Friday, 10 May: last day of the tour,
no walking, return to Edinburgh

Breakfast on the Royal Scotsman was elegant, naturally, and convivial. My journal makes no further comment about the meal, but pictures that I did not select for these pages show that we did not segregate ourselves into the two walking groups.

After making sure that we were packed, we joined the majority of our fellow travelers in the observation car. In the block to the left, there we are, sitting reading or otherwise occupied (big image, small). I didn’t take any pictures out the car windows, but did occasionally join the crowds of people standing on the back platform taking snaps. For the most part, not a lot to see except for tracks slipping away behind us as in the upper right picture (big image, small) or lower left (big image, small), the latter being made “artistic” by the inclusion of the ornate rear end of our carriage. In the lower-right picture of this group, you see, among others, Donna at the very center, and Roger at the right, busy taking pictures (big image, small). Much earlier than either Mark or I finished our pages, Roger sent out a link to a collection of his pictures from this tour as well as of the week in Britain that he and Wendy spent after the tour.

Big image, small.

The Forth Railway Bridge! I had always wanted to see it, but when Mark and I crossed over it going northward a week earlier, we were too busy getting settled in our seats for me to pay attention as we crossed over. As a kid, I had read about it, and I know that at some point I saw the Hitchcock film “The 39 Steps”, in which the bridge plays an important part, though of course I saw it some time after the film came out. Its construction was a great engineering feat, and I was interested to see what it looked like, from both the inside and the outside, so to speak. In the event, I got no sat­is­fac­to­ry pictures. Only the shot to the left, taken just as we passed through, and another from some distance (the larger shot in the center below) were any good at all, but nothing I did gives any feel for the bridge. Clearly, the bridge is best appreciated from the firth or from land, not from the train itself. I could only wish that its setting had been more like that of the Hell Gate Bridge in New York.

When we arrived in Edinburgh, it turned out that we didn’t even need to return the kilt and the other things to Kinloch Anderson: the Royal Scotsman took care of all that. So once we checked into our hotel, the Radisson Blu, we had the whole rest of the day free.

A reconstruction of what the Deskford Carnyx probably looked like originally. All that actually remains is only a fraction of what you see here. Photo © National Museums of Scotland.

One of my main objectives for Edinburgh was to get to the National Museum of Scotland, which is one of the world’s greatest treasure-houses of Early Celtic Art. Certainly to see the Torrs Pony Cap, the Deskford Car­nyx and the numerous astonishing bronze arm-rings in the Museum.

We found the correct gallery, but the displays were all-round dis­ap­point­ing. For one thing, the lighting was dreadful. At one point, we were pulling out our pocket flashlights to read the labels. Maybe there has been a crippling budget crunch, so that the museum has to economize on electricity. Beyond that, there seemed to be little rationality in the setup of the displays. There was no clear simple path through the gallery without having to make repetitive visits past some display or other.

Enjoying the sights
(big image, small).

May 10 is still Early Spring
(big image, small).

For lunch, we were unimaginative, and ate in our hotel. The food was unimaginative, too—more what you would have expected of Scottish cuisine if you hadn’t been on our tour or on the Royal Scotsman. (Our breakfast the next day in the hotel was an entirely different story.) After that, we returned to the our room to catch up on sleep. I think that consumed the whole afternoon.

Street busker
(larger image).

For supper, we didn’t go far, just stopped in to an unpretentious Italian restaurant a few doors away, where I had lamb with noodles, which my journal reports was unspectacular but acceptable. Then to bed, in preparation for another tourist day.