"Aberdeen - It's Time To See The Granite City" Aberdeen by scotlandscotour

Its time for tourists to stop dashing up the boring A9, straight from Edinburgh towards Inverness, on some caffeine induced rapid tour.

Take a different route, eastwards, and explore the coastline with its tiny fishing villages, now almost abandoned. Explore the wild and beautiful solitude of the Grampian Mountains - now the Cairngorm National Park, and Royal Deeside. (There is a good reason why the Queen likes it so much to live here).

Head for Aberdeen, Scotland's 3rd City, the "Granite City", the Oil City, and you will be impressed. This is Scotland. Take my tips, and leave the tourists to the A9. You are explorers!

Buildings glimmer in the sunlight after a rain, and look bright, sharp and clean, as if assembled just yesterday.

The tough granite doesn't erode and fade like sandstone, doesn't absorb dirt, so Aberdeen looks ironed and pressed, starched and business-like.

This is a hard city, like the stone. A working, business orientated, shrewd and pragmatic thing, like the old farmers of Aberdeenshire.

This is the land of Aberdeen Angus, this is the sea of Herring and now Oil. This is gritty, real Scotland. Rich and poor, intermingled.

It may not be pretty, but its grand. It is different from other cities - and that is what you want, after an homogenised, bland globalisation of corporate marketing. Aberdeen, paradoxically, is international. It also so has a beach!

Aberdeen, to any Brit, is synonimous with Oil. It is home of the UK oil industry. It is here that multinational giants have there offices, where financial brokers and agents congregate like rats upon a quayside corn store. It is here that the support vessels and exploration ships dock, if not in Norway, and it is here that the men and women who work the storm smashed rigs of the North Sea enter and exit that maritime world.

It is in Aberdeen that they let off steam, blow their money, invest their futures, buy and spend. Aberdeen is rejuvinated by oil, and now as the supplies dwindle, it is turning to renewable energy to utilise the expertise and the business networks now in place. The countryside remains rich and fertile, the cars a little smarter, the houses a little more cared for and pricy. But in a modest Aberdonian way ;-)

What will the next chapter say?

• Pros:Another Side to Scotland, Under Explored, Different
• Cons:Expensive Because of the Oil Industry, ... and Grey
• In a nutshell:Oil, Granite, Money, Sea, and ???