After another delicious cooked breakfast, it was time to pack and vacate our room. Our host, James, offered to store our luggage until we were ready to leave at 3 p.m. He suggested that we share a taxi to the station with Isabelle and Keith, because we all wanted to depart at the same time. We all thought that was a very good idea and James was happy to make the booking for us.

We had three or four hours free before our lunch date with Fiona and Chris, so we set off (on foot once again) to see some the sights we had missed. Our first destination was the Scottish Parliament, which was very interesting. There were no sessions in progress, but we were still able to go into the assembly room. We loved the architectural design and features of the building.

Having spent just over an hour in and around the building, we continued walking along Canongate, the lower section of The Royal Mile.

Old Tolbooth Wynd / Canongate Tolbooth, with its turreted steeple and clock.

John Knox House, popularly known as "John Knox's House", is reputed to have been owned and lived in by Protestant reformer John Knox during the 16th century.

Another recommendation by Anne and John was the Museum of Childhood. We both saw many things which brought back memories from our own childhood! It was quite a big museum too, on many floors. We thought William Bear might appreciate one of the displays...

Just as we were passing this shop, we got a message from Fiona to say that they were stuck in traffic and would be fifteen minutes late. There was nothing to be done, except to spend a little time IN the shop. Later, we were to blame Fiona for the resulting spending spree... she was having none of it!

This is where we met Fiona and Chris. The "famous afternoon tea" comprised a choice of sandwich, with a freshly baked scone served with Devonshire clotted cream & Scottish strawberry jam, a selection of mini patisseries and a pot of any kind of tea you can think of. Well, what were we to do? Have the famous afternoon tea, of course!

Afterwards, Bruce posed with Fiona and Chris for this photo. It had been ages since we'd last seen Fiona and it was great to meet Chris for the first time. We really enjoyed seeing them both.

After saying our goodbyes, we walked back towards our B&B to collect our luggage and get our taxi to the station. On the way, we couldn't resist going back into the National Portrait Gallery. We calculated that we had about thirty minutes to spare, so we made our way around it fairly rapidly, but we couldn't possibly do it justice. On the ground floor, there was a special exhibition called "Head to Head - Portrait Sculpture - Ancient to Modern". We both liked this intriguing piece called Galina III (1974), by Gerald Laing.