I also visited the National Museum of Scotland which is hiding behind some buildings at the top end of the Royal Mile. It is a grand modern museum, free to enter and I think it's first class. I visited the national museum in New Zealand: called Te Papa and it's rubbish, but I can't fault the one in Edinburgh. As it's so big, I only managed to look through the prehistory section, which is basically Scotland before the Romans. There I managed to tag along to a guided tour given by Angus Mackay. He took us around the basement which is a big stash of prehistoric items that have been found around Scotland, in fields, in peat bogs and on beaches. There's a lot to see. Scotland was under ice until around 10,000bc, when it melted and then the forests slowly began to move northwards. Angus demonstrated the standard divisions of stone-age, bronze-age and iron-age by examining axe-heads. However he was always pointing out how strange it was that some of the items should have been in Scotland in that era: there was no natural tin in Scotland, nor gold, nor amber, nor yew, so how did they get imported?, and from where? We can reasonably conclude that there was a big trading network in prehistoric times, and that the European Trading Block was functioning long before the locals could write.
There seem to be two or three free guided tours per day, which is the only way anyone can reasonably come to learn about such a huge collection of artifacts. I shall draw the reader's attention to the Lewis chesspieces which have been copied in vast quantities, and I'm sure the reader would recognize them. They were probably carved in the twelth century, when the outer hebrides where inhabited by Vikings. The pieces were found on the isle of Lewis in 1831.
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I went to Edinburgh zoo. The clever people have placed it on a south-facing slope, so it benefits from more sunshine. It's quite a steep slope however, and these days you can't expect people to walk up hills because they're too lazy or unfit. So the zoo runs a little van up to the top of the hill, and you can meander down at your leisure. It's a small, compact zoo and they have an interesting collection of wildlife. At time of writing, it's the only zoo in the UK containing koala or polar bears. There is an enclosure for scottish wildcats which is also good.
The polar bear is called Mercedes, and she's being moved soon to their highland wildlife park in Aviemore. They are, with help from the army, building a 1.6 hectare home for her which will be more suitable than her tiny little place in Edinburgh. I'm sure the tourists in Aviemore will love to see her.
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I was surprised to see quite a lot of species from far warmer climes, like those that roam the great African plains, as I would think it too cold in Edinburgh for these creatures, like rhino, African patched dogs, zebra, lesser kudo. I even saw Kirk's Dik-dik here. These are antelopes the size of a poodle, ie tiny. They are native to countries like Kenya which are warm all year. Such a small creature must really feel the cold of the scottish winter. They also have wallabies from Australia, and Malasian Tapir. The zoo does a good thing in penguins however, which are able to laugh at anything the scottish climate has to offer. There seem to be three large penguin enclosures, containing King, Gentoo and Rockhopper penguins. I like the way you can watch the penguins swimming through the glass, indeed they will come over to you and seem to be as curious at you as you are of them.
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Anyone with a camera can easily spend a day here photographing the animals, there are lots of them, and catching them in a suitable pose takes ages. The only other thing I'll say about the zoo is that it, thankfully, provides some climbing-frames for children. The idiot parents love to bring their young children here, and I can say quite categorically that their children show absolutely no interest in, nor understanding of, the animals in the zoo. They just want to go and play on the climbing-frame. That suits me fine.
I can think of a good place their children would love: it's the brass-rubbing centre at Trinity Apse, which is close to the High St. There they have a variety of brasses; you select one and they tape paper over it and give you crayons for you to colour it as you please. I had a great time there copying a medieval frieze. It seems the council want to close it down, which would be a veritable shame; I rather think they should advertise it more. It deserves to thrive.
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That was the end of Edinburgh for me. Not enough time, I felt, but if I was going to have any chance of getting around Scotland before the snow, I had to get onto the road again.