Edinburgh -- Once More

So, apparently there are a lot of programming languages related conferences in Edinburgh. I have been there once, twice... and I just came back from my third time there in the past year. You can be sure the kitties didn't want me to go:

This time, however, I only gave myself two actual non-travel days, to go to the LFMTP and LfSA workshops at the big FLoC mega-conference. This didn't give me much time for fun. In fact, mostly I stayed in my room working on a paper:

although I looked longingly out the window:

But it was not all boring. I did get some awesome, spicy Indian food in my room:

and, as a treat, I passed by a place on my walk to the conference that sold gooseberries!

I had never had gooseberries before, so I got some, and they were delicious! Kind of like grapes, but different.

And, of course, no trip to Scotland is complete without a dinner with beer; the food was from the dorm cafeteria (they put us up in dorms at the University of Edinburgh), but the beer made it all better:

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The Single Most Important Day of My Life

I am a penguin fanatic. See exhibit A:

We own no fewer than 3 stuffed penguins, one of which is a 3 foot king penguin who sleeps in bed with us--his name is Captain Duvet. So when we found on that the Edinburgh Zoo has the largest penguin exhibit and the largest population of captive penguins in the world, we had to go.

The Gentoo penguins had just begun their nesting season, so we got to watch some amazing nesting and coupling behavior.

There was even a baby King penguin.

The most amazing part of the visit, however, was the penguin parade. I was a little bit worried about the parade because zoos sometimes make me feel sad if the animals don't look well-treated or well-adjusted. I had visions of keepers parading the penguins around for the pleasure of spectators. Also, I expected all kinds of fan fare that would make these little birds anxious. I am happy to report that the parade was very well-handled. All of the spectators lined up along a path and were warned not to touch the penguins as they walked by (they bite). Then the gates were opened and any penguins who chose to walk the "parade route" between one part of the enclosure and another part were allowed to go at their own pace, closely supervised by the keepers.

They get higher parade participation in the Summer months, but we got a group of 8 Gentoo penguins who walked the parade that day. Needless to say, it was a rare opportunity to see these beautiful birds up close.



Click here for more photos of our visit to the Edinburgh Zoo.

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Edinburgh Redux

Eddy recently traveled to St. Andrews (birthplace of golf) to give a talk. What better time to revisit Edinburgh?!

We spent a fabulous day at the Edinburgh Zoo. We took in a couple of museums and loads of shops. We ate way more pies and bangers and drank way more beer than I care to remember. We bought a lot of scotch from our favorite store.

And we also hugged quite a few statues of dogs.

On our last day, we took a spontaneous trip down to the ocean and saw the lovely Leith district of Edinburgh.

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A Visit with Nessie

We recently visited Edinburgh! I was there for only 3 short days, while Eddy stayed longer for the ICFP conference and workshops. Our first (jet lagged) day in the city, we wandered around and saw some Edinburgh sites. The first thing we learned is that the city is built on a steep mountain. Here's a typical Edinburgh view complete with incline. One of my goals while in Scotland was to eat pub food for every meal. While this goal lasted a mere 2 days, we did enjoy tasty pub vittles including the Scottish treat of Haggis with tatties (potatoes) and neeps (turnips). Here's a picture of me taking my first (and only) bite.















Day two we took a tour of the beautiful Scottish countryside on our way to Loch Ness. Here's a picture of me sleeping on the bus. Although every moment was packed with breathtaking scenery including purple heather mountains, rainbows and white woolly sheep, we were en route for a total of 10 hours, so we both dozed off just a little.

Once at Loch Ness, we explored Urqhart Castle, stepped into the loch and took a short cruise. While we didn't come back with any tacky Nessie nick-nacks, we did get Eddy's picture with some curious souvenir shirts we spotted back in Edinburgh.

On our last day in the city, we visited the Edinburgh Book Festival, walked the Royal Mile, and found the most amazing paper store on the face of the earth. We ended the day by attending the Fringe Festival--the largest arts festival in the world. We saw a couple of stand up comedians, one of whom spoke about the history of obscenities.

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