A chick flies the nest ... to the land of Rabbie Burns

It seems I blinked and she went from this little cutie patootie

to a young woman all grown up and kitting out her room at university!

Last weekend we travelled to the northern hinterland, accompanied by alarming amounts of baggage, to settle Daughter the Elder into her new life in Edinburgh

... city of friendly bagpipers

castles  and pageantry

Cars streamed in all weekend, loaded to the gills, spewing out freshers and their worldly goods at the halls of residence, joining long lines for registration, everywhere the nervous sense of departures and new beginnings.
Did we worry that we had too much stuff? Hell no, a brave few did this thang in style!

While Daughter ran the gamut of receptions and welcomes, we attended the Parents’ Tea (dear god, can I really be this old?) in the grand McEwan Hall ...

where friendly and charming graduate students told of all the fun our offspring would be having as we returned to our dull middle-aged lives ...

... until four years time when we meet up here again, hopefully, to see them graduate in this same hall...

In between the events we revisited some favourite places. Down the touristy Royal Mile, pubs beckoned ...

as did plenty of Scottish kitsch (ah, those endangered tigers of the highlands)

and St Giles Cathedral, the High Kirk rather, glowed in weak early autumn sunshine

... its founder John Knox probably still ranting from the grave against the 'ungodly' Catholics (will the Pope, visiting Edinburgh today as it happens, swing by and pay homage to an old enemy?)

From the gardens in Princes Street ...

the Royal Scot Grey on horseback (they fought in the Boer War in South Africa in 1899) fronts the view across to Parliament House and Old Town 

while Mary Stuart's Palace of Holyrood House hides a grisly past of murder and intrigue ...

 

(the ruined abbey at Holyrood)

(view from Holyrood Palace to Arthur's Seat)


Back for a spot of shopping for light relief, to the elegant George’s Street in ‘New Town’, where a statue seems to punctuate every intersection,  and a bagpiper every doorway ...

and lunch in Grassmarket where students enjoyed a last bit of sunshine under the castle on the hill ...

Scotland, you have my wee chick and therefore my heart. I hope to see you both often.