Sasha girls in Scotland - part 4

Laura and Florence complete their blog about our May half term to Scotland (see also Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3):

On the second Saturday of our visit to Scotland we joined the family on an outing in Edinburgh.  In two days they had already explored the Museum of Childhood, had an open top bus tour, visited The Elephant House cafe where the first three Harry Potter books were written, been inside St Giles Cathedral, seen Blackfriars Bobby statue and grave, visited the University of Edinburgh Art Degree Show and had a private pre-arranged tour of an important no longer open to the public building in Edinburgh as part of a history project.

We walked from our B&B all the way up past the Castle to the Camera Obscura on Castle hill.  After viewing the Camera Obscura show of the city (10 minutes in the dark with a birds eye view of the city projected onto the large white dish table) we went outside onto the viewing decks for a magnificent fresh air sunny view of Edinburgh.  Wow!  It was so impressive.  DollMum looked at the list outside of other camera obscura's around the world (not many) and realised that she had also been to the only one in the Southern Hemisphere in Grahamstown (SA) and the one in Aberystwyth (Wales), apparently there are three others in Scotland.

The Camera Obscura sign on the tower

Florence and Laura view Edinburgh from the Camera Obscura

View of St Giles Cathedral (in the distance down the Royal Mile)

After that, we worked our way down the several floors of the museum exploring all the optical and scientific exhibits which taught us quite a lot about optical illusions in a fun way.

Mirrors played tricks on us in the Camera Obscura museum

Singing Cats and Piano playing dog automata in the Camera Obscura

Singing Cats and Piano playing dog automata in the Camera Obscura

Laura's left eye magnified 50x in the Camera Obscura

Laura's right eye magnified 50x in the Camera Obscura

Laura played with coloured light shadows

There was an amazing optical illusion room which tricked your eyes into believing that relative sizes were different from reality:

DollMum's younger daughter is only double the height of Laura!

DollMum's elder daughter is a giant, Laura is tiny

DollMum's younger daughter is bigger than her elder daughter

Laura is tiny compared to DollMum's younger daughter

Laura is tiny compared to DollMum's younger daughter,
while her elder daughter has short legs for a change

DollMum's daughters are the same size, while Laura is tiny

When we had finished at the Camera Obscura we walked all down the hill to the moat gardens, past the galleries by Princes Street and sat in the gardens eating ice cream in the sunshine.

Eating ice cream on a slope in the Edinburgh park

Eating ice cream and watching the world go by

We really enjoyed our day in the sunshine in Edinburgh (Laura had more fun than Florence who spent most of the day strapped to the side of DollMum's camera case rucksack watching everyone).  On Sunday we had the long drive home and were pleased to get back to all the others in the doll and bear family to tell them all about our adventures in Scotland.