I went there with my sister and her husband. [Ok, that's Claudia and Roberto. I've got some miffled remarks in the past, because they haven't been mentioned by name and especially Roberto felt like a second hand appendix, being always mentioned as "my sister's husband", as if he had no identity of his own. {Btw, you can spot him in one of the 'Hogmanay Crowd' pictures, holding a digital camera.} Anyway, the start of a new year seems like a good point to mention them explicitly.] The hotel we stayed at still had their christmas decoration standing, and they had a neat and fairly lazy (not to say lascivious) looking bear lying under the tree (see picture in upper left corner).
A fairly new attraction in Edinburgh is the 'Dynamic Earth' exhibition. (Which is also conveniently located next to Holyrood Park, in case you've gone to a Husky race there and needed some place to warm up...) Unfortunatly the exhibition can't quite make up its mind whether it's supposed to be an interactive teaching tool, an experience environment, a multimedia show, a ride or whatever. As a result, everything is a bit of a mix-up. Which is a bit frustrating, since all the elements are well done and presented. Worth visiting, but don't get your expectations up too high.
Another tourist attraction in Edinburgh is, of course, the Zoo. Also, since we've all bought ourself new cameras for christmas, it was a good place to play around with them and try things out. Which is the reason for all the animal pics on this page. (Ok, for all of them that don't show dogs.) Unfortunatly they have their main attraction, the daily penguin parade only in the summer months, so there are no pictures of that.
Back to the Hogmanay stuff. They had a street theatre afternoon in the center of the city. The best part was a group that moved around in huge metal tubes/spirals (looking like the ones that you put on the top of a stair and watch it going down step by step) and was nicely coreographed. Unfortunatly it didn't come out well in the photos. There was also the usual assortment of jugglers, musicians and oddly dressed and strange looking people.
On the big night itself we had a very good view of the fireworks, thanks to my sister (Claudia, remember?) who isn't too fond of moving in large crowds, so she secured a good place to stay and watch the castle rather early on. So we had an unobstructed view from Princess Street to the castle. After midnight I sort of drifted through the crowds for a while, giving and receiving lots of "Happy New Year!" wishes.
On New Year's Day they had "Huskies go to Holyrood", a husky race in Holyrood Park (actually the playing fields behind the Palace of Holyroodhouse). Turned out to be fun in a completely unexpected way. What I expected was a 'Ben Hur' style race with five or six sleds (or some wheeled equivalent) with eight to ten dogs in front of each competing in a race around Arthur's Seat (a huge hill from ancient lava) or something like that. What I got was series of one-on-one races with just two dogs in front of a (sort of) tricycle running just one round in a 400 yard oval. Some races only had one dog pulling the tricycle, which looked more like a convenient way to go walkies than a competition. So if everything fell short of expectations, why was it fun? Well, partly because there were clear skies, the sun was shining, everyone was in a good mood, but mostly because nobody took it very seriously. Instead of running around the course, most of the dogs enjoyed their 'moment in the spotlight' and most races were decided due to the fact that some dogs ran to the cordons to be petted, get their fur ruffled by the audience, greet other dogs, and didn't care much about following the track. Real crowd pleasers those dogs.
