July 15-30, 2023

15th - Arrival	16th - Dean Village	17th - Portabello Beach	18th - Union Canal	19th - Baird & Blackford
20th - Mercat Cross	21st - Cramond Beach	22nd - Botanical Gardens	23rd - Stirling	24th - Scottish Museum
25th - Duddingston	26th - Pentland Hills	27th - Glasgow	28th - Gardens	29th - Rugby game

Saturday

One of the only fixed items that we had on our calendar for this trip was a Rugby game. As soon as we knew that we were coming to Edinburgh on these dates, Dan checked the calendar for Murrayfield. There was a “friendly” game between Scotland and Italy, so we bought tickets and put it on our calendar. And now the day had come.

We took the train to the field, which went much faster than the walk here we had taken the other day. We arrived fresh and ready for our first live rugby game.

The stadium is big and clean and we were early. Most of the crowd that was there were milling around outside, drinking and eating from the many, many food vendors set up in the area around the field.

Artsy shot on the walk to the train station

Such a strange sculpture

The early birds, hanging out under grey skies

Someone wasn’t so keen on meeting the mascot!

Talk about going “whole hog”

Watching the stands slowly fill in

What’s Scotland without a little rain?

Ah, that’s better

Bird on the field!

And then the sun came out

While Dan and I had decent seats, and the crowd around us was enthusiastic, we had to admit that we get a lot more out of watching a game on the television. We had bought the little in-ear transistors that broadcast what the refs were saying, but they didn’t work very well and we often had no idea what was going on down there on the pitch. With Scotland’s win (25 – 13), it was a happy and boisterous crowd that streamed out of the stadium that afternoon. And with the good spirits and the good weather, we decided to walk with them back towards the city.

River art

Sunday

Our flight didn’t leave Edinburgh until the evening, so we had another nice lazy morning, walked around the Morningside neighborhood some more and stopped to get breakfast from Black Medicine Coffee. We even had time to slip in a movie (2001: Space Odyssey). But eventually we had to leave behind our little “holiday home away from home” and fly back to our real home. It had a been a wonderfully stress-free visit to one of our favorite cities.