Edinburgh, Scotland

We arrived in Edinburgh close to midnight and bussed to the city center for the short walk to our flat. The first thing I noticed about the city was the differences in elevation because everything has been built on hills. With streets crossing hundreds of feet above others and little stairways all over the city to change levels accordingly, the layout of this city is incredible. Not to mention the beauty of the Old Town area where we spent most of our time, which is covered with medieval architecture. We rented a flat for our time here and it could not have been more perfect. Located just a few blocks off of the Royal Mile and in the middle of several Fringe Festival events, we were able to walk every single place we went in Edinburgh. Upon arrival we were amazed not only by its location but also the style of the 18th century flat which was decorated with several city maps from different time periods, showing the growth of the city, as well as many photos of Scottish royalty, writers and historic idols.

With the city streets still being very lively at 2:30 am, we found a street vendor selling bratwurst and had that as our first meal in Scotland before turning in for the night. The first morning we walked down George IV Bridge to see the Elephant House where JK Rowling wrote much of the second, third and fourth Harry Potter books but being overly crowded with tourists we walked across the street to Caffe Lucano for coffee and breakfast. 

We then made our way down the Royal Mile, shopping around in little boutiques and watching street performers. From there we crossed over the Waverley Bridge to Princes Street in New Town and popped into a grocery for a bottle of wine, which we took to the Princes Street Gardens and enjoyed while people watching in the park and looking at Edinburgh's beautiful natural architecture framing the castle. 

During the month of August, the Fringe Festival takes over Edinburgh which is the largest arts festival in the world and is comparable to SXSW in that it's a multi-venue, city sweeping festival but in this case primarily theater and comedy. Some of the parks in town are transformed into outdoor venues for the festival and we found a great picnic table in the middle of George Square Gardens to finish our bottle of wine and get a first glimpse at the festival. After a quick meal at the Indian restaurant below our flat, we began our trek to the castle for Saturday's later showing of the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo. With performances by several military bands, bagpipers and dancers, I can best describe this as being comparable to the opening ceremony at the Olympics, however every group performing is either representative of a particular time of importance in Scottish history or of another culture that was helpful to the Scots and it all takes place in the esplanade of the Edinburgh Castle illuminated with lighting effects throughout the entire performance. It was essentially 2 hours of being in complete awe followed by grande finale firework display, and one of the most wonderful experiences of my life. 

On our second day, we grabbed coffee and breakfast at Brew Lab, a trendy little cafe below our flat, and then walked to the meeting place for the Potter Walking Tour. For the next hour and a half we walked the streets of Edinburgh waving wands around, casting spells on pedestrian crosswalks to let us pass and visiting several of the places that inspired JK Rowling in writing Harry Potter. 

After the tour, we took a short break in a coffee house called Booze + Coffee where we appropriately had Prosecco and espresso. For lunch we walked to The Outsiders, a restaurant I would recommend to anyone visiting Edinburgh for it's remarkable style, food, price and location with George IV Bridge on one side and the back resting on top of a hill overlooking the city with great views of the castle, several streets and Princes Street Gardens. That afternoon we visited Camera Obscura and World of Illusions museum with several optical illusions and interactive art covering 5 floors which lead to the top of the building where you find Camera Obscura, a three lens and mirror combination which projects real time images onto a circular wooden screen in a dark room and served as a citywide surveillance camera when it was first designed in the mid 1800's.

 We grabbed afternoon cocktails and Thai food then walked to the the Udderbelly area of the Fringe Festival, marked by a massive upside down purple cow that hosts the largest stage of the festival. After a recommendation from our Potter tour guide, we had purchased tickets to a show called Shit-Faced Shakespeare which is a completely serious rendition of Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona with one randomly chosen cast member who is completely shitfaced for the show. On this particular night, the actress playing Julia/Sebastian finished two bottles of champagne on her own before the performance. 

As the show was introduced, random members of the audience were assigned a gong to ring and a bugle to blow whenever they wanted during the show to make the actress drink more and another person was assigned a bucket...just in case. While all other actors completely stuck to character, you could hear the drunk actress with her microphone on backstage mumbling ridiculous things, hiccuping and requesting cigarette breaks. She could remember some of her lines but would fade off into speaking in more modern words and calling other cast members knobs and dickheads for interrupting her or bursting into song with Outkast lyrics having nothing to do with the play. Occasionally she would request to start over because "this part is really fucking important and that was rubbish" or she would insist on riding on props as they were rolled off stage. At one point she crawled under another actress's dress and narrated as though she was her vagina. It was all somewhat vulgar but absolutely hysterical and I have never laughed so much in a theater. By the time the show ended, we agreed we had really done Edinburgh right and went back to the flat to pack for our early flight the next morning.