Edinbourrée
On August 20th, Lauren and I started the day back on the Royal Mile. Near the Castle is an old tourist attraction called Camera Obscura. You pay for a ticket, climb up through five floors of crazy optical illusions, and then pile into an archaic dark room (camera obscura is Latin for ‘dark room’) with about ten other people. Everyone stands around a big round white table while a guide manipulates the giant lens atop the tower above. The lens projects an image onto the white table and it is like being inside a camera (mostly because you actually are inside the predecessor to the modern camera.) The guide moves the lens around and tells you a little about the city as he works his way around the 360° view. The whole device was built back in the 1820’s but it is still as entertaining as ever.
We ate our giant vegan potato lunch in a park near the Royal Scottish Gallery and then went inside and studied the Andy Warhol exhibit.
Later, we dined at yet another vegetarian find near the King’s Playhouse where we saw a performance by the Scottish Ballet. The ballet was arranged into three parts. The first was designed around music by Radiohead, which was probably about as hardcore as ballet can get. The second was some sort of really modern minimalist ballet that had the whole audience rustling around with at least a mild case of boredom (the very novice ballet patrons like me came down with the boredom Ebola virus, while true dance aficionados like Lauren suffered only a common boredom cold.) The third part was a much more lively, traditional ballet that regained everyone’s full attention. Afterwards, we fouette-d our way home.
Tags: Travel
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