May 2014 Edinburgh Holiday

It's my birthday today so this week we decided to take a trip away to Edinburgh (we never go far on holiday!). Disappointingly there was naff-all on when it came to art exhibitions and we had just missed the Royal Scottish Academy's annual exhibition by a few days. We did manage, however, to see a cool film by Camille Henrot at the City Observatory on Calton Hill which was really worthwhile. As usual there's always new things to discover and we did a lot of wandering about to find new places.

The obligatory hotel bathroom picture. I swear I'm looking more like that painting I did of myself, everyday.

Camille Henrot's art film 'Gross Fatigue'.

Miss Katie Cupcake's shop on Cockburn Street. It had some really beautiful stuff. A little bit different from the ordinary which was nice too.

Our favourite discovery this time was definitely The Coffee Mill near Grassmarket (and next to an amazing second hand bookshopwith tonnes of science fiction). The place was so good that, after having coffee and cake there, we went back the next day for brunch.

Cake at The Coffee Mill. The picture doesn't really do the place justice. The food is all made up fresh and the staff were so nice and friendly. We'll definitely be doing back there next time we're through in edinburgh.

I didn't get much time to draw, but I can't go a whole week without the odd daft sketch in my notepad.

And we treated ourselves to ice cream from Patisserie Valerie on the last night. I had pistachio ice cream in a waffle cone and Tim had the same with a scoop of double chocolate on top. It's the best ice cream I've ever had. So now I've had pistachio hot chocolate and pistachio ice cream. I think it's time I tried some actual wee pistachios (I've never had them. It's shameful, I know)!

First Anniversary In Edinburgh

Tim took me to Edinburgh for a week for our first wedding anniversary this October and it was just lovely. Sometimes I think the only time I can really relax is when we're there. We stayed at a different hotel this time which was a bit further from the centre of town that we'd thought. That meant we had an hour and a half walk to Edinburgh city centre every day and the same journey home at night, so by the end of each day I was knackered, but it did feel good to get a chance to walk in the fresh air, even if we needed a coffee stop on the way a couple of times.  

On the first day into town we stopped off a Mimi's Bakehouse. The cakes looked amazing although we didn't get a chance to have any.

I did like the cheeky wallpaper though.

Oh, and I have pink hair now. Here I am, posing about in the hotel loo to demonstrate. The colour's a bit better now since I've had a chance to go over it with Special Effects Atomic Pink instead of Fudge in Pretty Flamingo which the hairdresser gave me. At the moment I'm planning on keeping the black. Underneath anyway, I think I'll grow it out to pink at the very, very front. What do you guys think?

And more loo pictures. How could I resist when the toilets in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art look as cool as this though? Trippy...

We stopped in Cafe W in Waterstones for a bit while my legs recovered from all the walking. It's much bigger than the one in Glasgow. I read about Grayson Perry for a while and Tim pretended to read about modern art.

We usually go the the City Cafe during the day, but this time we went at night and shared antipasti for dinner. I liked it because it was all red and they played some cool music. I looked up the lyrics to a song that was playing that we both liked and it turned out tot be James Blake's Retrograde. Tim also liked the sound of a song which I told him was Genesis by Grimes. I never thought that would be his cup of tea. Cool, eh?

A new place we hadn't been to until this trip was Summerhall which was pretty magical. It's a huge public building with tonnes of different exhibitions and interesting things. Phenotype Genotype (PhG) was a fascinating collection of art, all displayed on scientific benches.

I don't know what's going on here, but it looks like some sort of cake experiment. We stared at this one for ages.

There was lots of other stuff as well which I didn't get any photographs of, including two Louise Bourgeois exhibitions, an exhibition on witches and a long walk into town on the last day through the park by the water. There was also all the girly gifty shops Tim patiently went into with me and the full breakfast provided by the hotel which I took advantage of on the last day before leaving. Oh, and the weirdest thing of all: having access to a television for a week.
 

Old Calton Burial Ground

It was my birthday this Friday so my husband took me to Edinburgh for four days. Edinburgh isn't very far from where we live, but it's perfect for a nice trip away without the hassle of a long journey. Although we didn't get around to doing all the things we planned, we still managed to go around all the main art galleries including the current exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art which was a bit hit and miss for us, except the work they had from Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle which was awesome. I've never had the chance to see any of his sculptures up close before and they were playing videos from the cycle (although the segments were too long to stand and watch the whole way through) so that was a bit of a treat.  The most fascinating stuff though was at the annual RSA exhibition, which we were both bewitched by. I even bought the exhibition poster to sput up in our bedroom.

As well as being overly critical about art and eating lots of cake, we also found time to go on some walks at night. Here are some photos from the Old Calton Burial Ground where we went for a walk on the first night. You can read up on it on the wikipedia page here. The parts that stood out for me were the monument commemorating Scottish soldiers who had fought in the American Civil war and also the David Hume Mausoleum.