The last word on Edinburgh

A few incidental things from Edinburgh:
UMSLG coincided with the G8; consequently Edinburgh was filled to bursting point with policemen, and the student residences where we stayed were used to billet police from all over the country. Much of modern police work seems to consist of hanging around reading the paper and waiting for something to happen, to judge by what I saw.
I went to the National Gallery of Scotland, to see two exhibitions, one of Landseer, which had lots of animals, alive and dead, and one of Gauguin, built around The Vision of the Sermon. The juxtaposition of the two was odd, and perhaps it was a bad idea to try to see both.
And finally I restored myself with drinks and the magnificent architecture of the former office of the Scotsman, now a cocktail bar called North Bridge.