Thursday: Aberdeen to Dundee

Day 2 of the Aberdeen Special Collections. Another rainy day, but it always seems easier when you’re on the 2^nd day and know your way around.

I like the red doors - most people have a colourful door, to contrast with the grey or beige brick:

 Here's where we ate dinner the first night in Aberdeen, the Three Kirks bar. Clear that it was formerly a church.

We started with the Aberdeen Public library (they were open earlier than the university), where we spent time with the Minutes of the Aberdeen Musical Society and a flute tunebook of unknown provenance. This was the only library of the tour so far that allowed digital photography (flash-free of course). The curator came for a visit and invited me to send a copy of my dissertation when its finished, for the library.

Here's Kevin with his white gloves, inspecting the Aberdeen Musical Society Minutes:

Back to Aberdeen University for the afternoon, to finish up there. We had pre-decided to have lunch at the campus café, as we discovered the day before it had good soups and was relatively quick and convenient.

Today, however, we got stuck in the middle of a long lunch queue of the Aberdeenshire Youth Orchestra. Youth Orchestra kids look the same the world over, apparently.

Aberdeen University is getting a new library, which will house the special collections. Check it out - pretty impressive. We're grateful they made the collections available to us while they are preparing for a big move. The Special Collections seems like a pretty active place, with more users than I anticipated this time of year. Oh, if I could do it all again, now that I know better, I'd make sure to do an exchange to a university like this. Can you imagine if this was where you arrived on campus every day? 

More pictures from Aberdeen, around the campus:

Cobblestone streets...

 Two sculptures outside King's College Chapel - I think they represent King's College and Marischal College crests, the two colleges that merged to become Aberdeen University.
Note: Correction - Scott has clarified that these are flags for England and Scotland. See comments below.

William Elphinstone, Bishop of Aberdeen and Chancellor Scotland, founder of Aberdeen University

We think this might be the University President's residence:

Old Aberdeen Town Hall, now part of the U Aberdeen campus.

Filling in time before dinner and catching the train to Dundee, we visited the Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums, and took some time just to walk... lots of sitting at libraries means we need to stretch our legs.
This is the outside of the gallery.

More from Dundee soon....