3
Edinburgh’s
bloomin’ lovely
By PHYLLIS STEPHENFOUNDER OF EDINBURGH based
charity Invisible Cities, Zakia Moulaoui,
joined a roundtable discussion with the
Duke of Sussex to talk about sustainable
tourism.
Prince Harry set up Travalyst a not for
profit organisation which assembled
some of the biggest brands in travel and
technology for an online chat about ways
of supporting regenerative projects in the
tourism sector.
Zakia explained to Prince Harry and the
other delegates the model for the work
they do, recruiting people who have
experienced homelessness to roles where
they run their own tours in the city. She
said that conscious travellers can have an
impact on communities. She said: “We are
increasingly seeing people making even
more conscious decisions when they are
travelling and visiting new places. People
want to see the money they spend
directly benefit communities.”
Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex, said:
“Travel and tourism relies on destinations,
held together by communities, without
which we have nowhere to travel to.
Communities are the beating heart of
travel, and we must do better by the
people who are the custodians of the
places we visit. We’ve heard from some
fantastic organisations like Invisible Cities
who train people affected by
homelessness to be tour guides in their
own city.”Visible royal
connections
By PHYLLIS STEPHENEDINBURGH’S CHERRY BLOSSOM TREES
have been very colourful this year, attracting
even more photographers to the city to take
photos of the beautiful displays.
The cherry blossom or Sakura can be spotted
around the city including The Meadows where
students, Congli and Jinzcan above, visiting
from Newcastle, were having fun on a sunny
day in The Meadows.
Edinburgh was recently named by The Times
as one of the the best alternative places to enjoy
the pink blooms. Both Japan and Washington- where the trees have been gifted to the city by
Tokyo since 1912 as a gift of friendship - are well
known as places to look at, enjoy and photograph
the pink blooms and now it seems that Edinburgh
has made the grade with its displays.
There are several places in the city where
photographers or Instagrammers will get the
best shots. The most abundant display is in The
Meadows where the trees blossom along two of
the avenues - although the duration of the
display depends very much on the weather.
There are blossom trees along the railings on
Princes Street inside the gardens offering a lovely
frame for a photo of Edinburgh Castle, and also
lining the street on either side of Ravelston Dykes
just round the corner from Modern One. At
Starbank Park in Trinity the Friends hold an
annual picnic to celebrate the display.
In Washington DC the trees are so prolific
that there is a website set up to monitor them- cherryblossomwatch.com - which predicted
that peak blossom time already came and went
on 17 March. Here in Edinburgh we still have
the spectacle lingering as we go to press.
If you snap some good shots then please share
them with us on social media or by emailing
them to [email protected]Martin P McAdam
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