Joe and Françoise's excellent adventures!: The weather is splendid and everything is blooming in Edinburgh

Our flight was uneventful, and on time - my favorite kind of flight- landing us in Edinburgh around 9:30am local time, which is 4:30am NY time, so we are a bit zonked out…..

Our first sight of Scotland was a a vast, and barren land, but as we approached Edinburgh, we started seeing signs of agriculture (the yellow patches are rapeseed fields) and civilization.

I had dozed off a couple of hours on the plane, so while Joe napped, I took advantage of this beautiful weather to take a long walk around the city. I first went to the old town, through the beautiful Princes street gardens, and up to Edinburgh Castle. I did not go in however because we will visit it with our tour group, and the lines were long!

Instead, i wandered along High Street (AKA “the Royal mile”), enjoying the street performers, the cobble stones and the little side streets (called Close). It’s very hilly and there are a lot of steps!

I continued on to Carlton Hill to admire the view and then back through the more commercial, but still pleasant Princes Street. Edinburgh is quite compact and very walkable (as long as you don’t mind stairs and cobblestones….),

and - unlike many old cities- has managed to avoid putting too much cement amongst its old stone. There is this one building, which is hard to explain though, and which, to me a least, looks just like the poop emoji……

Everywhere you look, you can see the castle as well as other interesting buildings - We will probably learn much more about those once we join our group and actually have a formal tour…. So, much more about hat to come in the next 2 days.

Along the way, I stumbled upon this pizza place….. Joe and I may have to have haggis pizza tomorrow……. But this evening, we are tired, so we just had dinner at the hotel, which happens to have a really excellent middle Eastern restaurant!