Our Scotland and England Adventure: Day Fourteen (30 August)

Bob wanted to sleep in today, so we met in the early afternoon and I set off on my own to see what I could see. I started off at the Talbot Rice Gallery,

located within the University of Edinburgh. Actually a wonderful pair of galleries, the White Gallery is a luminous contemporary space, while the Georgian Gallery is distinctly more traditional, with sculptures and paintings from earlier centuries. I was there to see the contemporary exhibit (a fascinating take on the consumables on offer at £ shops in the UK), and moving to the dark columns of the Georgian Gallery after the bright whites and neons of the White Gallery was a bit of a surreal experience. Next up was the National Museum of Scotland, a place where I thought I'd just pop in for ten minutes since it was across the street from the Talbot Rice, but where I ended up spending more than an hour. The atrium is a nice way to enter the complex

and most of the reason I know I was there for more than an hour is this remarkable clock, which began chiming Bach's Concerto in A Minor as I sat in the atrium, looking at the museum map, deciding where to go first. The music filled the huge atrium, and I wandered over to have a closer look:
A clock filled with stories from the past millennium, the makers of the clock assert that "it does not aim to show everything and makes no attempt to explain anything." Having said that, an impressive array of events are reflected in the clock's intricate pieces. The top part contains twelve figures that signify months and tell tragic stories of the past.
The middle section contains regular people, "caught up in the wheels of time," oblivious to the ways that they can't see what's above them, which happens to include Hitler, Stalin, and Lenin swinging a reflective pendulum on which Death himself is found. Viewers of the clock are reflected in the pendulum, adding 21st-century regular people to the clock.
Finally, the bottom portion of the clock contains an ancient spirit, along with the wheels of time being started by an Egyptian monkey.
As the clock chimes, all the pieces swing into motion, creating a cacophony of sight and sound that I was very lucky to see--to preserve the clock's mechanism, it only chimes four times per day, including at 11:00 A.M. and 12:00 P.M., and when I was about to exit the museum, I heard the clock begin its declaration of time all over again! I began by walking through some of the decorative items on display, including these wonderful iron finials,

which I learned were made in the 1920s by the same firm that made the ironwork in St Giles Cathedral's Thistle Chapel (which we saw yesterday) and in Edinburgh Castle's National War Memorial (which we would see tomorrow). I also liked these Staffordshire vases from 1905:
The little publicised (at least as far as I'm concerned) roof deck provided some excellent views:

The rest of my time in the museum was spent peeking into rooms and lingering over whatever struck my fancy. I could have fit this tiny box in the palm of my hand--it's a house-shaped shrine (carved out of solid wood and plated in gold and bronze) dating to the year 750:
These remarkable walrus-ivory chess pieces are from the 12th century (believed to be Scandinavian in origin) and were found on the Isle of Lewis in 1831:
This brass lectern is suspected to have been stolen by the English army from Holyrood Abbey in 1544, and subsequently given to St Stephen's Church in St Albans, from where it is on loan to the museum:
The fragment of Guthrie Collegiate Church's 15th-century painted ceiling is the only pre-Reformation painted ceiling that still survives. The images of the Last Judgement and the Crucifixion fill the panels, and were used to remind the congregation (who were mostly illiterate) of the consequences of sin.


While we were in Burghead, Anne and Jim talked a lot about different surnames and where various people were from in Scotland; in that vein, this display attempts to map names and origins of common Scottish surnames:
After leaving the museum, I headed back to Greyfriars Kirk; the red pub from yesterday is right in front of the church, and I liked the weatherworn image of Greyfriars Bobby that graced its front:
The church is very pretty
and although the graveyard is to the side and back of the church, when you enter the grounds, a lone gravestone stands in front.
It is, of course, Greyfriars Bobby's stone.
Behind the church is Bobby's owner's stone:
Gravestones line the walls around the graveyard, in startling proximity to the private homes that lie just outside the walls. A peaceful place,
the views from the back of the graveyard are wonderful, easily transporting you away from the 21st century.
I felt kind of silly taking the above photo, as no fewer than three different people were sitting on the pavement, sketching the view in watercolour, pencil, and charcoal respectively, and there I was "cheating" by using a camera!
Some gravestones are even set into the exterior walls of the church,
and many inscriptions have been completely lost to time.
I was pretty hungry after my morning adventures, and Bob was ready to start his day, so we met for lunch. We decided to have a rare restaurant meal since I'd read about a French place (normally out of our price range) that offered an unbeatable lunch deal (two courses and coffee for around £7). As we walked up to the dining room, we paused on the steps to stare at this startling photo of an 1895 Paris accident at Montparnasse station.
The dining room was lovely, like a bit of Paris in Edinburgh's West End.

I had charcuterie for my first course,
and an incredible lamb dish (which came in its own cast-iron pot, from which I scooped out more as the meal went on) for my main course:
Great atmosphere, delicious food, and strong coffee: all in all, a nice break from eating in the park! After lunch, we went to two galleries, right across the road from each other, the National Gallery of Modern Art and the Dean Gallery. We started at the National Gallery of Modern Art, whose front-situated Landform (built in 2002) is striking, to say the least:

The National Gallery has a wonderful collection and a relaxing café where I enjoyed the view while Bob finished watching a special gallery edition (showing different scenes simultaneously on two screens) of the recent Zidane film (which happened to be screening while we were there)--having now seen both versions, he said that the gallery edition was spectacular, an entirely different film. The Dean Gallery was much smaller that the National Gallery (especially considering that we only went into the permanant exhibit), but it contains a great collection of Surrealist art that was worth the visit.
Since photography wasn't allowed in either gallery space, the only interior shot I'll share with you is a distinctly odd one:
It's the women's washroom! "You took a photo of the washroom?" Bob asked in disbelief after I emerged with a smile on my face and told him why. The Dean Gallery has a graveyard behind it, and I wandered a bit while Bob finished his film. The first grave "stone" I saw was definitely the strangest I've seen in a long time.
The back of the pyramid was also odd:
The rest of the graveyard was pretty much as expected: quiet and lovely.

We spent the rest of the early evening wandering again, near Princes Street Gardens
and through more of the Old Town.
When we were in Cullen just two days ago, Jim told us about "Cullen skink." Although it ended up being a delicious-sounding soup (a chowder made from a mixture of smoked and unsmoked fish), when I first heard the name, I thought it sounds like something awful, as in, "I got all my vaccinations, but I still came down with Cullen skink." Since we hadn't gotten around to trying Cullen Skink, we were tempted when we came across this pub sign in a steep, narrow passageway just off the Royal Mile,

but we were both still full from lunch, so just continued on our way. During our time in Edinburgh, we saw a lot of graffiti that expressed this type of sentiment:
Whether it was "end London rule" or "Scotland, not England" or "English out now," the politics were the same. We didn't see a single retort against this notion on the walls of Edinburgh--and believe me, I looked. Our walk happened to take us back past the Parliament Building and we discovered that our previous explorations had neglected an entire side of the complex, one whose decorative appeal masks the fact that it was conceived as a solid fortification against possible terrorist attacks (it's the side most open to the neighbouring road):
Although I love the underlying design principle of inlaid rocks with notable quotations, along with empty spaces leaving room for present and future quotations to join those of the past, the resulting effect is a bit underwhemling, unintentionally echoing the unfinished momument on Calton Hill, with undertones of overspending and lack of public support.
After a bit of a rest back at our B&B, we headed out again for an evening walk--something which is always nice in a new city. We passed by the Royal Bank of Scotland
and this "big old thing" (what we call something impressive that we don't know anything about--a very common occurance in Europe!) lit up by artificial light and the glowing moon:
I didn't really notice until I selected the photos for the blog, but today's post ends with the same subject that yesterday's post did: Edinburgh Castle, this time at night, glowing over the dark city:
You can't really get away from the castle in Edinburgh, and tomorrow we would finally get an up-close view of the castle that we'd spent the last two days staring at from afar.