Edinburgh Festival

The wife is part of a choir and was given the opportunity to sing at the Edinburgh Fringe - so I dutifully tagged along to visit the International Fringe Festival. We arrived on Saturday morning and had wander around the city.

Some classic landmarks - castle entrance. The heaving castle street looking down the royal mile. The statue of the Black watch … and looking over the National monument - but not the monument itself.

Here we have the Scottish Parliament, Holyrood Palace, Duke of Wellington statue and Salisbury crags (with a bit of the parliament building in the foreground). From our wandering, we like Edinburgh (or at least the touristy bits) - some lovely architecture, which hadn’t been ruined by bombing and poor replacements being built. The city was friendly, but almost every other shop seemed to be selling tartan and shortbread! - we were in the tourist sector to be fair. 

We then popped into a show - in a Brewdog pub. Where we saw the following:

The show was compared by Jurgen the German - who was a bit hit and miss, who introduced the 3 other artists. Cal Halbert was the best and we went to see him the following day - where he deserved to be seen by more than 10 people. We would have liked to have seen his evening show, but we had already booked stuff for the evenings. 

Saturday evening was taken up with the Military Tattoo up at the Castle. 

The theme of the show was Journeys - with a Naval focus - Royal Marines bands and US Navy colour party throwing around rifles with fixed bayonets, like majorettes throw batons. Lots fantastic choreography and music. 

Because we were at the last show of the evening - the lights were brilliant as well. A really good evening. 

I would recommend this as part of the Edinburgh Festival visit. 

On Sunday we went to see Cal Halbert in the morning, the good lady and I went for another wander and a trip to the National Museum of Scotland. 

This amble took in Greyfriars and other places - we also found the Mosque Kitchen, which was a great place to eat - very cafeteria in style, food slapped on the plate, but plenty of it and good value for money!

Sunday evening was a music evening - watching three shows by Night Owl Shows. 

These were Tribute acts, but really well done - we felt that in that Blondie was the best - energy, voice and story telling was really good - bloody great actually, then Kate Bush - great emotional songs, but to match Kate is a tall order for any singer and Amy Winehouse (the same girl who did Blondie), belted out some tunes to a packed out audience - so a great atmosphere - but I am not as familiar with the music. I would recommend watching these to anyone! Wanted to watch the Police and Sting show they had, but the timing just didn’t work. 

Monday was the big performance day for the other half - but we thought we would start it with something different - we went to see an all women (4 to be exact) performance of Macbeth. 

A good performance - easier to follow than the Michael Fasbender film I tried to watch a couple of months ago - you could actually hear what was being said. It took a little while to identify the character changes, as the actors were playing multiple roles. Worth the watch.

Then we headed down to Brewhemia - nice pub with lots of Czech beers on draft! One thing I noticed was larger was very popular in Edinburgh - not that many real ales about (although Keeno did send me a list of real ale pubs). 

The 30 minute gig in the pub went well - then we had some time to kill before the main event - the better half had a look around the surgeons museum, I had a look at a couple of games shops. 

A couple of pictures of the main event - the girls blasting out their tunes very well - I heard non-hangers on, saying it was a really good show, lots of fun. But now the show was over, the pressure was off … but we were knackered (a lot of walking) so went back to the hotel. The hotel was a Premier Inn Hub - and it was really good - they looked after our bags, on arrival and before leaving for a good few hours.  The all you could eat continental breakfast kept us going for most of the day - the room (although small) was ideal as we didn’t spend much time in it - another recommendation. 

Tuesday (our last day) saw us head up to Arthur’s Seat - for some amazing views. 

It was busy up there - probably because of the One Day film/Netflix series. Certain worth the climb. We then had a cup of tea at the Palace Cafe, another wander (I found another game/model shop … I’m not sure why I keep dong this, as I rarely buy anything - because there isn’t much I need to buy, and they are usually a fairly way off our track). Then we when to see Arthur Smith and Phil Nice in OOF! This was a nice show, remembering their early career at the Fringe (40 years ago), but also poignant as it addressed their split up as a double act and Arthur’s struggles with addiction. 

Then we trekked across the city to see 5 Mistakes that Changed History - this was really interesting show which discussed mistakes by or about Alexander the Great, Tomatoes, Annie Oakley, Winston Churchill (and something else) in an informative and amusing way. Another recommendation. Then we hot footed it back to the hotel - grabbing a meal with J&J and Evo & Al (with whom we had travelled up with and seen an number of shows with - and had be splendid company), before head to the airport and home. 

A very busy weekend, but I would recommend Edinburgh and the Fringe (but it is busy). 

Morts