The High Point

The first thing we did the next day, of course, was return to the park. Bruce's day was completely scheduled by his host who was thrilled to have him visit Edinburgh. We were thrilled to have his help finding a place to stay (see below). So it was just me and the kids for the day. I have learned by now to keep it simple, and avoid driving, which we did.

I would have planned the park for mid-day, but it was on the way to our selected main attraction, Camera Obscura. They didn't want to leave, of course. The other picture I took was of the little boy around Olivia's age who kept them entertained by yelling clever things like "butt face".

Unfortunately any of my three girls makes a pretty good audience for this kind of entertainment. Okay, maybe Olivia particularly. She could hardly breathe she was laughing so hard, I think she has a crush on pretty much every little boy that looks her way these days.

We did then make it to Camera Obscura, with a short stop for hot chocolate to warm up. This is a tower that has held since around 1850 a mirror and various qualities of lenses at the top that project a rotating image of the city onto a lens-shaped table below for all to see. Apparently when it was first open to the public by a woman who produced lenses for industry, viewers were so upset by it some would faint. It was a little surprising to see people walking around, cars driving through, etc. Apparently there are several around the world, including one in San Francisco. There were then four other floors containing various optical illusions like the one pictured here.

After spending a couple of hours here, believe it or not, it was starting to get dark. (Okay, I kept it really simple.) It was only 4, but the sun was setting and I had located a couple of pizza places on the walk home to investigate. It feels more than a little silly to travel to all of these places and look for pizza, but that seems to be the optimum choice.

Olivia with her Irn Bru (sounds like iron brew, tastes like orange cream soda) float

After several meals of various bread, cheese, salami, granola bars, fruit leathers (thanks Mom!) and Cheerios, everyone filled up with pizza and the kids tried the local soda float for desert. Somehow I spend all day trying to entertain them, and then feel like I have to treat them for tolerating it so well. I'm still trying to figure out if there is a good age to take kids to Europe.

Fortunately we had this awesome apartment to return to. It reminded me alot of Lara and Kimmo's apartment in Nice. Two bedrooms and a bath in the hallway to the right. The host paid for at least two of the nights. It had a fridge, dishwasher, stove, and milk and bread for breakfast. This is the way to travel. The neighborhood wasn't beautiful, but it was close enough to the castle we could walk. No complaints, and probably cheaper than the two hotel rooms people over here seem to think we require to stay anywhere else.

When we got up our last morning, Bruce thought a hike and a visit to Our Dynamic Earth might be too much (probably because I also hoped to drive by some castles and end up at Hadrian's wall). But when we parked at the base of Arthur's Seat he agreed we probably needed to hike it. This despite the fact we had seen the weather report predicting rain off and on all day.


So up we went. It was a little steeper than we thought it would be. And MUCH colder than it looks.


Not sure how high we got, but you can see the castle below in the background. We made it up as high as this path would take us. We were told if we went down and back up that Arthur's Seat wasn't much further, but we decided to have a couple of chocolate caramel covered digestive buscuits and call it good. It was really remarkable to have this kind of nature experience right at the edge of such a city. It was comforting to have a hike, very much like hiking in Eastern Oregon or Bald Hill in Corvallis. Definitely a high point.


Our Dynamic Earth was just accross the street. The entrance is quite dramatic. The museum was nice, but possibly more than we needed on this particular day. Never know until you try.


I'll spare you the pictures of the dark castles in the distance that were closed for the season when we drove by. The first was Bamburgh which is supposed to be beautiful, and did look nice on the coast, and was fortunately just a few minutes off of the freeway. The second was a Harry Potter set for a couple of scenes, Aldwick. Also just a minute out of the way, but an overall disappointment. Should have gone for the glass-blowing factory instead. We did manage to end up in a town along Hadrian's wall called Hexham by following signs in the dark to a closed tourist information with just enough information posted on the window.