Day 16: Wandering in the Rain

Since I'd seen all the main things I wanted in Edinburgh, I was planning to return to Holyrood for some more hiking today. Unfortunately in the morning it was raining quite hard and 2 degrees out. It was going to be far too muddy and slippering to do hiking, but I didn't want to spend my last full day in the city sitting around, so I headed out in the rain, just wandering aimlessly. These rainy spells often don't last long, so I was hoping I'd walk around for awhile, it would dry up, and then I could decide what to do next. After awhile I found a nice path along the Water of Leith, and followed that for awhile.

Eventually I came to a staircase up through the wooded area with a sign indicating it led to the Scottish Modern Art Gallery. I hadn't really planned to go to this originally, as I wasn't too thrilled with the modern art in London, but since I randomly stumbled upon it, and it was still raining, I figured it was worth a look.

They had an exhibit on sculpture on, which drew my attention more since I really enjoy a lot of statue and sculpture work. No photographs allowed, but two artists I liked enough to bother to remember their names were Eduardo Paolozzi who had some eerie machine-like sculptures and Ron Mueck. The Ron Mueck sculpture was a very detailed and realistic just-born baby that was 10'+ long. Looking up some of his other stuff online he seems to specialize in realistic figures made large. Here is the one he had here (from the internet, since again, no photos allowed):

I got a bit lost trying to get back, and it was still raining hard. By the time I found my way back to the hostel area I'd been out in the cold and rain for around 4 hours, and didn't really want to push things and risk getting sick. It's looking like the sun has finally come out a bit now, so I might try for another walk this evening, but my coat is still wet, so we'll see.

It's a bit hard to see, but that's snow on the hills outside of town. It was green yesterday.