Christmas Angels & Bagpipes

In Edinburgh last week, for a spot of quality time and Christmas shopping with daughter the elder, I found that all was quite wonderfully Christmassy.

The Dome on George Street, where daughter and I must indulge an annual tradition of Christmas drinks in extravagantly festive surroundings. 


The city's heart  -  the area between medieval Old Town and Georgian New Town, overlooked by the Castle - is transformed at this time of year into a winter wonderland of lights ...

The gardens become a sparkly ice-rink, over which the redoubtable Bank of Scotland looms with its splendid green and gold dome ...

a giant ferris wheel is a splash of whirling colour against the sombre dark spire of the Scott Monument

and a sprawling German Christmas market pops up in front of the National Gallery, enticing with smells of dried oranges, cinnamon and spices, gluhwein, wurst und bretzels

On a freezing clear day, the city skyline at sunset is all deceptive golden warmth

and fairytale spires with frosted icing ... these views from the roof of Edinburgh's Camera Obscura where, in a turret, we crowded into a tiny blackened room to sit around a pale circle of light, as at a seance, and spy on the city through a 19th century camera in a tower ...

By night the High Kirk glows atmospherically in lantern light ...

With a bitter, icy wind whipping in from the Firth of Forth via the North Sea, the name of the game was to hop from one warm, friendly interior to the next: and so it was breakfast at Eteaket on Frederick Street ...

old-fashioned afternoon tea at Jenners, Scotland's oldest department store, here with giant Christmas tree in its grand hall

drinks in the cosy, antlered Whiski rooms on the Mound ...

and in between, art galleries and the Poets Library (about which more in another post)

until it was time to leave (with bulging suitcase) my Scottish lass

in the city of  frozen angels with bagpipes

xxxxx