Gardening and Busing....Oct 17, 2019

Today I got busy rearranging again the luggage becaue this weekend we have to go separate ways.  Ray is going home to get one of the shots in his eye and I am staying in The Hub in Edinburgh for 2 days then going down to Coventry where Colin will pick me up and I will stay with them until Ray returns on Tuesday.  So we packed one luggage for me, one for Ray to take home and leave home, and one for him to take home and bring back along with a piece of luggage we left at home with things in it for the cruise that will also come back with him--so needless to say, having to think about where each piece of stuff goes was time-consuming. 

That done, we got on the bus to go to the Royal Botanic Gardens, but we DIDN'T get off at the correct stop, so we had a 20 minute walk through Inverleith Garden, which was very relaxing.  The gardens are beautiful. 

Tulip Tree:

Monkey Puzzle Tree:

One of the original greenhouses from 1858:

Largest Bird of Paradise I've ever seen:

Calliandra haematocephala:

Macleania Salapa:

I liked that the gardeners don't overdo the grooming and kind of leave the not natural to this area plants in a natural state.  Beautiful trees and amazing greenhouses with orchids and tropical plants. 

Had lunch at the Terrace Cafe--I actually ate a baked potato with a chicken sald kind of mixture in it--chicken, bacon, and sweet corn mixture.  It was delicious.

Then we decided to just catch the next bus that came along out the East Gate of the garden and we ended up at the end of the line in Hunter's Tryst--which we kept thinking was NE Edinburgh but turned out to be SW!  Anyway, it brought us back to very near our apartment.

This is Penhaligon's Perfume Store that used to be sort of a general store, I believe.  The story goes that George Street in the new town is haunted by a ghost of a woman dressed in the 19th century clothing. She is known to speak out her name, hence her nickname. According to legends, Jane is a ghost of a lady called Jane Vernelt who suffered a mental illness of some sort after being persuaded to sell a shop she ran on Goerge Street. Has her condition grew worse she was finally institutionalized and died shortly afterwards. Since then her ghost has been haunting the George Street.

Ray is making salmon and potatoes for dinner, unless the oven doesn't work right then we're going out.  Stay tuned.....