Aberdeen for the non-golfer.

Aberdeen is the Granite City, which is both its geological truth and its most persistent reputation management problem. The stone is silver-grey felsite and mica, and on a morning of low sun from the east it turns luminous in a way that photographs don't capture adequately. On a February afternoon it turns precisely as gloomy as everyone assumes it to be. The city was built on two industries — fishing and granite — before offshore oil arrived in the 1970s and made Aberdeen briefly one of the wealthiest cities in Europe per capita. The oil money has left a ring of decent restaurants, a renovated art gallery, and a distinctly complicated relationship with the idea of civic identity. For the non-golfing companion, the city has more depth than the granite suggests. The Art Gallery, reopened in 2019 after a £35 million refurbishment, is one of the better free art museums in Scotland. Old Aberdeen — the university quarter around St Machar's Cathedral and King's College — is a half-day that holds well against comparison with the older Scottish university towns. Footdee, the historic fishing village compressed into a grid of alleys at the harbour mouth, is ten minutes' walk from the city centre and feels like a different world. The two out-of-town drives — Dunnottar Castle to the south and Slains Castle to the north — are both within 30 minutes and both give the non-golfing companion something the golfer will not see from the fairways.