So it's 7.20am on Monday 28th April 2014 and I've woken up to a sunny morning in Edinburgh, the 6th city in my UK Cityscape Project to be the first person to  document and photograph all 69 cities of the UK.

I've had a pretty good nights sleep at the Old Waverley Hotel on Princes Street, I still can't quite believe how lucky I was to find that this hotel had a massive discount on lastminute.com  The staff here have been lovely even though we were only staying for 1 night, we've a great view of the Scott Monument and our room faces onto my favourite department store Jenners. I'd always wanted to stay at this hotel, just for the views really and I thought i'd won the jackpot when the promised internal room actually happened to be one with a view, some of the front facing rooms which look directly onto the Scott Monument and Princes Street are definitely worth paying a little more if you are in Edinburgh for the whole Scottish experience.

So, what can I tell you about Edinburgh?

Well it's of course home to 2 very famous Pandas who live at Edinburgh Zoo, no time to go and visit them on this trip sadly but I'll be back with the girls in the summer for our fun trip!  Oh and just a warning, click on that link and you'll be transported to the Edinburgh Zoo panda cam, you may spend the day doing not very much else ;)

Apart from the Pandas -

Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, population is around half a million or was when it was last counted in 2012.  It's home to the Queens official Scottish residence the Palace of Holyroodhouse, I've never actually been inside, the next time I must visit!

Edinburgh is a city steeped in so much history your head might just explode if you try to absorb it all at once, it's not a city you can just spend one day in, I've been visiting for many many years and still haven't seen all of it, there's just so much to do whether you have kids or not, to name a few things there's the National Museum of Scotland, the National Gallery, Dynamic Earth, the royal yacht Britannia, the botanic gardens, and of course Edinburgh castle a place I can finally say I've visited, just 1 note about Edinburgh castle, it's amazing, however it's also got a very expensive coffee shop, if you're on a visit you might want to avoid the £3 cup of coffee and the £3 cake, just because they're expensive does not mean they're the best coffee and cake you'll ever experience ;)

And so onwards with our photographic journey, lets enjoy slightly misty murky Edinburgh, at one point I thought we would have to give up as you couldn't even see your own nose never mind a cityscape but lucky it cleared a little later on in the day.

 I have Abigail joining me on this leg of the journey as she's still got another week left of her Easter holidays even though it seems like Easter was weeks ago, if you're wondering what the heck she's doing, well I think she was either trying to hold up the ice-cream van or she's being a tour guide.

yes I think we all wish we could do this to our beloved Tweens every now and then.

and so that was Edinburgh, one of my favourite cities and I suspect when I get to the end of the project it will still remain as one of my favourite cities, everywhere you go in Edinburgh there's beauty to find, the magnificent layered landscapes our cities provide is really in evidence in Edinburgh and although the layers combine the old and the new it's really the old which stands out more than anything else, inhale and you'll breath in thousands of years of history, so much so you better hope you don't get some stuck up your nose!

and so onwards we go on this crazy journey, we leave on a train for Glasgow this morning, luckily it's only a half hour journey and luckily for me I love train journeys.

If you would like to grab yourself a pre-order of the book, find out more about the project or sponsor my campaign you can do so here

If you're a business and would like to discuss corporate sponsorship and working together to show how magnificent your business is in your city you can email me here

and if you would like to purchase any of the cityscapes from any of the cities you can drop me an email or there's a selection in my fine art Etsy store Philomenas Boutique

24 hours in Glasgow with the kids, things to do, places to see

So Monday beckoned and I realised we were into the second week of the summer holidays and I'd not spent as much time with the kids as I'd have liked, I love my job but it can make for some really crazy hours, a split second decision was made and I quickly booked some train tickets and a hotel through Late Rooms and just an hour later Looby, Abigail and I were on the train to Glasgow, now we usually escape to Edinburgh but Glasgow has been somewhere I've wanted to explore ever since Abigail and I spent a day there a couple of years ago.

So 24 hours to enjoy Glasgow with Looby (8) and Abigail (10), we wanted to cram in as much as we possibly could, here's what we got up to in photos....

we stayed at the Grand Central Hotel which is literally on the edge of Central Station, if you have kids it's perfect as you get off the train and voila, there's your hotel!

Although this building is now a co-op, the architecture is from Venice, it's beautiful even if it is now a supermarket.

No trip to Glasgow with the kids would be complete without a trip to Hamleys, yes it's not just in London, it's based in the corner of the St Enoch centre, Abigail and Looby loved Hamleys!

while in store a helpful young chap (well sort of) called Snudge did some magic tricks with her new set of Muppets playing cards, Abigail is not a massive fan of magic as she's someone who needs to know how everything is done so it kills her when someone does something she really doesn't understand.

The Glasgow Museum of Modern Art

One of our favourite things to do in big cities are go on the bus tours, for £22 for the 3 of us we got a 24 hour pass to jump on and off the bus as much as we wanted, the first time round we did the complete tour, it was a great opportunity for me to be able to sit and take photos and Looby tested out her new binoculars!

The Armadillo, part of the S.E.C.C

The Glasgow Science Centre, more on that later....

The Glasgow Botanic Gardens, more on those in a moment too!

Our tour guide, lovely but mad as a box of frogs, very entertaining!

The worlds tallest Cinema is in Glasgow, bet you didn't know that!!

This fountain is the largest of it's kind in the world, it's just been moved from the other side of the park at a cost of £4 million, not entirely sure what made it worth that but it's a lovely fountain.

The Italia Building with Italia on the top

So todays first stop was the Glasgow Botanic Garden, home to the national collection of Orchids, it's the perfect place to go with the kids, they have plenty of places to run around, a play area, a childrens garden and lots of fabulously unusual plants

and so our second stop today was the Glasgow Science centre, the only museum in Glasgow you actually have to pay for, it cost £33.98 to get in for the 3 of us but that included the planetarium show which was brilliant

in reality I think you could easily spend an entire day in the science centre, in the summer it's open every day in the summer from 10-5 and there is so much to do, we just really rushed about the place because we had to be back on the train at 5pm

I hate when photographers take these type of photos but if I hadn't there would have been no photos of me in Glasgow with the kids!

Giant Abigail or a very small room?

I think a giant Abigail is enough to terrify most people so I'll leave this blog post now....

Glasgow is a super place to take the kids and you know what, there's 20 museums owned by Glasgow City Council and every single one of them is free, you could spend a week and not have to pay a single admission fee, next time we go back I'm planning a week of free activities, I don't think they'll be bored for even 1 minute!