Hello Hello Let's take a walk in Edinburgh.

As you may or may not know Edinburgh in Scotland is where I grew up and it is always fun to go back and see how things have changed.

And change they do, especially in the City Centre where we are today.

One thing that never changes is the Scottish weather and today was no exception!

So pick up your umbrella or brolly 🌂 and let's go.

First things first a spot of breakfast 🥓🥙!

I do love a breakfast muffin. We are right in the centre now and this is a route I used to take to and from school🎒.

We walked through St James Quarter the new shopping centre and are at the back of it. See all that fluffing rain 🌧.

We are now standing on Little King Street which is rather appropriate as it is here where they put the statue you see of the famous boxer Ken Buchanan 🥊.

Ken is considered by quite a few folk as the greatest boxer 🥊 the UK has produced. He was a lightweight and after a six year appeal for funds, this statue of him was unveiled on August 2022. It is a nice touch as he is still alive and you can read about it here

Can you see that rain chucking it down?

I bet you saw Big Foot 👣, did you see the ankle to the right?!

But wait ...

There is a hand as well!

What the fluff🙃

A few yards away from the Ken Buchanan statue and outside St Mary's Roman Catholic Cathedral is The Manuscript of Monte Cassino.

These are three huge bits of a body, a foot, an ankle and a hand.

Together, they form a poignant statement on the horror and destruction of war.

Created by Edinburgh-born artist Sir Eduardo Paolozzi (1924 – 2005), the work is thought to have been created as a reaction to his experience of growing up during World War II.

Source

They have never known what to do with this part of Edinburgh. To be truthful it is a bloody disgrace and the council should be ashamed of themselves! Years ago there was a massive roundabout here, and they constructed a monstrosity of modern art that looked like a load of neon tubes thrown together!

Now there is no more roundabout and they have the trams (another council fcuk up that has cost millions upon millions), but years later and there are still fluffing roadworks!

This is the top of Leith Walk, and yep still raining! The roadworks though, the shop owners are so pissed off with it all. It has been years on and off and they keep fncuking around with this road.

This is a part of Edinburgh that I know extremely well as I had digs here in a couple of places when I was at Uni in Edinburgh.

If you look on the far right, you can just about see that the buildings are indented and that is because another road is running parallel, that is called Elm Row and where I shared a flat with some unsavoury characters. I survived though to tell the tale.

Think Edinburgh think the original Trainspotting film 🎥 and the big H! It was Europes capital for Heroin use after all.

Turn to our right and we see more roadworks and another familiar couple of roads.

On the left is the big London Road. And yes, if you follow it, in theory you will end up in London some four hundred and two miles away.

After I moved from the Heroin flat of Elm Row I moved in here. The road that you see going up the hill is called Blenheim Place which is quite an unusual name as Blenheim Palace is down south in England.

What made it freaky was that my parents lived up north in Aberdeen in a street called ... Yep you guessed it ... Blenheim Place!

How fluffing weird was that!

Well where the church is, is called Blenheim Place and then it becomes Royal Terrace once it levels out. I stayed in Royal Terrace overlooking the gardens!

The church btw is ⛪️ Greenside Parish Church ⛪️ a Protestant Church of Scotland, which is Scotland’s national church, within the Presbytery of Edinburgh.

Edinburgh does have some cracking buildings which we just take for granted.

So the trip to Edinburgh was of course a shopping trip. We are back standing in the road at the junction of London Road and Leith Walk.

The fluffers had no pedestrian crossing now!

So it was time to run 🏃🏃‍♀!

Did you see what was the first shop that Mrs T wanted to go to?

📚 Yep a bookstore! 📚

There has been a book shop on the corner here for as long as I can remember, so that is a fair length of time.

Now though it is part of a chain Topping & Company Booksellers

I shall make a separate post about this visit to the bookstore aswe are getting rather lengthy already in this post and we have not wrapped it up yet.

I did want to grab a coffee in the bookshop as they do have it and little tables to sit at.

Spoiler Alert .... This did not happen! I was a bit disappointed to tell you the truth but did buy a couple of books.

I do believe that things happen for a reason!

Do you?

We ended up having a wonderful coffee and a doughnut in St James Centre

Krispy Kreme, they have some fluffing tasty doughnuts!

My favourite is glazed, what is yours?

As the weather was attrocious we did all our shopping and actually ate twice in St James Quarter!

This is a new Continental style shopping mall so parts of have no roof and appear to be leaking with the rain!

Talking of water, let me leave you with this clever but cute sign and bowls!

And there we have it, a quick wee tour of the centre in Edinbrugh, now you can dry yourself off!.