UK Trip: Day 10, Part 2, Royal Yacht Brittania and Camera Obscura World of Illusions

Tuesday, June 21, 2022

After lunch we took a tour of the Royal Yacht Brittania, which used to be the Queen's personal yacht. It was at most mildly interesting, but overall, I thought it wasn’t too interesting. We were given “phones” for our audio tour. I only listened to about half, and then I got bored of it.

Sitting in the captain's chair

The yacht's operating room complete with anesthesia machine.

We practiced tying some sailor knots.

We went back through the terminal to drive to downtown Edinburgh to a car park. We walked up a bunch of stairs to go to the Camera Obscura World of Illusions. It was fun! The kids had a good time. It was a multi-level, hands-on, psychedelic experience. The vast majority of it was optical illusions; some I’ve seen already. The camera obscura is like a periscope at the top of the building that uses light and mirrors to project an image of the city onto a dish in a darkroom. The kids loved the vortex tunnel and the mirror maze. Poor Ian slipped and fell on the stairs on the way out, but he was ok.

Controlling cameras outside the building to spy on passers-by.

Looking at old-fashioned 3-D photographs.

Looking down over the Royal Mile between Edinburgh Castle and the Palace of Holyroodhouse.

Looking at each other through kaleidoscope tunnels.

The kids enjoyed posing for these optical illusion sets.

The concave mirror shows an upside-down reflection until you get really close.

The kids went in the vortex tunnel and the mirror maze several times.

We took some family pictures with Edinburgh Castle in the background on our way out to the car. We ate leftovers for dinner.

We planned to visit Edinburgh Castle the next day.

We saw a big jack rabbit in the backyard when we returned to the rental house.