This is the skating ring. Not rink, but ring, around a bar that serves mulled wine. It's only frozen because it has electrical freezing coils underneath it.
This looks cartoon-like, but it's a street of very old buildings, viewed from a terraced street above. Edinburgh has some very interesting criss-crossing high and low streets. This terrace was built when they remodelled the slummy Edinburgh at the end of the 18th century. It created steps and a better street where it used to be a very steep slope up to the castle.
Here is the beach along Cramond, where I walked with a woman I met at a party last weekend. People tend to walk their dogs off leash here and they're generally very well behaved.
If you continue along you can get to Leith.
I tried to take a selfie to see if I would look as happy and peaced out as I
did when I walked by the sea in Belle Ile, but no. Life here isn't as delightful as there, beautiful though it is.
However, it's a very magical place. Here are some owls that were just sort of hanging out on the Royal Mile, busker-style. Isn't that awesome? That's an Eagle Owl, the big one. Yarrow says the ladies told him that dark-eyed owls are nocturnal, orange-eyed owls are active at sunset & sunrise, and yellow-eyed owls are more active during the day.
Another extremely lovable thing about Edinburgh is all the men wearing kilts everywhere. Tartan looks amazing on women, too. How is THIS for a dress? It's absolutely amazing.
Yarrow and our old air BnB room-mate Erin from Sydney, Australia, eating a deep fried Mars bar.
Black Medicine, apparently one of JK Rowling's old writing haunts, by the university. Oddly, they have a Canadian thunderbird totem pole. All the furniture is carved wood. It's a good vibe place with inexpensive food.
We decided to walk up the Almond River (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Almond,_Lothian) from Cramond this Saturday, on our way to get cat litter at the store. I think that it is the most beautiful river walk I have ever had in my life, actually. I love the evidence of hundreds of years of civilization here and there. Actually, it's thousands of years -- the Romans settled in Cramond as far back as the first century after Christ.
That's Yarrow there, looking at the mist on the river.
Here is one of a few herons we saw today. He's waiting for fish to come out of the fish ladder beside the waterfall they've made for the mill.
The heron's in this picture, too, now that you know where he is maybe you can see him.
This is a 14th century bridge. You know what's cool? As I took out my phone to take the picture, it said the time was 14:14. Neat.
Yarrow's arms are clearly longer. He was assigned to take the selfie while we were standing on the bridge. (actually, he became impatient and took the duty upon himself).
