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.
We got ready early to head out to Doune Castle. The castle was really neat! It was a self-guided tour and had a lot of steps and a lot of rooms. Much of it has been restored since most of the wood has long since rotted away. You could see the stones that used to hold the beams to the floors if you looked up. Erik was really excited about seeing the castle since his favorite movie, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, was filmed at this castle. The castle was built about 600 years ago by the Duke of Albany who lived well into his 80s. The castle was also used in filming Outlander and Game of Thrones, but we weren't really interested in those shows.
This whole scene was filmed at Doune Castle.
Erik imitated Sir Lancelot running toward the castle.
Lancelot runs into the courtyard at 0:44 on the youtube video.
He climbs these stairs at the end of the youtube video.
Lancelot enters this room twice as 2 different rooms at 1:11 and again after the video ends.
"Now you're not allowed to enter the room..."
"One day, lad, all this will be yours."
The left side of the castle was used in the opening scene of the movie while the right side was used for the scene when Arthur encounters the French and tries to fool them with a wooden rabbit.
"You've got two empty halves of coconut and you're banging them together!"
"Perhaps if we built this large wooden badger."
"I told them we already got one."
Erik and Gabe pretended to push the wooden trojan rabbit up the hill toward the castle.
This alcove is where the knights sing "we eat ham, and jam, and spam a lot."
The fireplace is where Sir Galahad the Chaste was treated against his will by 2 young female doctors. The next room was where the rest of the Castle Anthrax scene was shot.
Erik told Ian he couldn't buy a toy sword and shield, so he ran and hid in the cellar.
Next, we drove to Ocean Terminal in Edinburgh. We wandered around the mall for a bit. There were some weird piano “sculptures” there. We stopped briefly at the Wee Museum of Memories. We didn’t stay long, just long enough for me to plunk around on an old piano. We let the kids eat their lunch at a Subway since Erik didn’t think they’d like the food at the restaurant we planned to eat at.
We drove by the Kelpies a few times. They were made to celebrate an extension of a major canal.
I suppose this is what they do with old pianos in Scotland.
Inside the Wee Museum of Memories
We had to walk a long way to get to the restaurant, Teuchters Landing. I ordered the Ploughman’s board and Cullen skink (smoked haddock soup). I liked all my food except the pork pies; they tasted plain and processed. Erik’s haggis, neeps, and tatties wasn’t too bad either. The haggis tasted like a livery sausage. The soup was pretty good, but I couldn’t finish it all.
Ploughman's board: inverloch plain jane cheddar, a wee pork pie, ramsays of carluke ham, soft boiled organic egg, caper and tattie salad, beer and apple chutney
Three-layer haggis, neeps, and tatties with whiskey cream sauce
