Newcastle/Dundee/Edinburgh

 An overcast morning for our train to Edinburgh.  

So far, the nicest train line has been the LNER (London North Easter Railway) which is a UK Government owned company  

Today they offered a small breakfast  

I chose the vegetarian sausage sandwich.  It was basic but tasty. 

The scenery along the east coast was lovely but the dreary conditions made photography difficult. 

Surprisingly not a lot of development along the coast.  A few old houses but mainly agricultural. 

Inland lots of small towns. 

Some really cool buildings.  

Arriving at the train station in Edinburgh. The weather cleared a bit for our first day in Scotland!

Since hotels apparently don’t allow check-in before 3pm these days without changing a fee, we again had them hold our luggage while we hopped back on the train. Destination Dundee, a city on the east coast, about an hour away. 

More beautiful farmland viewed from the train. 

We immediately set out to climb to the top of Dundee Law. It’s basically a big rock hill…1.3 miles from city center.  Amazing views. 

Memorial at the top for fallen soldiers from WWII. 

Views all around. 

On the way back down from the climb, this is Dudhope Castle. Cool but not open to the public. 

Cool church…

On of the “don’t miss” list items was the V & A Design Museum.  Wow, how incredibly strange. Not our favorite by a long shot. About half of the museum was discussing…the museum itself!  And the rest was a hodgepodge of unrelated items.  

An example is this display. Basically a yellow dyed piece of fabric.  Yeah, “design “ at it’s best. 

Moving on to a much better museum (my opinion, of course)  the McManus art gallery.  

Very nice informative galleries.  With objects that took great talent to create!

Time to head back to Edinburgh.  Shortcut thru an interesting graveyard. So many children and babies!!

Back on the train, more beautiful farmland viewed 

Forgot earlier to mention the trainline - Scotsrail.  It appears to be a little lower quality….not as comfy as the others. 

Back at the large Edinburgh station and off to check in at our hotel.