With a lunchtime arrival time, we had to stop for a bite of lunch in the Palace Cafe. Good food and reasonably priced too and the general standard very high. You can sit inside or outside.
Whilst Amber and I headed in to buy the tickets for the exhibition Andrew stopped outside for a few photos of the new Scottish Parliament building. Personally I think it looks nicer inside than outside.
The exhibition we were going to see was a photographic exhibition of the Scott Antarctic Expedition called the Terra Nova which took place around 1910 to 1913. So we headed through the doors of the Queen's Gallery and we must have spent over an hour doing the audio tour of the photographs. I would certainly recommend it. Not only are the photos fantastic considering when they were taken and the conditions in which they were taken, but you learn quite alot about the exhibition itself. If like me you'd only heard of the name Scott then you won't know about Shackleton's earlier unsuccessful quest to the pole, or indeed the Norwegian Roald Amundsen successful trip to the south pole just a few weeks before Scott made it there. There's a photo of Scott and his men at the south pole and their faces tell it all........ not euphoria for reaching the pole but a weary, disappointed expression from realising the moment they got there, someone had beaten them to it.
Other highlights were a photo of the sudden end of a glacier, a photo from inside a glacier cave with the ship Terra Nova sitting stately in the distant sea, and a picture of the Antarctics only volcano sitting above the monstrously, enormous cliff of ice and this tiny tiny man and a sledge just below it all. The contrast between the tiny man and the giant ice and volcano is amazing. Poor photographer chap must have been freezing waiting for the right photo opportunity!!
The car park to Holyrood sits at the bottom of Arthurs seat. Now there's something we must do another weekend........walk up to the top and no doubt appreciate some great views.
We spotted some huge stone sculptures and had a sense of deja vu......... ah yes, same artist displayed his works at the Falkirk Wheel. We liked this lion and so did Amber as she attempted to clamber up the top.
