We caught our bus into Edinburgh from Haddington with no hassles, though our bags were heavy to carry to the bus stops. Our flat was lovely, modern and clean, with nice glass doors into the kitchen. There were two bathrooms and two bedrooms.

We arrived by lunchtime so found our way out early afternoon, taking a bus down to the other end of the main street, to get some food at the supermarket and essentials from the Pound Shop. Peter got a haircut from a dodgy tattoed character with alcohol on his breath and rocked to music while cutting his hair!  Peter worried whether he really did work there!

We then caught a bus into the middle of town and watched the street performers.

It was a lot of fun… the kids were really into it….until Peter slipped on the edge of the path and badly twisted his ankle … just like he did in India. We only spend about an hour more in town because he was in a lot of pain and after a bit of a search for the bus stop we found our way home again.

The next morning we went to church, with Peter hobbling along. After church a kind lady bandaged his foot and said he would need an x-ray. Thankfully the pastor offered to drop him at the hospital so that’s where he spent his afternoon while the kids and I went searching for the modern art museum.

The kids and I caught a bus to where we thought the museum would be, but discovered from the driver that stop had been cancelled for the festival, but he promised to drop us off as close as possible! A kind gentleman sitting next to us gave us extra instructions so we set off on our walk.

A little way along we saw some people in costumes with cannons and muskets with bayonets. We went and sat next to another gentleman who told us all about it. The re-enactment was just finished, so we’d missed it – it was of the redcoats versus the Jacobites. The redcoats were slaughtered – the fight was over in 15 minutes. The Jacobites fought with farm tools – sickels and the such, but they managed to overcome the redcoats.

The Jacobites..

Inside the church was a tapestry showing the whole history of the redcoats versus the Jacobites (the redcoats – government troops- did win eventually, of course.

We then kept walking and came to the modern art museum – but when we got inside the lady knew nothing of the children’s event we’d come to take part in! She directed us down the driveway and across the road to the other part of the museum, so off we set again. We got there with 15 minutes to spare before the free museum coach was leaving. The activity we wanted to do was scheduled for a different day, but we wouldn’t have had time anyway. So we got on the free bus to go back to the National Gallery and heard from Peter at the same time that he was on his way there to.

Outside Modern Art Number 2.

At the hospital the conclusion had been that Peter had fractured the bone in his foot (again – he did it in India, same foot). It’s a small fracture (Pete says), but way painful and he’s now hobbling around on a walking stick with his foot strapped up. Thankfully he avoided a moonboot this time.

Stop trying to hide the walking stick, we know it’s there..

To celebrate Pete’s foot (ha ha) we went and got a coffee then made our way home in the rain..

Everythings OK if I can just have a coffee…

The next day was Monday and our Tattoo day! We went into town late morning, and Amy and I went looking for the place to pick up our tickets while Daniel had his first turn at busking with his ukulele!! How cool! He did really well, making about four pounds for an hours strumming.

Lost in the crowd of passerbys..can you see him?

Apparently it took ages before anyone put any money into his hat, then when we got back, Amy had a quick turn and made 70p in two minutes!

After the busking, we all went to ..ta da.. you guessed it MacDonalds to use our vouchers and get late lunch. Then Peter took the kids home – his foot was really while I went to look for two boxes to send some of our stuff home. I did manage to get to a post office (after a long walk which wasn’t appreciated – I was tired and grumpy cos I’ve got a chest infection and feel pretty wiped out). Guess what? The post office was only open to people with cash as all the computers were down! Lucky I had some cash (here’s another saga, I’d been to the Pound Shop, so I’d got some cash out, to buy some Ibuprofen for Pete -I wanted 6 boxes but they’d only sell 3, so I’d sneaked back in a second time and gone to a different terminal to buy the second lot. Lucky the first guy didn’t notice me trying to hide the boxes while I waited in line. Felt like a criminal!)  Anyway, back to the post office. They had some self serve terminals, which wouldn’t take my 20 pd note no matter how many times I put it in, so I got it changed for two 10 pd notes, and the machine took it after 3 attempts then it ate it! After some discussion (time was running out as I had to meet someone in 20 minutes and it’d take me 20 minutes to walk back) 3 staff members and I managed to get the machine to give my money back and started again! Finally I bought the stupid boxes only to find out later from PC that’d I’d paid twice as much as we’d paid for them at the Co-op supermarket! (which we then discovered was just down the road from our flat!)
Never mind, I walked back and saw some guys playing jazz in the park and decided despite feeling grotty, well the sun was shining (quite an event for Scotland) and it was amazing to be here in Edinburgh during the festival!. I made it to my meeting ( I had to collect my rings I’d left in the last house from the landlord) and then went home to rest before we went to the Tattoo.

The Tattoo was excellent. It seemed smaller in size than we thought but it was very exciting seeing all the stands full up with people. The bands were amazing – so co-ordinated and clever with how they marched around the performance area. It was a great sight to see.

 

We all liked the “Secret Drummers’ a lot. They were a band of drummers who did some amazing drumming, standing in a line, drumming on each others drums and throwing and catching each others drum sticks. They then moved into a “Musketeers” section, where they moved around and while drumming looked like they were having a sword fight. It was awesome!

We also liked the guys with their guns, who marched in time and threw their guns around as well as fired their guns! Pretty cool!

The visuals were amazing too – lots of different images were projected onto the castle walls. The kids loved the Superheroes section – see Daniel’s blog for more about that!

There was so much packed into the show and then the last thing was the fireworks, which were pretty good too (though the kids thought the ones at Bethlehem Town Centre’s Christmas Eve event were better!!).

We slept in the day after the Tattoo, then spent the day getting ready to catch our plane to France. We packed and decided what to send home then went off to the post office and sent three packages home. The packing was quite difficult because we needed to get down in size enough to go on EasyJet. We’re getting good at throwing stuff out…(lets not talk about my nice zipped up sweatshirt that I’ve had forever that I left behind… shopping in America here I come..)

Poor PC..he sent home his nice warm jacket..

(Week 27A: Saturday 18 August 2012 – Wednesday 22 August 2012)