August 10 - Edinburgh, UK

band watching

18 degrees, partly sunny – weather continues to be great, evening (11 degrees) was colder than the previous evenings

Today was very similar to the yesterday, in that we got to bed late the night before, so got a late start…left the room around 11, found tickets to a show, got some lunch and a pint, saw the show, back to the room for a nap and out for the evening.

One thing that was different was that as

soon as we left our hotel we heard music. We knew there was a band someplace and 10 steps later we saw what seemed like a high school band playing in a small ‘shed’, like a small open warehouse area of course with the requisite bar. There wasn’t really seating, a couple of rocking chairs, a few hay bales and that was it. And speaking of the bar I’m certain we haven’t been to any venue, small or large that hasn’t had a bar. And another thing about booze…everyone here drinks. OK, I’m sure not everyone does, but it seems like everyone does. It is about 11:30ish when we are seeing this band and everyone has a drink. Even the 2 older women have pints. After finding out that there was a bit of time left in the show, we got a drink and settled in to watch the end of the show. This group was really quite good, sadly it only lasted about 20 minutes.  Obviously they weren’t the best band in the world, but for a random encounter at 11:30 on a Wednesday morning they were awesome.

Next we were off to find the theatre for the afternoon’s show, get tickets and basically be sure we know where to go. Today’s afternoon show was a musical called “Title of Show” – about 2 writers trying to get their musical to Broadway. It was 10 pounds, 90 minutes and was pretty good. The venue held about 85 people.

There is a half price ticket booth here for some shows that I guess haven’t sold enough tickets and to encourage attendance. We know there was a show we wanted to see going for half so we head there to get tickets. Edinburgh is one hilly town, we went up an

incredibly steep hill and then back down again – a Scottish joke? Got the tickets no problem. There was a couple of hours before the show so we though we’d find the next theatre and get something to eat. Off we went…a different route, but guess what?? up a hill and down again. The problem was that once we got to the area where the show was, there weren’t many places to eat that we were interested in. This area was where the university was so that was interesting to see and it was also quite residential. There wasn’t the usual pub. There was a mosque, halal meat shops and the occasional coffee shop…hmmmmm, where to eat. We wandered and wandered. We weren’t starving, but didn’t really have much to do and the show wasn’t for over an hour. We finally found a pub, had a pint a small bite to eat and were satisfied before the show.

Had we wanted to we could have eaten at the massive beer garden type places around where our show was. This whole Fringe Festival situation is very, very difficult to describe. It’s sometimes not unlike places I’ve been before but on a much bigger scale. For example, the beer garden I mention is kind of a labyrinth of a ton of walk up areas for drinks of any kind, food truck kind of places serving any kind. These food/drink areas are around the building housing at least 15 different venues – it’s wild. And this is just one of a ton of spots with multiple venues – I can’t explain!

“The Toxic Avenger” was our evening entertainment – a musical. The story wasn’t super engaging, but the singing/preforming was fantastic. It also wasn’t full (half price tickets) so we weren’t sitting on each others’ laps. This was the biggest theatre we’ve been in so far, probably 500 or more.