See Ya Later, Scotland! (Scotland #5)

We left our tour group at the top of the castle hill and headed down to find some dinner. It was a lovely evening in Edinburgh, and we enjoyed the slightly warmer temperatures and the non-gray skies.

We actually ate dinner at McDonalds because we were hungry, but not THAT hungry, and it was almost 10pm by the time we ate, which meant we were passing a lot of closed businesses.

I really wanted to wait until it got dark so that I could have a picture of the castle lit up at night. We hung out waiting for it to be dark enough and finally called it "good enough" at 10:45. The nights stay light so much longer in Europe!

The next morning, we slept in. When we had to check out, we left our bags behind the counter at the hotel and set off for food and the Scottish National Gallery. We walked through the Prince's Street Gardens, and liked these ruins at the base of the hill with the castle.

We grabbed lunch from Pret and ate our sandwiches on a sunny bench in the gardens. We people watched (there was a very happy, very zippy dog running around in excitement about being outside) and sat there and talked.

Next, we hit the gallery. There's a building out front with special exhibits that isn't free, and one behind that is, and we chose free. We enjoyed walking from room to room admiring paintings. My favorites were Impressionist paintings, which was no surprise to me.

After the gallery, we walked to the hotel to get our bags, and then over to a coffee shop for a Flat White for Carson, Earl Grey for me while we waited for our bus to the airport to arrive.

Our flight home was delayed just a little bit, but that was okay, because our trains back weren't for awhile anyway. Carson snoozed on the flight back.

And then he doodled in my notebook about his experiences in Scotland.

We took separate trains back to Münster that night, Carson on a regional train, while I took a couple of express trains. We got back and walked home. This was our last trip while in Germany, and our very last of many walk home from the Hauptbahnhof! There's no doubt in my mind that while car travel is so nice, we will miss this kind of travel!