From here it was a pleasant walk through the park and university to the Elephant House (made famous by JK Rowlings as the spot where she wrote the first Harry Potter book) where we planned breakfast. As it turned out they did not have anything gluten free on the menu despite having quite a few GF cakes so we ended up just having coffee and moved on to a café in Grassmarket for breakfast.
A wander around the streets followed and then up the hill to the castle where they were still dismantling the seating from the Edinburgh Tattoo. What an exercise. It takes 40 days to construct and 37 days to dismantle, seats 8,825 people at a time and costs 16 million pounds. We had visited the castle when we were here in 2011 so didn't need to repeat it today. A bit more time wandering the streets before heading back to the car around 1:30.
It was then off to Holyrood Park and a drive around Queen's Drive. It's just lovely to have a huge green area like this in the middle of a city. We stopped at Dunsapie Loch and climbed up Arthur's Seat for commanding views over the city (well Alex climbed to the top while Jill and Cate did go most of the way).
Holyrood Park
We then dropped Cate off at the airport for her flight back to London and the rest of us headed north across the brand new bridge over the Firth of Forth to Kelty where we have an AirBnB for the night.
Back to Kelty for an evening of catching up.
