Anniversary trip chapter 1.

Hi Everyone :)

Today's blog post will be about a fantastic trip to a lovely city. We took many pictures and visited so many places, that it would be too much for 1 blog, thus we divide the trip into 3 chapters.

The first chapter will be about the stop that we took. The city where we stopped for a couple of hours is called Dundee, Scotland's fourth largest city, and still like a little town. Maxim found the city more western-style than Aberdeen (Tho I don't really know what made him think that), he enjoyed the quiet streets. The city established itself as an important east coast trading port. Rapid expansion was brought on by the Industrial Revolution, and Dundee was the center of the global jute industry. This, along with its other major industries gave Dundee its epithet as the city of "jute, jam and journalism". The city still wears the mark of industrialization.

Today it is promoted as the "One City, Many Discoveries" in honour of Dundee's history of scientific activities and of the RRS Discovery, Robert Falcon Scott's Antarctic exploration vessel, which was built in Dundee and is now berthed at Discovery Point. (from Wikipedia) We spent like 5 hours in the city while changing buses, and mostly walked around the city. It looks like we managed to cover all the main sightseeing apart form the museums and the botanic garden (and I am really sorry for that we missed it). Here come the pictures. :)

The bus left at 6.30 in the morning, and we got like 4 hours sleep, that is why we look tired, but nothing could stop us :D

This is Dundee's centre, just 2 minutes walk from the bus station.

The only city so far in Scotland where I saw a fountain actually working.

We headed to the University from the bus station through the city centre (literally took us 15 minutes.)

A small park in the University. ( & Maxim in the corner..)

From the Uni, we climbed up to Dundee's landmark and an enduring attraction for visitors and locals...

The route we took went through the Dudhope Park, where this tree can be seen. Yep, those are shoes on the tree.. (The walls with the graffiti are part of the skate-park, so maybe that is why such a tree could be found here.)

As we walked higher and higher, the streets became more quiet, the houses more grandiose and the gardens bigger and better maintained. This is the scenery from around half way up to our destination.

I could not skip this one. Some of the houses have this badge. I tried to look up some reference to this, but couldn't find anything apart from amazon sellers who would like to sell one of these plaque, perhaps, really nothing happened, and this is the indication to move along because there is nothing to see here. Still it was amusing for the first time. :)

And finally we reached our destination: Dundee Law.

It is a plug of an extinct volcano. If you wish to learn more of it, here a link:
https://www.dundeecity.gov.uk/service-area/corporate-services/democratic-and-legal-services/dundee-law

The next 7 pictures meant to be a panorama picture, but khmm I was too  clumsy and couldn't manage to take the panorama picture right, therefore i took several normal ones from the Law. :D

 And the history of the Law. It explains how it was made, its past and present (It was occupied in the Iron age) and how the city has changed since.

An arc indicate the entrance to the Law.

Well, this is true for whole Scotland, that there are temples everywhere. Like this in the middle of the suburb. (A very nice one tho, but still, why are there so many temples in Scotland?)

We accidentally passed by this something. (I don't really know what it is, maybe some sort of bandstand). Anyway it was nice :)

The city is full of hidden pathways and stairs.

This is the gate to the Baxter park. The interesting part is the poster on the gate, stating that some clever dogs may have stupid owners that don't clean up, and for that they can be fined £80.

Pavilion in the park.

3 minutes from Baxter Park there was another park, in where there were 2 artificial lakes.  This is one of them.

And this is the other one. It is bigger, and has an island in the middle. There were swans and ducks in lake. It seemed like a nice spot for a casual boating :)

The other side of the park. This is actually a part of a circular rose garden.

From here we started to go back to the direction of the bus station, but before the station, we went to the harbor (which was again maybe 5 minutes from the bus station).

The harbor is not like in Aberdeen. I mean Aberdeen is a port city, you can see fishing ships and ferries departing and arriving but in Dundee nothing. Instead, they refurbished the area, there are numerous new, nice-looking flats, and market.

This is a crow's nest (lookout point). Obviously it is not a ship, it is on the ground and the caracole staircase also a new one, but the actual lookout point resembles an original one.

And lastly, the waterfront of the city quay. This is a new building, full of restaurants, offices and entertainment.

There were 2 very old ships in front of the city quay building and I thought there were just uhm.. leftover junk, but turned out one is the HMS Unicorn, which is nearly 200 years old and preserved as a museum.. and the other one is the North Carr Lightship, the last remaining lightship in Scotland..

The HMS Unicorn, and unfortunately, I didn't take any picture of the lightship, because i thought what I thought...
If you would like to learn more about the ships, here some useful links.
http://www.frigateunicorn.org/history

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Carr_Lightship