Camera Obscura || Lifestyle

 Hellooo lovelies,

 I hope you're all having an amazing weekend so far! This weekend me and Gary decided to become tourists in our own city and take the day to explore starting with Camera Obscura. Camera Obscura is an optical illusions place at the top of the Royal Mile in Edinburgh which I guess you could call it an interactive museum? It has lots of illusions and fun things to do and it also has an open roof which gives spectacular views across Edinburgh. It's the main place that if you're visiting Edinburgh that you definitely need to give a visit because I've been twice now and I still love it! I think it would be a fabulous place to go on a first date because it would definitely get rid of any of that first date awkwardness and obviously it's a great place to go just to have a good time with your partner, friends or family!

 If you're wondering what these weird gloves are on our hands it's because they make you wear latex gloves before going in the mirror maze because it's so confusing and you do end up feeling the walls to try and get your way out!

Body Heat Map

The light tunnel proposes as the perfect venue for selfies ofcourseee

The view from the roof is breathtaking but obviously it would be a lot nicer on a sunny, clear day. You can see right across the city and even over the sea to Fife. Also on the roof is a little room where you go in in groups and get a talk from the tour guide who shows you around Edinburgh using mirrors and zooms in on people walking up the streets. You can actually watch everyone going about their business and you can even pick them up using sheets of paper and build bridges for the cars to go over. It's pretty clever!

Magic Mirrors

They have lots of these scary 3D pictures.

Coloured shadows picture

Double Trouble

Shrink and Grow!

 This tunnel is a new addition (since I was last there) to Camera Obscura and the actual platform stands still but the outside surroundings is colours spinning round in circles and it's quite funny because you end up being so dizzy and falling all over the place. The feeling can only be described like 'spinny room' (as I call it) after you've been drinking a little too much and you've gone to bed before it's worn off and the room sways and spins. So it was like spinny room x5!

 Okay so Camera Obscura may just have the cutest gift shop ever, it took great restraint not to buy all these adorable chocolate bars. Also the fact that I'm meant to be eating healthily may have helped me. My personal favourites have to be the love heart bar, Oreo one, Magic Stars and the Terry's chocolate orange one..they'd make a fabulous gift wouldn't they?! They also have a cute Autowed machine (if a little tacky) which there's apparently only two of and the other's in Las Vegas?? I'm sure I read that somewhere! So you get married on a machine and it gives you a little certificate and two rings except we never got a certificate but we did get our rings! Obviously its just a gimmick but we couldn't resist giving it a try!

My 'wedding' ring

Already a lot of street performers are out in preparation for the Edinburgh fringe festival. If you do want to visit Edinburgh then August is definitely the prime time to visit as the capital is at it's busiest with numerous shows each night and performers lining the Royal Mile all day.

St Giles Cathedral

  I love St Giles cathedral not only because its a beautiful building inside and out but because ever since my grandad died it's been tradition for my family to go and light a candle there in his memory. So whenever I'm passing I like to pop in and take a minute to light a candle, it's quite touching looking at all the candles that people have lit for the ones they love. There was also a wedding finishing as we arrived and they had a double decker bus for their wedding car which I thought was such a cute, quirky idea! P.S. how amazing would this place be as a wedding venue?! I couldn't take many pictures inside because you have to have a photography permit to take pictures but I did manage to take a snap of the candles.

 Before we stopped for our lunch we popped into the Fudge Kitchen to get some fudge for later because the Fudge Kitchen makes THE best fudge I have ever tasted. It was also a bit of a tradition for me, my mum and my little sister to pop in here every Summer holiday to get some 'Vanilla fudge'. I love how you get to see the people making them and they also give you tasty testers to try before you buy! They have all flavours from Strawberry Cream Cake fudge to Terry's Chocolate Orange fudge but my personal recommendations would be 'Toffee fudge' and 'Vanilla fudge'. Again if you're visiting Edinburgh make sure you give the Fudge Kitchen on the Royal Mile a visit!

 We then stopped off in a little cafe for lunch because we were staaaarving! I had a jacket potato with cheese and Gary had a cheeseburger and obviously since we were being stereotypical tourists for the day we had to have Irn Bru with it.

  We then stopped off at Patesserie Valerie to get Gary a cake for later. We have a few of these scattered about Edinburgh so I don't know if they're exclusive to Edinburgh or if they have them elsewhere but they do the nicest cakes. The atmosphere in their shop is lovely and if you take away your cake it's gift wrapped really prettily- typical beauty blogger, all about the presentation!

Then we came home and had homemade nachos!

  Definitely not the most healthy of days but it was so nice just to look around our home town from a tourists point of view because often we don't realise how nice the cities we live in are because we take it for granted. So I'd definitely recommend ALL of you to take the time to be a tourist in your own towns and cities and see what hidden treasures you can discover.

Previous Posts:-
Pure Zen || MAC Mondays
Health & Fitness Haul
Boohoo Haul

Lots of Love,

A x x x