Bagpipes and Castles

Amy and I had decided we needed to take the kids downtown for a day of home town tourism. August is the month of the Edinburgh Festival and the population of the city supposedly doubles to one million. So we decided to go for it, head down to High Street with the Festival goers on opening weekend. There would certainly be no parking, so let’s take the bus. Our children absolutely love the double-decker buses.

We took the bus to High Street (although I made us get off one stop too soon and walk) and turned up hill from George IV Bridge toward the Castle. We had decided to purchase a membership in the Scottish historical society so we could get into all the castles in Scotland with no further fee, and the place to buy such a thing is the castle. As we got closer, we noticed that the steps along the sides of the streets were filled with people waiting but we couldn’t tell what they were waiting for. When we got around the bend, we saw a few bagpipers and decided to stay for the parade. We didn’t really consider when the parade would start, but found a spot on the route in the front and planted the children on the steps to eat their lunch. The parade started roughly one hour later. It was the festival bagpipe parade. Have you ever heard Scotland the Brave?



Whenever a new bagpipe band approached I’d ask the girls, “Hey, what song do you think they’ll play?” They thought this was funny twice, but there were a lot of bagpipe and drum bands.

After the parade, we headed to the castle and decided to go on in and tour the place. I think the kids thought it was pretty cool. Aaron was out cold from the jarring of the cobblestones when we got to the cannons and waited for a tour to start. Amy had the other three up on a cannon when one of those super annoying photo company asked if she could take their photo. I recognized the Aussie accent (with the previous knowledge that Kat from the Heatherlea was one of these photo people) and went and gave her a hug. This was disconcerting to my wife and children. We did however score free pictures, although we’ll have to pretend that Aaron is IN the cannon. (They look something like this, although this is not one from Kat and the photo people.)



After a tour the three ladies went in to see the crown jewels. Upon emerging from the chambers, I excitedly asked the girls if they liked the Stone of Destiny. They looked at me and said, “What’s the Stone of Destiny?” So then I just asked if they saw a big square stone in with the crown jewels. “Um, I don’t think so, why?” Nevermind. Amy ensured me that the Stone of Destiny was still there.

We left the castle and headed to the Fringe. I’d like to explain what the Fringe is, but it is totally unclear to me (and the link won't help you either). What we experienced was a massive number of people handing out flyers to their shows and very bad street performers lining High Street. Oh yeah, and about 100,000 people irritated that I kept jamming the stroller into them when they wouldn’t move.

We decided to leave to meet some friends for lawn bowling. Seriously, we finished the day with lawn bowling at the Falcon and a picnic dinner. Very relaxing. One can best understand the day by this guy…