Long Days

Faithful readers will no doubt recall my Dark Days post in early December, when we received just over 7 hours of daylight. They were indeed dark days. As we approach the summer solstice, just over 4 weeks away, the days are noticably longer. According to this site, we'll receive about 16 3/4 hours of daylight today. In practical terms, that means that the sun is rising at around 4:45am, and setting after 9:30pm. I'll admit this is quite nice in the evening, but it is making it difficult to sleep in. Even for Japhur, who seems to think he'll get fed at 7am now instead of 8am; though he'll eventually adjust. In a month, the sun will be setting after 10pm, though the sky will remain relatively bright for the whole night. Looks like our summer visitors should expect some long days!

Edinburgh Castle

Edinburgh Castle

We finally made it to the Edinburgh Castle, the one we used to live beneath, the one we see practically everyday, the one we hadn't gotten around to visiting yet.

It was not what we expected. From the front gates it looks like you walk straight into a very large building from the parking lot (which used to be the "killing grounds"). But in fact it is just a large gate with a gate-house (should have been obvious) perched on top. (Apparently this is where you get married if you sign up to get married in the "castle".) What we found beyond the gate was a cobblestone road that winds spiral fashion up to the highest point of the extinct volcano that the "castle" is built on. There are several buildings with various functions (not all of them tourist functions) along this road. (Some of the buildings are still in active use by the military). I should also mention that for each of the four courtyards that the road leads you through there is a souvenir shop.

The views from the Castle are amazing--who needs a CN tower when you have a castle atop a volcano. If you click on the photo above you can see our album from the visit.

The Scottish war memorial is perched on the very top of the volcano at the heart of the spiral. It is a chapel with little cubby-holes for each of the Scottish battalions, each cubby hole has a book or two in which all their war dead are listed from World War I to the present. Strangely enough, there are also books of Canadian war dead from battalions that had some sort of Scottish association--either a formerly Scottish place name, like Renfrew and Lanark, or were "Highlanders" or "Scottish". I know nothing about military history ("battalion" is probably even the wrong word), but I found it strange to find Canadians listed at the Scottish memorial. But then there is a very strong connection between Scotland and Canada that we hadn't realised until we got here.

We had a guided tour (free with admission and about every 20 minutes) and he told us the Castle had always been handy in a fight but that the monarchy were not too fond of it because it is cold and blustery. And I can attest that it was much colder and windier up there on the hill than it was down below in the town.

Mike's Visit to Cambridge

I went to Cambridge on Tuesday and gave a talk at the University of Cambridge. It was another in a series of talks that I'm giving on my research. Without a doubt, Cambridge is a beautiful city. I planned my route to take the 45 minute walk from the train station to the University. It was a gorgeous day, making for a great walk through the city. The Computer Laboratory, where I gave my talk, is away from the older portions of the University in a more rural part of town and surrounded by open fields. They're close to the veterinary school hospital as well, so that there's a field with several horses directly across from the the computer lab.

Click on the above picture to see the rest of the photos I took.

Penguin Parade

Alette and I recently became members of the Edinburgh Zoo. It's about a 20-minute walk & bus from our house, making for quite a convenient visit. Unlike some other zoos I've been to, most of the animals seem to have quite spacious surroundings and seem relatively comfortable (at least as far as I can tell). But I'm not here to blog about the zoo; I'm here to tell you of the Penguin Parade.

At 2:15pm everyday, the gate to the penguin enclosure is opened, and eager penguins line up to participate in a 5-minute stroll amongst the humans. The ritual apparently started when the cage door was left open by accident, way back in 1951, and some curious penguins made a break for it. On Sunday, there were 15 penguins that formed the parade, all gentoo penguins, all originally from the Falkland Islands. The zoo has over 100 gentoo penguins (almost 200 penguins altogether), apparently they do well here because the weather here is quite similar to that in the Falkland Islands: i.e. cold, gray, and rainy.

Here's a link to a video of the parade (that we didn't take). And a video of the knighting of one of the king penguins.

Click on the photo above to see the rest of our penguin parade pictures. There are also photos of the beautiful views from the zoo, and of vicunas.