A day out

As we've noted previously, the Scots take their holidays seriously. Again, I rely on a photo from the internet (though we took a few as well) to best show the scene. This is a photo taken from Light On night, when the city turns on all the lights around the Mound and Princes Street, as well as the big Christmas tree on the Mound itself. Of course there are fireworks-- the Scots are quite big on fireworks. We missed the actual moment (though I was walking home about 15 minutes before the event), because of kids' activities in Stockbridge, but next year we'd plan to hang around and see the lights go on and perhaps even the fireworks.


This is Princes Street Gardens East-- a grassy rose-garden most of the year, cleared once in a while for special events (like the World Archery Championships in September), but now completely built up into a winter carnival. As Lynn pointed out, we do fairs like this America, we just don't do them in the middle of winter at night. The Ferris Wheel is lit up, there is a shiny golden carousel, various other rides (including a child's roller-coaster), a big ice-skating rink, and so on. We took the kids last night and they rode the teacups-- but it really was quite chilly (though many of the Scots demonstrated their fortitude by going without gloves and, in some cases, jackets).




It was actually a relatively big day yesterday, especially for Taran. He and I went to the Central Children's Library, which was quite warm and pleasant, though nothing like a library in the States-- it was smaller than the children's area at Sun Prairie Library, for example. Then we had lunch at Snax Cafe, Taran's favorite restaurant, just off campus. It's really a local student burger/breakfast place, with very cheap food.



But the big treat was going to see a local production of Dahl's The BFG. It was a wonderful play and Taran loved it. The bad giants were really well done, and they used a variety of neat, simple stage effects to deal with the challenges of staging a book that included a 20ft tall giant. I'll post some other photos and Taran's enthusiasm soon. We even got a picture of Taran with Sophie (who turned out to be from Oregon).