My plan was to update the blog to every day of our time in Edinburgh but we kept so busy that I didn't get it done so this will be a recap of the week.
Tuesday
Last night we were all exhausted and decided to sleep in this morning. And boy did we. Susan and I slept until 9:00 and we woke up Emily and Ryan at 10:00. We all needed that sleep. We went to breakfast and then headed up to the Edinburgh Castle for a self guided tour. Fortunately I purchased tickets last night as the queue for tickets was very, very long. Parts of the Castle were the original from the 13th Century. Amazing. Incredibly the oldest remaining building within the Castle walls is St. Margaret's Chapel. Very cool. We spent about two hours in the Castle and then headed to the National Library of Scotland for a quick tour. We were very fortunate in that the Library had an exhibition relating to the Shackleton trip to Antarctica in 1916. The exhibition focused on the photography of Frank Hurley and I was able to see some of his pictures that I hadn't seen before. After the Library Susan, Emily and Ryan took in the Harry Potter tour while I went to see if I could purchase an additional ticket for Wednesday nights Tattoo. J. K. Rowling wrote most of the Harry Potter series in Edinburgh. We had dinner and spent the rest of the evening taking in many of the street performers which included mimes, magicians, comedy and music. I was glad to see that Tom Ward, a classical guitarist, that Peg and I saw in 2015 was there. We were all impressed with his amazing talent. I purchased his CD for Emily and Ryan.
Wednesday
After a leisurely morning we attended performance of the week which was "The Joni Mitchell Story". It was both a video story and the singing of many of Joni's songs by Charlotte Bremerton. It was OK and not Emily's or Ryan's favorite. After a quick lunch we toured the National Museum of Scotland. It is a fantastic Museum with something for all ages. We spent about three hours there. We then headed back to the hotel for a couple of hours before Susan, Emily and Ryan attended the Tattoo. I was unable to get a ticket for myself which was fine as I didn't really want to go and sit by myself. I met Susan, Emily and Ryan after the performance at 10:30 and we headed back to the hotel. I should mention that we were able to walk to every place that we went for the entire week. We put a lot of miles in for the week.
Thursday
Today was a very busy day as along with watching many street performers we went to three events. Ryan had seen an advertisement for an Edinburgh attraction called the Edinburgh Dungeon. This was not part of the Festival but a year round Edinburgh attraction. It was basically a choreographed tour of an actual dungeon. We all enjoyed it. Our second event was a performance titled " The Ping Pong Ball Effect". It was an acrobatic performance using ping pong balls as props. Our third performance was titled "Card Ninja" which was a one man show with playing cards as the props. Card Ninja is a very humorous display of comedy and card stunts using playing cards as ninja weapons. The stunts included using cards to break balloons and using cards as a boomerang. Susan was called up on stage to assist with one of the stunts. The evening included dinner and more street performers.
Friday
It was another full day with three more performances and many more street performances. The first performance was "All Time Greatest Hits" which was performed by a group of high school students from Utah. The shows title was certainly a misnomer as most of the "hits" were recent songs and several none of us recognized. The second performance was titled "Best of the West End" which was an hour long medley of Broadway tunes performed by a group of to women and five men from the U.S. We all enjoyed the performance. We had lunch at a pizza shop and then had a mile and a half walk to the third performance witch was titled "Tago: Korean Drums II". The performance was strictly a drum performance and was my favorite. After dinner we all took a ride on a giant ferries wheel that was set up for the Festival. Then it was back to the hotel to pack for our trip home.
Saturday
We were up at 7:00 and walked about two blocks to catch the bus to the airport. We were able to dodge the rain all week but not this morning. It was pouring as we left the hotel. We finally got to use our rain gear. All went well with the travel as went went from Edinburgh to JFK in New York, then Salt Lake City and finally Boise at 9:30 PM. It was a very long day and we were all whipped.
It was a great trip and I am so happy that Emily and Ryan joined us.
Our next rip is a trek to Annapurna Base Camp. We leave on September 28.
Looks like you all had a great time! What a wonderful adventure for the kids especially!
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