We took a walk through Princes Street Gardens, which are absolutely lovely. Possibly one of my favourite things about Edinburgh. It’s great being up high and seeing over everything, but it was really relaxing being down low, and looking up at it all from among trees and flowers. I did a couple of quick sketches in my small Fabriano Venezia book, to capture the mood. Edinburgh is a lovely city. These gardens are the sort of place to sit and read a novel. They love their writers in Edinburgh – Sir Walter Scott has that absolutely massive monument by this park, the biggest I’ve ever seen for a novelist anywhere, 200 ft high. Apparently it’s the second biggest in the world, because there’s one in Havana dedicated to Cuban nationalist hero José Martí that is bigger, and since he was also a writer, well it means the Scott Monument isn’t the biggest one for a writer. Just the second biggest, which is fine.

We walked through the parks and there was an old time band playing old time music, I think it was for a gathering of veterans as there were lots of elderly people in uniforms with kilts, it was a nice event underneath the shadow of the castle. We had a cold drink and went off for lunch, before exploring some more of New Town, following a walk from my guide book.

New Town is (obviously) a lot newer than Old Town (wow, this is epic level travel writing here Pete, you’ll be competing with Rick Steves at this rate) but still historic and actually a UNESCO heritage area. Many of the buildings are Georgian (I suppose) and laid out very mathematically (I guess). It was a different vibe to Old Town and seemed to have fewer cashmere shops per square metre. We found ourselves on Heriot Row, which is where Robert Louis Stevenson lived as a child. Edinburgh loves its writers, and he’s one of the most famous, writing Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr.Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, A Child’s Garden of Verses (personal favourite of mine as a kid and as a parent), and loads of other stuff, I mean the guy was a literary legend. Does he have a monument as big as Walter Scott? He has little monuments all over the place. Maybe Robert Louis Stevenson’s true monument is his body of work. That said, he does have a massive state park named after him in California not too far from us. It is (checks Wikipedia) in fact the largest state park in California named after a writer, at 5,990 acres, so well done Robert. Jack London’s state park is only 1,611 acres and he’s a native Californian. We found Robert Louis Stevenson’s childhood home at 17 Heriot Row, and so I added that house into my sketchbook. I’ve loved his poems since I was a kid so this was really fun to see.

We wandered further on our guidebook walk, finding ourselves on George Street, popping our heads into the very fancy restaurant The Dome which has a spectacular marble-columned interior underneath a huge (surprise!) dome. We rested on the steps and I did a quick sketch of the 18th century church spire across the street, called “St. Andrew’s and St. George’s West”, the two patron saints of Scotland and England. We moved along to St. Andrew’s Square, which surrounds a very tall column with a statue on top called the Melville Monument. Named after Herman Melville, the writer of Moby Dick, Edinburgh really loves big monuments to its writers doesn’t it. It’s 150 ft high so not as big as the Scott Monument but bigger than Stevenson’s, though neither of them have massive state parks in California’s wine country. Further inspection of Wikipedia and my guidebook informed me that Herman Melville is from New York, has nothing to do with Edinburgh, and that the Melville on this big column is some old Viscount called Dundas from the problematic days of the British Empire who famously opposed efforts to end the transatlantic slave trade. So, not a novelist who wrote about whales. I think I prefer the monuments to the great writers. With none of this really on our minds, our tired legs needed a rest and wouldn’t you know it, there was a big screen set up and they were playing The Wizard of Oz. So we sat on the grass (well, I stood and sketched for a bit) and watched the second half of that great ancient film. I know all the words, my sister used to watch it about eight times a day when she was little. When we were done, we all went our separate ways for the afternoon, my wife looked about the shops, my son went home to read the new novel he’d bought at Blackwells (he loves a good book, so fits in well with Edinburgh) but I needed to do a bit more climbing so I walked up Calton Hill and drew this.