week thirteen.

 Our second to last week in Edinburgh -- a week of several "lasts"! Another climb up Calton Hill, another photo taken of Waverly Station and Old Town -- just can't get over this skyline!

Last session of silly posing on the National Monument;

Enjoying the last of our walks through Princes Street Gardens on a drizzly afternoon --

 And another walk down along the sea (which you can't see) in  Musselburgh.

Enjoying our last Sunday in Edinburgh with some church family in the back garden. So lovely, so close to being finished with our adventuring! ...For now, at least. :)

i know not how it is with you.

In a very atypical fashion I drew this very much person-less drawing while in Edinburgh. I rarely draw any pictures without people in it -- people are the most interesting part to pictures and I therefore make sure to include them because secretly I think drawing water and leaves and grass and trees is sometimes a little boring.

Saw this lovely RL Stevenson poem painted on a wall in New Town Edinburgh and just got this feeling in my gut that it ought to be drawn, so I sat down that night and drew something. A bit mixy-uppy but interesting nonetheless. Mixy-uppy is not a word. Or term. Or anything.

It's just a bit like a mishmash of everything that I saw in my mind while reading the poem, which is the sweetest little poem, and I am not necessarily a poem person so it is quite a thing that it instilled in me a desire to illustrate it. The poem reads:

I know not how it is with you --

I love the first and last,

The whole field of the present view,

The whole flow of the past.

One tittle of the things that are, 

Nor you should change nor I --

One pebble in our path -- one star

In all our heaven of sky.

Our lives, and every day and hour,

One sympathy appear:

One road, one garden -- every flower

And every bramble dear.

- R.L. Stevenson

week twelve.

During our twelfth week in Edinburgh we realized time was running short and we had a few things we needed to fit in before packing up and heading back to the US of A. Our activities this week included:

Taking self-portraits with our camera timer in front of Salisbury Crags (note our layers of clothing even in mid-August... fall's a-comin');

Trying out a new cafe;

Catching a twilight view of downtown from Calton Hill;

Finally getting to try our all-time fave beer on tap -- Innis & Gunn, brewed in Edinburgh itself. And apparently looking sullen while drinking it;

Standing in the middle of South Bridge to take a picture (don't worry mum, I checked both ways);

And trying a bacon roll! The breakfast of a true Scot. Fried bacon and egg slapped on a bap (otherwise known as a morning roll) -- the classic breakfast of Scotland. They put anything on these buns for breakfast, but bacon and egg is the most deliciously unhealthy kind you can have. We got up early to get to the Saturday morning Farmer's Market on time -- they typically run out even before the Market officially opens. We learned that the hard way the week before this. I was disappointed. More disappointed than necessary, probably.