Camera Obscura

Camera Obscura is Edinburgh's oldest visitor attraction, that sits on the Royal Mile, just down from the Castle. It's a five floor building of illusions & all sorts of trickery, that I've always thought looked super cool, but it seemed like too much of a touristy activity to do myself. Is that weird? I think that's weird. Anyway, it's one of the places that has long been on my list of "oh, I should probably try to do that one day", but I didn't really ever think I'd get round to it....

Until, my moment to play finally arrived with an I Spy Edinburgh invite - a Google City Experts takeover, described as the ultimate schooltrip for grown-ups.

And it was FUN!

Photo by Chris Scott

 The whole place is packed with all sorts of puzzley, bewildering fun. There's a mirror maze! A vortex tunnel! (which is AMAZING, but surprisingly difficult to walk through). An Ames Room, which magically shrinks you (I can't quite get my head around how this works), all sorts of optical illusions and fancy lights and weirdo mirrors, and just millions of things to play with.

If you are a big kid who likes talking millions of photos, you will LOVE it.

We played until we were dizzy (and needed to lie down). I don't know if I could handle it with millions of tiny kids around, but this is the nice thing about Lates-style events getting so popular - adults get to play too!

If you want to come along to events like this, it's really easy - just sign up to Google City Experts. Basically, if you upload reviews & photos of places in your city, then you can join the program and get all sorts of special stuff (including event invites).

There's just been another City Experts event in Edinburgh, held in partnership with the Science Festival (good choice, guys!) which was a massive space party, and it was BRILLIANT. I do like it when work and fun combine! I'll blog about this post-festival, when I'm a little less knackered - I've only got six days to go...