Residences by Marriot complimentary breakfast covered all options …. Eggs, bacon, sausages, fruits, yoghurts, cereals, pastries, coffee, etc. On checkout we discovered that they subsidised the parking in the actual parking station that we had found for the car so it cost £10 for our overnight spot.

We decided to take a stroll to the coastline. Teresa’s fever had broken and she was feeling a little better today. The beach here is very different from what we have in Australia. The North Sea sent constant waves crashing to the shore and the beach was covered with black wooden structures for as far as we could see. They are called Groynes and have been installed on Aberdeen Beach since 2006 to manage the shore erosion. It was still very cold, about 2 degrees, but lots of people out and about, including a couple of hundred people participating in Parkrun!

The sun came out and the wet drizzle of the previous days was replaced by the glare of a bright star. The drive to Dundee on the A90 was very scenic, lots of farms, some glimpses of snow capped mountains but no more roundabouts. Whenever we were driving with the sun in front, the glare on the road made it very difficult to see any lane markings, or really much at all. We have been lucky to not encounter any black ice on our car journeys but found some in an outside car park in Dundee and had to walk carefully.

Ready for lunch, we relocated to an undercover car space and walked to a cosy pub called the Trade Bar. Michele and Teresa chose lentil soup, bread and fries whereas Scott enjoyed a serving of fish and chips. All was delicious. Being a Saturday, the pub was already busy with people watching football games on the tvs. It’s not unusual to go into a bar here in Scotland and have a sign on the door that states “no football colours”, which is indicative of the sort of issues that that crowd brings.

Now it was time to explore. We walked down to the RRS Discovery, which is the ship that took Scott and Shackleton to Antarctica in 1901. We also took a short stroll along the river Tay. We went into the Premier Inn on the water to see if they could put us up for the night. It was about 2:30pm and the front desk attendant told us that we could only book online or wait until check in at 3pm for someone else to book. We tried to book online but couldn’t even find the hotel. We walked around and explored some other options and had a wee dram at a bar called Groucho’s. Dundee seems to be a large shopping mall, and a lot of roads. There was no lovely old town like the other places we had stayed in. We realised that Edinburgh was only another hour and a bit away, and we made the decision to just head back there for our last 2 nights.

Driving into Edinburgh we all felt we had made the correct decision. We found a lovely 2 bedroom apartment on Princes Street right near the old town. The front desk attendants were very friendly and informed us that the bar was open 24 hours! Teresa and Michele had a wine while waiting for Scott to park the car.

It was tricky to find somewhere last minute for dinner due to it being Saturday night and still very busy. We were able to get a table at the Brasserie Prince in the Balmoral Hotel. We received 5 star service and enjoyed ravioli with burnt butter and crispy sage, French onion soup, and hazelnut crusted lamb. Our waiter grew up around Dundee and he confirmed that we had made the right choice to just spend the day there and then drive to Edinburgh.

Walking back to hotel, we settled in to the place that we will spend our last nights together as a family for this trip. Good nicht!