Edinburgh Scotland

We caught a Ryan Air flight from Frankfurt Hahn to Edinburgh Scotland for our week long trip to the UK!

  First stop was Edinburgh Scotland where we were greeted by the lovely lady above in true UK fashion! 

We headed for the Royal Mile to check out this Optical Illusion Museum I had read about online. We ended up buying tickets to enter even though it was a little expensive…..but we are so glad we did!  It was so much fun! 

Do you see the word OPTICAL or ILLUSION below:

      

These rooms were so weird!  We had lots of fun taking pictures….

Okay so I may or may not have gotten a little side tracked at this color light room playing with my elongated shutter speed.  Like as in 30 minutes of sidetracked…the rest of the kids were way ready for me to move on, but I was having sooooo much fun!

   

A definite highlight was this color tunnel.  The colors were spinning all around you while you walked down the bridge.  It makes you feel so dizzy that you can barely walk straight. 

After the mirror maze, we headed out into the streets again to take in more of the Royal Mile. 

 

The next morning we rode the train in to tour Castle Hill and the famous Edinburgh Castle.  This was during Festival time so they were setting up a lot of seating and getting ready for nightly events. 

Last time Jared and I were here, I was 7 months pregnant with Cole and we got pictures here then too!  Wow how time flies. 

 

After checking out the castle, we walked down the mile to take in some of the atmosphere.  Its really a fun place….

We meandered down until we found the “Birthplace of Harry Potter” where JK Rowling use to go and drink coffee and write down here stories and ideas for characters. 

We headed to the National Museum so Carter could see these Lewis Chessmen pieces that he’s been studying at school.  He was super excited to see them.  This is what Wikipedia has to say about them: The Lewis Chessmen (or Uig Chessmen, named after the bay where they were found) are a group of 78 12th-century chess pieces, most of which are carved in walrus ivory. Discovered in 1831 on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland,^[1] they may constitute some of the few complete, surviving medieval chess sets, although it is not clear if a set as originally made can be assembled from the pieces. They are owned and exhibited by the British Museum in London, which has 67 of the original pieces, and the Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, which has the remaining 11 pieces.

 

After wandering through the green areas and parks near the Sir Walter Scott Monument, we took some pictures and called it a day!  Scotland is so cool we need to come back and explore more.  The Scott Monument is a Victorian Gothic monument to Scottish author Sir Walter Scott. It stands in Princes Street Gardens in Edinburgh, opposite the Jenners department store on Princes Street and near to Edinburgh Waverley Railway Station, which is named for one of Scott's novels.