Edinburgh

Hi everyone!! We spent four great nights in Edinburgh with the hospitable Rose family. It was funny to hear the accents change on the train as we moved further and further north from London - as people got on and off the train.

On our first day we climbed to the top of the formidable Arthur's Seat (hill) for a view of the city. The volcanic formations reminded us of the Port Hills / Banks Pensinsula, although the medieval city in view was much different from anything you would see in NZ! The old buildings of the city centre (built without gap on either side) are all made from the same material and are in the same style, so that from far away they all become one huge 'wall' of buildings. Together with the impressive castle, it makes for a dramatic skyline.

We visited the Castle on our second day and spent a long time looking around. Some areas were fenced off for preparing fireworks for Sunday night to celebrate the end of the Edinburgh International Festival (unfortunately we left on Sunday morning so couldn't see them). Reuben also ingeniously realised that instead of paying for two audio guides, we can use our headphone adaptor for our mp3 player and our spare headphones so that we can both listen to the one audio guide. Is this cheapskate scottish, dutch or just plain brilliant?!!!

Some other things that we really enjoyed in Edinburgh are: the Ron Mueck exhibition (look at http://www.nationalgalleries.org/mueck/highlights.html for an idea of his intriguing works, the Nederalands Dans Theater performance (see http://www.eif.co.uk/G73_Video_Clips.php for video clips of Sh-Boom and Silent Screen) - both very impressive, and a good old movie night seeing 'Nacho Libre'! - a very funny movie!!

We also visited the nearby Falkirk Wheel - a charmingly simple solution (as with all engineering solutions of course!!) to the problem of connecting two canals of varying levels (c.115 feet) together. It was built in 2003 and won many awards, and uses the Archimedes principle of displacement. We will post some photos later so you can see what we are talking about - the computer we are currently using does not have a USB port so we can't connect our camera to get the photos off.

Thanks to the Roses we had some good Scottish food - particularly haggis and neeps (which Reuben took a liking to), and experienced a local pub quizz night (where we were absolutely useless with all the UK trivia).