Old versus new

A wonderful sunny morning, so Mrs M, Daughter Two and I caught the bus into town and had a look round the new St James Quarter. The while the ladies went shopping I climbed up Calton Hill and spent a wonderful hour admiring all the old buildings and comparing them with Edinburgh's newest hotel. This has been given various nicknames including the 'Ribbon Hotel', the 'Golden Turd' and others! It's not doing Edinburgh's status as a World Heritage Site a great deal of good! I positioned the cannon in a suitable place in the photograph! 

I had a good explore of the old Calton graveyard and then met up with the others to go back for lunch. After lunch we visited Edinburgh Zoo - I particularly wanted to see the pandas for whom we were cutting bamboo in Oban recently!

It's frustrating to show only a couple of pictures when I took 177, but that's life! My extra today is of one of the pandas - no idea which one - but he or she was enjoying a leisurely nibble of bamboo, though not ours which would have been consumed ages ago!