Edinburgh

Tuesday 12th August
Scotland has welcomed me with fantastic weather... wet and absolutely freezing! I knew it would be cooler in Scotland but WOW! I am most certainly not packed for this kind of weather.
Still, I got up and jumped on a walking tour which was really good. Saw some of the 'old city' and got lots of history and stories (including a few Harry Potter locations!).
Because I wasn't quite frozen enough, I thought I might as well continue on and visited the Edinburgh Castle. I did a tour so got all of the history and stories behind it all. There is so much there and it has a good mix of Royal and Military history etc.
Tonight I thought I would get into the Fringe festival and found a free comedy show. It was ok, nothing ground breaking but had a few laughs.

Wednesday 13th August
The Fringe Festival is in full swing and there are so many people around, half of which are leafleters promoting their shows. I think I've already been given over 100 flyers! After soaking up some of the festival atmosphere I found half price tickets to one of the city Underground tours as well as for a comedian my tour guide from yesterday recommended.
The Underground tour was ok, we went down into the vaults underneath the city from back in the day but this was specifically not a ghost tour so it ended up being a little boring. Having said that though, I'm pretty sure I have a photo of an evil spirit on my camera!!! Will post when I can but I've showed a few people and most have been freaked out. So maybe not quite as boring as I thought.
The comedian was pretty average, that's the problem with sooo many shows on, there's no guarantee on quality (& this one was recommended!)

I have some nice people staying in my dorm (in particular a couple of Germans) so we all went out to watch the Military Tattoo fireworks from the bridge. They were short but pretty impressive, I would have liked to have gone to the Tattoo but you have to get tickets a fair way in advance and my trip wasn't that organised.

Thursday 14th August
Decided to check out a Fringe theatre piece (rather than comedy), so actually used one of the thousands of flyers I've received and saw an adaptation of Oliver Twist set in WWII. It was relatively ameature but I enjoyed it... an interesting link between the 2.
After that I tried another stand up show but again wasn't overly impressed.
So back to the theatrical performances tonight. This one was recommended by my German roommates and was really good! My favourite show of the Fringe.

Friday 15th August
I thought I should probably see a bit more of Edinburgh rather than just the Fringe stuff so I walked down to Holyrood Palace (the current Royal Palace for the Royal family went they visit Scotland). I didn't go in but had a look and saw the beautiful landscape behind it (which comes out of nowhere right in the middle of the city) aka 'Arthur's Seat'.
In the arvo I checked out the National Museum of Scotland. It's a big museum with lots of different exhibitions. I was a bit over all the history stuff so spent more time in the good old animal, geological and communications exhibitions. The museum also has a pretty good view over the city, a nice little bonus. And last but of course not least, I found Dolly (the cloned sheep)!!! Randomly placed in the middle of a kids hands on exhibition!

Tonight I had dinner with Rachel and Ryan, they have just got back from their Honeymoon so great timing to be able to catch up with Rachel after so long.