dkarabikas | In need of colorful grey

As i promised, a post about my trip to Scotland. Maybe a little bit belated.

About a month ago, we (there were three of us) travelled to Scotland.  Stayed there for 6 days. We were walking around the cities. Ι was taking photos constantly, more than anything, i collected a lot of memories and information.

So, Scotland, here we are!

I think, it is more appropriate to say that we didn’t visit Scotland but more accurate we travelled mainly to Edinburgh and we spent a day in Glascow.Firstly we arrived at Turnhouse Airport in Edinburgh after a four-hour trip, straight from Athens.The following day I was in a “shooting spree”. I was too shy to take pictures of people, so I focused on buildings. The view from the Edinburgh Castle was picturesque and spectacular. You can easily define the difference of light between the two sides of castle.

Leaving the castle, we start walking around and we passed through the world’s famous red telephone booths of UK…

and a graveyard of 19th century…

Next day we kept walking through new places and new things came in front of our eyes, such as the Scottish style street market. I can say that it was so organized in contrast to Greek flea market that it took me a few minutes to realize what it was plus I had to go close enough to understand what was happening there.

We continued to go through several streets…

and more…

…until we found a statue that was standing in the river.

When the sun sat we were walking towards home. Every evening the parks were full of people either walking or bicycling.

In a parallel road there was a building of Edinburgh College of Art. When I see this picture I am thinking that I have to take photograhpy courses in the next years there for sure.. Why not Edinburgh?

My weird passion for locks and doorbells conquered me again for a while.

One day we visited Glasgow by train. The route was fully descriptive of the south lands of Scotland.  After one hour we finally arrived at Queen’s Street Train Station and we found some benches in the nearby square to get rid of the travelling fatigue and dizziness.

I discovered that Glasgow is completely different from Edinburgh. It is modern and industrialized with multi-storey buildings and several ones with neo-classical architecture. Getting used in these locations I directly switch my camera to black & white mode.

The place was familiar, so we stopped our walk to take a coffee break as we do in Greece. There I started playing with the composition.

After composition, i I began to experiment with the forms of the structures.

I spent too much time at this particular place of the city. This part is my favorite. I am very keen on taking pictures of slogans on walls and graffiti. Especially when they refer social change and justice.

Some other street photos.

A lot of hours later we decide we had to go home and we began walking to the train station.

Finally we arrived at Edinburgh late at night.

We had one last day at Scotland. For the  first time instead of walking toward’s city’s center we decided to take a different direction. A direction without a specific destination. That was it. We got lost.

Probably we were at the suburbs and there was a field with some students (propably) exercising in sports.

Being lost, we were unable to spot neither Edinburgh Castle nor Calton Hill in order to get a sense of direction. Fortunately one old lady helped us to find the right way. We found a bus and we realize that we were about 20 minutes away from town centre.  Then we went straigth to Calton Hill where the following photograph is coming from.

As you may notice I didn’t change the black and white mode of my camera after being back to Edinburgh, because I fully accepted that black and white mode is capable to form far more expressive photos in coorporation with everyones imagination.

Now i will take you with me in a tiny tour to Cockburn Street.

Every day and every night after a lot of walking, museums and sightseeing we always end up at Cockburn’s to drink a Tennent beer or try some of the famous Scottish whiskey or eat baked potatoes with salad or just to take a coffee break at a Mexican or Italian cafe-restaurant. There was a multinational atmosphere.

That’s all folks.

That was our trip. That was my trip to Scotland. I loved Edinburgh, i walked around Glasgow. I would like to be there again, but i have many destinations on my mind that i should visit first. I’ll leave now with my last photo taken at The Meadows (park) at night.

Here is were we played golf but I will not post photos. Here is a photo blog, not a comedian’s blog.

A post is not enough to write and upload all the things a man can see on a trip. This is the least I can do.

I want to express special thanks to Thanos for his hospitality, as well as an extra thanks to Leo ( Thanos roomate) for affording us.

Αlso a lot of thanks to Aris and Mary C. who helped me with my rough english.