A tale of two capitals

Having returned from London, Sean and Finn's holiday wasn't quite over. With Sharon working on the Friday, I had a few errands to run in town and the torrential rain did not bid well for much outdoor activity. However, the showers eased off near midday, by which time we were parked off the Royal Mile and walking up to Edinburgh Castle to make use of our Historic Scotland tickets.

Sean likes the castle, but I think this harks back to a P2 or P3 school trip when what he really enjoyed was the castle shop(s). I find Edinburgh Castle rather boring. And, to be honest, there isn't that much to amuse the boys either. It's usually too busy to feel as though you have the run of the place and can explore and exploit imaginative play, like Craigmillar Castle or Blackness or Linlithgow Palace. At every turn in Edinburgh Castle there seems to be shops or cafes rather than genuine artefacts that you have paid to see. Even Sean noted this clash of new with old, stating that he didn't like the way the toilet block had been built inside the castle wall. We lasted barely 30 minutes (the advantage of a membership card: you don't feel obliged to stay longer).

What was far more fun, was the Camera Obscura. Sean had received tickets in a draw from the library Space Hop summer read and we put them to good use. The Camera Obscura presentation is interesting enough, though obviously its impact in these days of all-pervasive TV and video images is much reduced from when it first opened in the 19th century. The view down the Royal Mile, up to the Castle and across the city from the open rooftop is splendid and, while it maybe can't compete with the sheer height and scale of the London Eye, it is our home city and a very beautiful and dramatic place when you really look at it.

Some interesting (number) facts I learned. In 1900, Castlehill School, opposite the Camera Obscura and now the Scottish Whisky Centre, had a school role of 927. It was one of six schools in the Old Town which had a population of 52,000 compared to around 4,000 today. As a consequence of this overcrowding, the Old Town had some of the worst slums in Europe and, in earlier times, the first "high rise" housing as people couldn't build out beyond the city walls so they built up, rebuilding on top of old buildings whenever they collapsed. The Nor' Loch, now the site of Princes St Gardens, was where a good proportion of Edinburgh's effluent ended up: not a place for taking a dip (unless you were dooking witches). It perhaps explains why the gardens are so fertile...

Descending from the top floor, the boys had a great time with optical illusions and exhibits such as the surface which left a temporary shadow following a camera flash; infinity mirrors; make your own kaleidoscope pictures; image manipulation (Finn as a grinning chimp with glasses was less disturbing than Finn as a be-toothed, bespectacled baby!); static electricty lights; and the favourite at the end, the mirror maze. This comprised equilateral triangular floor tiles and full length mirror walls and, even though it occupied a fairly small area, was difficult to navigate. On the third attempt, Sean and Finn briefly got lost! Sean couldn't manage the vortex, a catwalk through a dark, rotating tunnel embedded with small LED's. Finn and I got disorientated halfway across and suddenly felt we were tipping over. Not one for vertigo sufferers!

I'd highly recommend the Camera Obscura for anyone with children in the six upwards range (and big people who have always liked MC Escher drawings). Once back in the daylight, we had a late lunch in the Hub, the boys sharing a burger while I had a baked potato. All in all, a good Edinburgh day out to round off our "Twin Capitals" holiday.

12 trains and counting

I'm in London, staying in East Sheen as a guest of Ali and Gordon. Sean and Finn are on their October week's holiday from school and having a great time with Megan and Freya, which essentially involves a lot of silliness. The boys always seem to have good fun with girls and, similarly deprived of siblings of the opposite sex, the Barnes girls seem to revel in having boys to play off against.

We took the train down yesterday morning, the 0930 from Waverley which arrived at Kings Cross at 1410. It was a quick, smooth journey with the laptop an invaluable aid in keeping the boys entertained. The children had a good play in the local park to shake off the cobwebs of so much travelling (four trains yesterday).

Today we raised the tally with another eight trains! It's Sean and Finn's first experience of the London Underground and they've quickly grown used to the noise and hustle and bustle that seemed so alien to me when I first experienced it over 25 years ago. We went to the Science Museum this morning for a brief look round and some lunch. Museums can be rather ennervating so I don't want to overdo them, but the boys were happy enough with the various interactive exhibits that we looked at.

From there it was a trip across the city and a switch to the Docklands Light Railway to rattle past the multi-storey behemoths of Canary Wharf on our way out to Greenwich. Unfortunately the Cutty Sark is in the midst of repairs just now but we strolled past the impressive stretch of the Maritime Museum and climbed up the path through the park to the Royal Observatory. The boys were quite taken with the Meridian and the notion of standing astride the zero degree line or being in the western or eastern hemisphere. After that we went to a show, "We are Astronomers", in the newish Peter Harrison Planetarium. This was very impressive, like being close-up to an IMAX screen, with great depth to the images. Sean and Finn were a bit wary at first as it got so dark but enjoyed it nonetheless. And we all stayed awake!

We wandered back down to the station and then made our way back via Bank and Waterloo, just avoiding the worst of the rush hour. The boys have been very good so far at staying close by me and have probably enjoyed riding the massive escalators in the Tube most of all!

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Sean is back at school today after being laid low with a virus for a few days. It was nothing serious, just a general listlessness and sore head. Fortunately it didn't deter him accompanying me to an Astro Event put on by Dark Sky Scotland at the Balfour Lecture Theatre down at the Botanics on Saturday afternoon. We had a half-hour in an inflatable planetarium, a hemisphere about 6m across getting a star talk; a lecture in the theatre where someone made a "comet" from water, soot, sand, Worcester sauce ("organic molecules") and dry ice; and then the chance to make and fire paper rockets outside in the gardens.

Sean loved it and it was great to see him engaged and confident to shout out answers like "Saturn!" and that one of the meteorites was rough and one was smooth. We got to handle the two meteorites, one of which was rock and the other, much heavier, was metallic. As Stuart the lecturer pointed out, these would easily be the oldest things we will ever handle in our lives, being about 4.5 billion years old. We shared a hot chocolate afterwards. I always love getting some time alone with the boys and Sean is now old enough to enjoy these sort of events.

My "Finn time" was Saturday morning when we went swimming at Loanhead. He mostly enjoys just playing in the baby pool with the toys but does a little bit of kicking when I hold him and seems unworried about the lack of armbands. He is wearing goggles for some of the time too.

Lesley and Stuart minded the boys on Saturday evening, so that Sharon and I could head through to Glasgow to see Frankie Boyle at the Carling Academy. He certainly is a no-holds-barred comic and it was good to get a night out and a good laugh with my dear wife, something we don't seem to get enough of these days.

Yesterday we found a new playpark for the boys. Seven Acre Park is past Braids driving range by Alwnickhill Road and has a fine vista north to the city of Edinburgh. The downside of the open views was exposure to a biting easterly wind. It didn't stop Rowan from enjoying a great run around a playpark under his own steam: climbing steps, crawling through tunnels and stuttering down slides (aluminium slides are just rubbish!). Rowan has had some dreadful teething nappies of late, far worse than the other two ever had, and was a little out of sorts over the weekend. He badly needs a haircut: his mop of locks is just engulfing his head.