and finally found a magnet. Some were going for 4 or 5 pounds - more than $10 just for a magnet is crazy. I intended to visit the Grassmarket area next, but walked a bit too far and ended up at Greyfriars Church instead. Jason was getting a bit impatient with my various detours already, so we headed back for lunch instead.
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| This is more like modern art. |
Just as I had been mentioning how every credit card transaction in the UK is supposed to require a signature (you never get the PIN option for some reason) but nobody ever bothers to check the signatures...I got my signature checked. Just about every transaction afterwards for the next three weeks I had to get my signature checked too, even for small $5 supermarket transactions, so I definitely spoke too soon.
With some spare time after lunch and most of my itinerary completed we went down to the Royal Britannia at the waterfront. This is claimed to be "the number one UK tourist attraction" which seems a bit unlikely. This boat was previously owned by the royal family and has been since been retired, with Edinburgh winning the bidding to use it as a tourist attractions, and charge lots of money (they call them donations) for entry.
My visit started poorly as I smashed my head on the doorway walking on to the ship, lucky it didn't cause any bleeding but it sure hurt enough. You get a free audio guide to play at various points around the ship, otherwise you wouldn't have much idea what was going on. The whole operation seemed pretty ridiculous and incredibly expensive to me, the worst example was probably the detail required to set the banquet table - the staff had to exactly measure the distance between the edge of the table and between each item of cutlery, and it took like two hours or something to do it. Despite that it was interesting to see how the royal family lived on the water, it definitely seemed like they take a lot of trips!
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| I'm on a boat. |
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| The Britannia did better than the Britannic. |
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| One of many living rooms. |
We went to some Italian restaurant for dinner where I had the world's worst three pound milkshake - that's price not weight, stupid Britain. It was a tall glass but the diameter was about five centimetres, what a waste. At least the pizza was pretty good though.
I was planning to get a last minute ticket for the Fringe Festival in the evening but just ran out of time on that.
- Edinburgh
- Tourist Rating - 8 out of 10
- Good
- Hiking and running options
- Old stone buildings and brick streets
- Street layout
- Bad
- Limited city shopping
- Limited and expensive magnet options
- Nike Factory
- No pay wave for credit cards
- Rain
- Super slow pedestrian crossings
- Tram to waterfront would have been useful
- Missed Out
- Botanic gardens
- Dunfermline (another city)
- Fringe festival
- Pentland Hills regional park
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