As you can see from my post last night, I had a lot more to add about our trip. On Saturday, we walked towards the castle again and then headed all the way down the Royal Mile, window shopping and making our way to the Palace and Arthur’s Seat. Arthur’s Seat is a group of hills that make up Holyrood Park and it peaks at 823 feet. Bean and daddy climbed part of the way up, but there was no way Gerbie or her stroller would have made it, so we watched from below. After that we took the site seeing bus tour. Since Edinburgh is not very big, the bus tour only takes an hour, but they give so many stories and so much of the history of the city that it was great to just sit and listen and look around. Somehow, I ended up on the “horrible histories” bus channel at one point (Gerbie’s little fingers were playing with the buttons) and started listening to some of the ghost stories of the city. And let me tell you, they are plentiful! In fact, as you walk around the city you see ghost tours advertised everywhere. I think it is a combination of the plague victims which were said to be locked under the city in one of the closes and the team of men who helped find bodies for the local anatomist. They apparently found their victims by murdering them. Oh, and there were plenty of public executions back in the day as well. In any case, after the bus tour we went to the castle and actually went inside this time, touring the property and seeing the crown jewels of Scotland, which are in the castle (and really consisted of a crown and a scepter – not really worth the wait). After some shopping, we called it a day. On Sunday we woke up to the windy, gusty rain showers, so we went to a science museum called Our Dynamic Earth. It was the coolest experience, so I am glad we had a chance to go to it. They start by having you enter a time machine (an elevator) and flashes of the past are shown all around you as you blast through time back to the Big Bang. Right off the elevator, you watch a movie clip explaining the Big Bang and then you get to enter a volcano. The floor shakes, the movie shows the volcano, the lava lights up the floor. The kids were giggling. After that you walk into the Ice Age. The room is cold and there are snow banks on the floor and another movie clip. After that you can explore in the interactive museum. The kids loved it – it was so kid friendly…lots of things to touch, to see and to do. After you make your way through all of that, you watch a 3-D movie that takes you on a tour of the world –from the desert to the rainforests. It was so fun to watch the kids trying to touch things that came up at them while their 3-D glasses were on. After that, we walked into the rain forest, which included watching a thunder storm. We capped the tour off by watching a film of the planets and stars on the astronomy dome ceiling. It was fun watching two little faces looking up and showing such awe for what they were seeing...we could see little scientists forming right before our eyes. After that, we toured Holyrood Palace, which is where the Queen stays when she is visiting Scotland. We noticed a sign that the Palace is closed as of today (July 6th) for the Queen’s annual visit, so we saw it just in time. As it started raining again, we made our way back to the hotel for swimming, pizza and an Uno marathon. And I do mean marathon!! We played three games and one of them lasted for over an hour. We were giggling so hard and having such a good time…..these are the little things vacations are made of! On Monday we rented a car and went to Rosslyn Chapel in Roslin, Scotland. It has exquisite architecture; it literally took our breath away. Photos were not allowed, so we did not get any. The only thing we wanted to do in Scotland that we were not able to do was tour Mary King’s Close. We discovered on our first day in Scotland that they do not allow children under the age of 5 on the tour. All in all, we had a wee merry old time. I put a few more of the hundreds of pictures that I took on this blog, but if you are friends with me on Facebook – I posted some more there.
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