Edinburgh to Windermere

Breakfast at Rick's again. Checked out, left our luggage at the hotel and took a quick stroll to the National Galleries of Scotland. Lots of paintings, sculptures, statues and intricate furniture. Quite nice, but neither of us are really the arty type! Alot of the paintings were different artists interpretations of popular parts of scriptures. Most of the artists must have been male as there were an abundance of bare breasts!

Went and got the car from the parking station, then did a few laps of the block looking for a parking space. Gave up, put the hazard lights on in a no parking zone. Meredith went and grabbed our bags while Will stayed vigilant at the care in case the abundant parking police came by!

We then travelled through the busy streets of Edinburgh heading west toward the motorway to Glasgow. While Meredith tried to take some photos it was difficult! We had a toot break at a huge 'Leisure park / McDonalds / KFC / Cinema Complex' off the motorway - it was huge, and randomly in the middle of nowhere!
We headed into the busy streets of Glasgow finding a parking station which evidently was attached to the biggest shopping complex in town, where we had lunch in the Food Gallery (Jacket potatos again - is this a national food second only to Haggis?)

After lunch we went for a walk outside the complex down Glasgow mall. We headed to The Lighthouse the highest point from which we could see all of Glasgow. The gallery was fairly boring - however Will climbed the billion stairs in the viewing tower - and took fantastic photos of all Glasgow including St Andrew's Cathedral. Meredith came about enough to be able to go up by lift - to the indoor viewing platform. We then went back to the car via Sainsbury's to grab a few things.

We the tried to get out of Glasgow - GPS not totally reliable. We travelled the motorway to Penrith then came through the road around the lake - no words can describe it apart from Picturesque. Reminded us of the show Heartbeat, apart from the mountains. We came a Bowness -on- Windermere. It was a low village with old pubs, restaurants and a church which faces onto the lake. Our B&B style Hotel was up the Hill but our room was beautiful - very old English style. The four-poster bed was very royal and the bathroom well snazzy (shower with mobile piece, two person showerhead and back jets to create a spa mist with massage pebbles underfoot. We then headed to dinner at an old pub 'The Albert' which at which we had a lovely meal. On the way back to the B&B we stopped at Tesco to get some Jelly Tots and an icecream.