Haggis

In the morning, at the same time as our friends were hustling their own kids out the door to school, their friend who works in Berwick-Upon-Tweed picked us up to drive us to the train station in that town. He graciously offered to let us stash our bags in his trunk--er, boot--while we walked around exploring Berwick before the train arrived. It's famously a walled town that has changed hands between Scotland and England many times. It's easy to see how a person could be compelled by Berwick toward conquest. It's gorgeous.

When it was time to catch our train, the friend-of-a-friend nipped out of work to drive us to the station--not that it was far, but we had a big suitcase and he wanted to save us the trouble. When we hugged goodbye he said "I'll probably never see you again," really matter-of-factly. "Unless you come to Nova Scotia some day," I said, but he was already shaking his head. "That's not going to happen." Fair enough; if you live in this part of Scotland, you probably want to stay.

We arrived back in Edinburgh way too early to check in to our hotel--our signature move, at this point--so we dropped our bags and headed out. We let the kids go into some of the shops we didn't have time for a few days ago, like the Harry Potter store that has to make people line up outside and be let in one party at a time. 

So much Harry Potter stuff is lost on me--I never got into it because I don't like whimsy???--but I get joy out of seeing the kids excited. They each bought a little book of spells that are supposed to bring prosperity and wealth so if we seem more prosperous when you see us next, you know why.

After lunch we went to the World of Illusions. I thought this was a tourist trap, something like those traveling GLOW exhibits that are basically a series of selfie backgrounds, but I was wrong. The top floor--which also has an observation deck with incredible views and binoculars everywhere--has a pre-victorian-era camera obscura that projects an image of the streets below onto a wooden table. The 10-minute show was fascinating and fun for the kids. You couldn't help but imagine what it would have been like for a person in the mid-1800s to see this thing for the first time, having never seen a video or any kind of projection before. 

A bonus for me is that the tower was purchased in 1892 by a sociologist named Patrick Geddes, who did all kinds of progressive things to try to lift Edinburgh's poorest out of their misery. I thought the site did a great job pulling in the local context and history, which made the otherwise placeless idea feel like it was exactly where it was supposed to be. The other 4 floors below the observation tower were just fun, and at times mind-bending, mostly optical illusions, and mostly technologically very simple. 

Today we did another thing on the kids' to-do list that I underestimated: the zoo. We were barely ten minutes in before I was crying about penguins. I had no idea how social and curious they are! I think I might even have a special connection with them. Maybe. I think we get each other. There was one that seemed enamoured with Lucy--everywhere she walked, he followed. Another kept pestering the zookeeper, biting the set of keys dangling off her belt, nipping her knees, chomping the tread of her boot, tugging at her clipboard. Later we learned he was probably the one they call Naughty Kevin.

The penguins remained our unanimous favourite animal despite the variety of exotic animals we saw in our six hours at the zoo: lions, tigers, flamingos, meerkats, sloths, several different types of monkey, red pandas, otters, you name it. Edinburgh Zoo is a significant hill, and the giraffes are at the top with a clear, expansive view of the city's outskirts.

This year they added capybaras, and their pygmy hippos had a baby. His name is Haggis.

While a normal person would come back from 6 hours at the zoo and get horizontal, the kids still had energy to burn and decided the best outlet was beating each other up in the hotel pool again.

Goodnight!