This was our last day in Scotland. To avoid the expensive and restricted parking in the city centre we took the bus from outside the Edinburgh Zoo and stopped outside the Princes Street Gardens. We cut through the garden, taking some photographs along the way, to get to the Royal Mile.

Once we found the Royal Mile we then went looking for where the Real Mary King’s Close was located as we’d booked tickets for this the night before for the 11:30 tour. Once we found it we’d still got some time to kill so we headed over the road to look around St. Giles Cathedral. It didn’t take long to look round this one, but did get quite a few shots. To kill a little more time we sat down in the Cathedral for a while before going in search of a cafe we”d heard of which is where J.K. Rowling has stayed whilst writing the first Harry Potter book.

We didn’t have to walk far from the cathedral – it was literally a 10 minute walk down the road to locate the cafe called “The Elephant House”. They probably get some tourists visit there these days as they have a sign in the window advertising the fact that it is there where J.K. Rowling had written Harry Potter.

From there we headed back to The Real Mary King’s Close as it had started to spit with rain; it wasn’t too long a wait before it was time for our tour. Sadly they don’t allow photography in the Close, but it was still interesting to visit. From the entrance you are led downstairs to what is like an underground city that runs beneath the area near the Royal Mile. Each Close is like an alleyway that used to be at surface level and would be where a lot of the cities residents lived. It was explained to us how people living in such close quarters would have helped to spread plague.

Once we’d done there we headed back through the park and took the bus round to the Royal Botanical Gardens – before looking around we stopped off in the cafe there to get some lunch (which was quite expensive compared to other places). We wandered around the botanical gardens for a while before arriving at their greenhouses. There is an admission fee to go round, but it’s not that much and it’s worth the price.

We did experience some issues looking around though as our cameras get misting up – them doing this too regularly could have damaged the sensors so we had to start being careful about where we were using them and how long they were being exposed to different climates for. One of the areas had a nice waterfall I attempted a hand-held long exposure from to get a blurred water effect.

Once finished at the Botanical Gardens we headed back via the bus to pick up the car from the guest house and drove to the coast to see the Royal Yacht Britannica. The car park for it is shared with a shopping mall, and you have to pass through it to get to it. When we got there though we decided the price was too high for how long we’d have to look around so just took some photographs and headed off.

The car was dropped off back at the airport and we headed back to London as our tour of Scotland came to an end.