Arriving in Dundee

I’m in Dundee, Scotland. If you read the last post from my previous trip, which was to Norway, you might remember that I said I didn’t know where my next trip would be, but I hoped it would be a visit to a very dear relative. That wish has been fulfilled.

I spent about a week in Edinburgh visiting said very dear relative. And, as a bonus, another relative also joined us there.

It was a very enjoyable and joyful time.

You won’t find any posts here about that time in Edinburgh. This is a travel journal, not a family journal. That visit was primarily about family, not tourism. Hence, by the prevailing rules, I didn’t place any posts about it on these pages. Sorry. As I’ve said many times before; my journal, my rules.

If you’re desperate to read about Edinburgh, you can find the posts from a previous trip I took to Edinburgh linked here.

I arrived at my hotel in Dundee after 4:00 in the afternoon, so don’t expect this to be a lengthy post. I didn’t have a lot of time to do much exploring. But I’ll be in Dundee for three nights, so I will have more to say tomorrow and the next day. I’m sure you can hardly wait. I said, I’m sure you can hardly wait.

In Dundee

On at least a couple of occasions documented in this journal, when I arrived in a city late in the afternoon and had only a couple of hours to tour that day, I expressed regret about having chosen that city as a destination because I was unimpressed with it. That wasn’t true in all locations where I arrived latish, but at least in a couple.

On those occasions, I usually either completely changed my opinion of the city for the better, or I at least found a couple of redeeming factors after spending more time there. And, by the time I left, I was happy I visited. I don’t remember where that occurred, but feel free to search assiduously through this journal to find those posts.

Having learned my lesson about stating negative first impressions that turned out to be unfair, I will not say that I’m beginning to fear that stopping in Dundee might have been a mistake. I will definitely not inscribe those words here. No how. No way. Don’t ever say that you read that here because it would not be true.

(*Joel binds his hands to prevent him from typing those words.*)

…

…

(*Joel unbinds his hands because he can’t type anything with his hands bound.*)

Let’s move on quickly in the hope that the urge passes.

After settling into my hotel, I walked down to the Firth of Tay. I recently learned that “firth” is Scottish for “estuary.” Dundee is situated on the banks of the River Tay, close to where it spills into the North Sea, hence it’s on the river estuary known as the Firth of Tay.

Wikipedia tells me that firth can also refer to a small inlet from the sea and the word is linguistically related to the Norwegian word “fjord.” My immediate previous trip was to Norway. I saw a few fjords there.

The Firth of Tay looks nothing like the fjords I saw in Norway. So if you’re trying to picture what the Firth of Tay looks like, first call up in your mind one of the fjords of Norway that you’ve seen either in person or in pictures and then forget it completely because that won’t help you in the least, other than it being an amazingly beautiful image to conjure up.

The Firth of Tay is quite broad at Dundee. The far shore is fairly gentle. I recognize that doesn’t provide much help in imagining what it looks like, so I included a picture here.

Unfortunately, the lighting at the time of day I took the picture, combined with the cloud cover then, makes the far shore look like not much more than a silhouette. So the photo isn’t much help either. Sorry about that. I might get a better picture tomorrow.

Suffice it to say that the Firth of Tay as viewed from Dundee is picturesque, but not spectacular. That doesn’t quite suffice as a description, does it? But it’s the best you’re going to get here. What do you expect for free? Gold and diamonds, rainbows and unicorns? Forget about that. It’s not happening.

I walked along a sidewalk beside the firthfront for a while and enjoyed the view. (In the post I wrote upon arriving in Oslo, Norway I argued that “fjordfront” should be a word despite not being in the dictionary because “riverfront,” “lakefront,” “seafront,” etc. are words. I make the same argument for “firthfront.”)

After walking inland a bit, passed by an attractive little inlet off the firth near central Dundee. Apple Maps labels it as Dundee Harbour.

I then walked into the central part of Dundee, which doesn’t seem to be particularly large. The buildings there are older than those in the rest of Dundee, although they don’t look anywhere near as old as the buildings in, say, the Old Edinburgh neighbourhood of Edinburgh, and maybe not even as old as some of the buildings in New Edinburgh. A few of the buildings I saw looked interesting, but none looked dazzling. I’ll probably do more walking there tomorrow and may have an update. Or not. We’ll see.

Despite not spending a lot of time there today, I can say that central Dundee is not devoid of art. I saw a dragon sculpture plunked down there.

I didn’t see many of the buildings much outside of central Dundee, but, except for a museum on the firthfront that I’ll probably visit tomorrow, most of the ones I did see looked quite bland. One might even say they are humdrum. Then again, one might not say that. It’s really hard to be sure. The utterances of nonspecific, random people are so unpredictable. The words of specific, random people aren’t much more foreseeable, what with them being random people and all. But enough about them.

Will I have a better impression of Dundee tomorrow? Time will tell. Or if time doesn’t tell, I might.