Desperate Dan strides down the High Street in bronze, his dog Dawg beside him, while Minnie the Minx raises her catapult behind his back. They were unveiled in 2001 by local schoolchildren, and they tell you within thirty seconds of arriving that Dundee takes its comics seriously. The Beano and The Dandy were both born here, at DC Thomson, which still publishes a few streets away.
The waterfront is where most people start now. V&A Dundee sits at the river's edge, an angular concrete building by the Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, its shape drawn from the cliffs of the east coast. Entry is free. Inside is the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Oak Room, a tearoom that spent nearly fifty years hidden from view and has been reconstructed piece by piece. Berthed in the dock alongside is the RRS Discovery, the ship built here in 1901 that carried Scott and Shackleton to the Antarctic. The railway station is a couple of minutes' walk away, with trains to Edinburgh in about an hour and a half.
For eating and drinking, locals send you to the West End, along Perth Road and Nethergate. Piccolo does Italian rollatini, buffalo mozzarella wrapped in prosciutto and baked. Más does birria quesadillas. Tahini does chicken and lamb shawarma, and Pacamara does the sort of brunch that involves shakshuka and Colombian eggs. EH9 Espresso serves Wild Hearth Bakery pastries with its coffee.
The pub to find is the Speedwell Bar, known to everyone as Mennies after Henry Mennie, who took it over in the 1920s. It was built in 1903 and the Edwardian interior is intact: mahogany, etched glass, an L-shaped bar. There are rotating guest cask ales. The Phoenix on Nethergate gets regularly voted the best pint in the city.
Fisher & Donaldson has been baking since 1919. Their fudge doughnut is made fresh daily and can't be shipped anywhere, which is one reason to come in person. They also bake the Dundee cake, the rich fruitcake ringed with concentric blanched almonds that carries the city's name around the world.
Above it all is Dundee Law, the eroded plug of a volcano some 400 million years old, now the city's highest point with a war memorial on top. It's about a thirty-minute climb on wide paths, and from the observation point you can see forty-odd miles to Fife and the Sidlaw Hills. Dundee is officially Scotland's sunniest city, which helps.
Four miles east is Broughty Ferry, a seaside suburb with its own beach, a fifteenth-century castle with a free museum, and a row of cafés and restaurants. The beach has held Scotland's Beach Award every year since 2004. You can reach it by train, bus, bike or the flat Esplanade walk along the Tay, where dolphins are regularly seen offshore.
In 1922 Dundee returned Edwin Scrymgeour to Parliament, the only Prohibitionist ever elected to the Commons, by beating the sitting MP, a Liberal named Winston Churchill. The Speedwell has been pouring ales since long before and long after.