A Cathedral, An Art Museum, and Meeting Our Fellow Travellers

 Yesterday we started the day by going to St.Giles Cathedral. To quote from their website 


“St  Giles’ Cathedral, founded in 1124 by King David I, has served as an active church and site of worship for more than 900 years.

St Giles’ Cathedral has stood at the centre of major national events - from John Knox’s parish church during the Reformation, to the laying-in-rest of her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth and the presentation of the Honours of Scotland to His Majesty King Charles III.”



It’s quite a bit smaller than Ely Cathedral which we saw last year, but quite beautiful.

Afterwards we went to the National Galleries of Scotland and had lunch in their restaurant with large views of the Scott memorial. Below is a picture not of the memorial but of part of lunch.


Then we investigated the art. They didn’t have a lot of Impressionism but everything they had was nice (and makes me a little annoyed that we haven’t been down to the Art Institute in WAY too long)





(I know the above paintings are not Impressionist but they are paintings we liked).

***

Edinburgh has approximately 5,362 buskers and something like 5,241 of them are bagpipers. We saw this one on the way back to the hotel.



Then last night we finally met our group. There are 24 of us mostly from the coasts (Florida, Maine, California, Washington) but there are 4 Minnesotans. Also one Swedish woman who’s here with her American daughter. I think we’re at the younger end of the gang except for Mark (30’s?) whose older parents invited him to join them. (Sorry H, S, and J, you’ll have to content yourselves with Salisbury).
The group leaders are Birgit and Barbara. Barbara is the instructor who will do all the teaching and guiding and Birgit is the group leader. She described herself as the “bad cop”who tells us where to be, by when, or else.After introductions we ate dinner and by the time that was over it was definitely bedtime!
 Then today… but I’ll save today for another post.




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