Edinburgh Festival

It’s been really crowded during our visit in Edinburgh.  Our stay happened to be in the middle of their yearly three week long festival called the Fringe.  It’s supposed to be one of the largest festivals in Europe.  This is why it so hard to find a decent apartment or hotel that was reasonably priced in town.

The actual tourists sites were reasonable but there were thousands of people on the sidewalks going to and from the various festival locations downtown.  The most notable site we visited was the Edinburgh Castle.  It’s perched at the top of the hill next to downtown.  We spent half the day at the castle and got soaked by the rain showers on our way home.  We had great weather for the past week so we forgot to pack our rain gear.

Today we went back downtown to tour the National Museum of Scotland.  We then walked to the Museum on the Mound which is in the original Bank of Scotland building and is a museum about their money.  That was a small but enjoyable museum but it didn’t explain why there are different versions of the same paper currency issued either by the Bank of England or three different banks in Scotland.  The crazy part is that some shops in England won’t accept currency issued in Scotland even though it’s worth the same.

We ended the day walking through the one of the Fringe festival sites and watched a few performances bought some souvenirs and did a quick walk through their Scottish National Gallery.