Early O'Clock

Edinburgh was up and busy from a particularly early hour this morning. In the days of yore, 8:30 on a Sunday morning would have been deathly quiet, few cars if any on the roads and even fewer pedestrians out and about. Not today. The influx of May Bank Holiday visitors were out of bed early and raring to go.

Nothing daunted, His Lordship and I went head to head with them as we set out for our favourite Sunday hostelrie for a simple breakfast of toast and coffee. Not for us the smoked salmon with cream cheese or eggs benedict on offer: we are moderate in our breakfast preferences.
Having said that, this is the cafè where HL is able to have a vulgar amount of delicious marmalade supported by toast rather than toast with a respectful spreading of marmalade.

Thus fortified, we sashayed through town seeing the centre as tourists might, and I'm sure we could have been taken as tourists, with my camera slung round my neck and our stately progression as I stopped to take innumerable blips of a particularly fresh looking Princes Street gardens with the views of the castle, St Cuthberts Church and Ramsay Garden seen through a canopy of new leaves.

We know how lucky we are to live in a city with such a beautiful centre. We could have believed that we were walking through the Botanical Gardens rather than the borders of Princes Street. It was only slightly spoilt by chancing upon a vagrant sleeping along a bench in a rain shelter which definitely needed hosing out.

Despite all the photos on my camera, the home grown lone dandelion clock clinging onto last night's rain drops won the blip for today.