On Saturday, I visited the National Gallery in Edinburgh as part of my Art History Course this semester. This was the first official meeting for our course. The bus left the University of Aberdeen at 7:45 and we arrived in Edinburgh at around 11:00. We went straight into the National Gallery and began our morning session. Our class was separated into four groups. Each group would discuss a series of paintings with a professor for about 20-25 minutes and would then rotate to the next professor. This is my second Art History course that I have taken but the first time that I have been able to learn about paintings while standing right in front of them. I much prefer to analyze a work that is in front of me as opposed to on a computer screen. At 1:30, we had a lunch break. My friend and I went to Subway and we were able to explore a bit of Edinburgh. Edinburgh is quite different from Aberdeen. I swear there were five city centers. Edinburgh was extremely crowded and gave me an entirely different vibe than Aberdeen. We were able to walk up to the Royal Mile and see a main shopping street that was used as inspiration for Diagon Alley in the Harry Potter films, pictured below.
For our afternoon session, I attended a lecture about baroque and Renaissance paintings in the gallery. I sadly found this lecture to be a bit dry. I was nervous that I would not have enough time to gather the proper materials for my term essay. We must pick a room in the National Gallery and describe why these certain works were chosen to be displayed together. This meant that I had to choose a room and then photograph every painting and description sign in that room. Surprisingly, this task was not too complicated and did not take too long. I have chosen to discuss the Impressionism and Post-Impressionism works. Overall, I did enjoy my time in Edinburgh and I am excited to spend three days in Edinburgh in two weeks!
Sunday morning 4:30 AM, I rolled out of bed to get ready for my day trip to Dundee. I was exhausted already from my trip the previous day to Edinburgh, but this is what you have to do to travel! The journey to Dundee was only an hour and a half. Alyssa and I arrived in Dundee at 7:35 and the city was a ghost town. Nothing was open, no one was walking around, and there was dense fog everywhere. We started our sightseeing by going to the V&A which is a popular museum in the shape of a ship. I do really enjoy the modern feel of the outside of the museum. We did eventually go inside later and I was kind of underwhelmed. There was an odd assortments of artifacts and collections. I felt as though there was so much wasted space.
We then looked on Google Maps to see what was close by and we ended up at a Tesco so that I could buy more cookie dough. Tesco is the only store that I have found that sells refrigerated cookie dough so I had to take advantage of this. We ventured up into the city center and found some clothing stores that we wanted to go into later, as well as some food places and the McManus Art & Gallery Museum. The exterior of this museum is stunning. We were able to go in (free entrance) and learned a bit about the History of Dundee.
My favorite part of the day was definitely tracking down hidden street art in Dundee. The previous day, I was in the National Gallery in Edinburgh studying detailed classical art. Today, I was running down alleyways to find these hidden gems in Dundee. Thanks to a very helpful website, I was able to find most of the street art masterpieces in Dundee. According to this website, Dundee created Open/Close to bring street art to Dundee. especially to areas that are prone to vandalism: "In the summer of 2017, we had support from Place Partnership, Scottish Enterprise and some amazing local business which allowed us to organize a trail project of 19 painted doors in lanes and alleyways around the city centre - all receiving makeovers courtesy of local artists who couldn't wait to whip out their cans and brushes." Finding all these pieces allowed us to explore more of Dundee and was kind of like a scavenger hunt! At one point during our hunt, we came across a street where a guy was creating a street art piece. It was amazing to see art being created right in front of our eyes. I really enjoyed some of the pieces but then there were ones that I thought were quite confusing and ugly. Below are all of the pieces of street art that I found in Dundee:
Because St Andrews is only 35 minutes away from Dundee, we decided to take a bus to St Andrews after exploring the street art in Dundee. St Andrews is a beautiful and small town! The fog was so dense though so my pictures are not of the best quality. The University of St Andrews reminded me of Oxford University a bit. I saw students wearing robes and their was a large courtyard in the Old College area. I got a very preppy vibe from this Uni but I could be totally wrong. St Andrews castle is in ruins so I did not pay to go in. I saw perfectly fine from the outside. The St Andrews Cathedral was very interesting to see. Of course, it is in ruins but the fog provided an eerie aura to the visit. The Cathedral during its heyday must have been huge and beautiful.
After visiting the Cathedral, we got ice cream at Jannettas Gelateria. This is probably the best ice cream shop I have been to in Europe. There so many flavors to choose from and it was not that expensive. Our time was short in St Andrews but we sure enjoyed it. We took a bus back to Dundee and walked around through the stores that were now open. At 6:35 PM, we caught our bus back to Aberdeen. My feet are in so much pain but sometimes you have to experience some pain and hardship when you travel in order to see everything. Looking forward to my weekend in Glasgow this upcoming Friday and Saturday.
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