a tattoo in a foreign land

Downtown was where our action was going to be at today. We headed into central Edinburgh, eschewing the rental car in favour of the bus system having decided that parking for the day in the city wasn't going to be the thing. And we knew we would be home late as we had tickets for the tattoo.

We spent the best part of the day ambling “The Royal Mile", taking in street performers and the local sights... David and I made a visit to the Camera Obscura, a marvel in the late 1800s to those who did not consider it witchcraft, and still a good example of clever simple technology. The views from the tower, a neighbour to Edinburgh Castle, are excellent and almost worth the climb and the fee in themselves. Continuing the optical theme, they display a series of unusually-shaped mirrors, visual illusions, holograms, and so on as well. An optical feast, without resorting to Indiana Jones-style cuisine. Meanwhile Bronwyn and Jenny did whatever it is that women do when they visit shops and mostly fail to buy things—as I said in my wedding vows, “and endeavour to understand you...” (emphasis added).

At the foot of the Royal Mile lies the Palace of Hollyrood House, the Queen's official residence in Scotland. Directly opposite is the still-under-construction Scottish Parliament, a few months past schedule and a whopping ten times over the original budget (that was already millions of pounds). It does look like a very nice building from the outside, though funky and modern rather than appearing to fit in any sense with the surroundings, from my casual observation. We were unable to visit due to the busy demolition occurring around the building. (It is possible this activity represented construction. But is it also possible that I have stumbled across the cause of the massive budget overruns? Ah!)

Lunch, dinner, ice cream passed, not in that order. We marked time in attractive surroundings for the main event of the day (the tickets modestly declared “The Event of the Year"), the Edinburgh Military Tattoo. We booked our tickets at the start of April, which meant we were just able to get seats for this Monday night show. It was as always completely sold out long before it started. A fully outdoor event, held on the forecourt of the castle, we were glad when the weather improved from heavy rain in the morning to just enough clouds to offset the sunset in the evening. (Especially as our B&B host later told us it had poured with rain there all evening.) It was a mission in itself to get the people up the narrow street, past security and ticket cheques, and into their pre-assigned seating. David fortunately discovered his currently-problematic leg seemed to be better on uneven cobbled streets than on the flat, which was a help! Finally, after dislodging some Germans who seemed to have failed to understand the distinction between “North Stand” and “South Stand” we were ready for the show.

The Tattoo is a little hard to describe. The first thing is the scale. At the finale I estimated there were about 450 performers on stage—counting is made somewhat easier by their penchant for lining up in rows! Bronwyn noted that there were a lot more older people than youthful types in the audience, but you can't beat over a hundred people playing the bagpipes in full highland garb for the wow factor. They were even trying to cater to a more modern taste—I can honestly say I never expected to hear a military brass band playing an S-Club 7 song. (It wasn't as bad as that oh-so-cringe-efinitly sounds.) They had performers from all over the world, including the South African Army brass band, the People's Liberation Army of China band, and even a Highland Pipe band from lil' old Invercargill, New Zealand, who played as part of the massed band. There were dancers from India, from somewhere-we-didn't-catch in South America, and from an exotic place called Australia. There were fireworks, a quartet for the Last Post, the Lone Piper, and even an Air Force jet flyover. We enjoyed it. And I'd like to say I'm fully convinced and reassured as it did convincingly justify the annual billions of pounds of military expenditure.

(Read that last sentence carefully.) We found the right bus stop home, a bit of a walk for David but at least we knew the bus stopped quite near our B&B at the other end. It was about 11:15pm though and it turned out our route... oh, it's too mind-numbingly painful to subject you to all the details. Let's just summarise by saying we got home safe and sound, but much later than planned, and it required a long (unnecessary) walk and a further (quite short) taxi journey to get us home safe and sound. How we look forward to being home tomorrow to London, where the public transport problems are known and predictable instead.  : )