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Just got back from five days in Scotland split between Glasgow and Edinburgh, catching the Fringe festival in the latter.

For those who are not familiar with Fringe, it's the biggest arts and culture festival in the whole wide world, consisting of a month of theatre, comedy, dance, music, street performance, food, art and craft markets, photographic exhibitions, circus, cabaret, burlesque, and storytelling. There are also gin, whisky and wine tastings, spa treatments and buskers. Phew!

Around 800 events this year are free, and the rest range in price from circa £5, up to £50 or so for premium events encompassing food and several hours entertainment. There's also a half price ticket hut that opens once the festival has kicked off.

I'll do my standard 1-2 posts per day, hopefully giving you a heads-up on what might be worth seeing if you are off to Edinburgh this month, and also some accommodation and transport tips.

Pix first to whet your appetite!

https://www.flickr.com/photos/494523...57657017316249

Friendship_Bay

Following. Will be there for a week starting Aug 25!

LCBoniti

Your photographs are amazing!

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Thank you

sheila

soopa photies. Did you have a good time?

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It was fabulous Sheila - I think I'm already having withdrawal.

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Thursday

I caught the train up to Glasgow from the south east of England, even though Stansted is on my doorstep, not being a great fan of flying. My ticket booked with Virgin cost £83 return, but would have been cheaper if I'd dithered less over ticket options and booked sooner.

As is traditional Virgin had completely ignored my request for airline style seating and put me on a table of four. I didn't realise it at the time but this might have been a blessing in disguise as further down the carriage in the airline seating was a very frazzled lady traveling with a grizzly toddler. No more than 2-3 minutes into the journey the little girl was sick all down herself. Mum immediately leapt up and carried the child to the loo at the end of the carriage, which turned out not to be such a wise decision as the wee one hadn't finished being sick and promptly vomited all down the aisle too, including onto any shoes and bags sticking out into the walkway.

Lots of sympathetic people helped mop up with woefully inadequate wet wipes and tissues and a really kind gent got mum a tea from the buffet car. For the next couple of hours all seemed relatively calm, until mother and child disembarked and took the wrong suitcase with them. There followed a huge row as the student next to me tried in vain to convince mum she had the wrong bag (mum had got two students to help her with the baby buggy and luggage and one of them had picked up the wrong case inadvertantly, due to the fact the child's Peppa Pig raincoat had somehow teleported from the top of one case to the other).

After a customs-like search of the contents of both cases to verify ownership, during which the train was delayed and no-one else allowed to get off whilst bag-gate was resolved, finally we were permitted to go on our way.

It was quite warm in the carriage and all three students on my table had ginormous laptops on the whole time, most probably frying my brain, and explaining the pounding headache I developed as the journey wore on. Initially, I manfully resisted taking any painkillers, having suggested to Tommy (who was meeting me at Glasgow) that it might be worth him getting the bus into town rather than driving so we could both have a drink when I arrived. About an hour from Glasgow Central I caved in and took two Migraleve.

Tommy was waiting for me at the end of the platform and whisked me off to Alston Bar and Beef - a fab drinking den in a cellar under the station, with a marble bar, low lighting and great cocktails - my favourite sort of hang out. I felt terrible breaking it to Mr M that I'd not be able to partake of booze due to being drugged up to the eyeballs, after he'd arranged such a lovely pit stop, but he thoughtfully had a gimlet on my behalf and the barman kindly made me a great raspberry based mocktail when he heard my tale of woe. Incidentally, the staff here were lovely, checking that our drinks were up to standard, and helping with wifi passwords etc without prompting.

http://www.alstonglasgow.co.uk/index.php/photos

We then headed to swanky Chaophraya, all glittering chandeliers, granite bars and sweeping staircases, for thai food, sharing an Asian platter to start, then tamarind duck for me, Penang beef for Tommy, and sticky rice for both of us. I had a Starburst mocktail which was blackcurrant based and amazeballs! - Tommy stuck to beer.

http://chaophraya.co.uk/

Taxi back to Tom's and an earlyish night, ahead of departure to Edinburgh for festival fun!

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Friday: Part 1

Friday dawned overcast but dry, a bit of a bonus, as torrential rain and flooding had been forcast for large swathes of Scotland.

We had two full days in Edinburgh planned with an overnight stop in the city. As you may already know hotels are prohibitively expensive during the Fringe, with even basic accomodation such as Premier Inn and Travelodge skyrocketing in price . However Mr M had managed to find a hotel - Snoozebox - right in the city centre that had rooms for a very modest £46 a night (special offer, normal price £79). I should perhaps explain a couple of things about Snoozebox. This is a 'pop-up' hotel of the type you find at festivals, with the rooms made out of repurposed shipping containers, hence the bargain price. They are not huge - about 10 x 8 - but have a private bathroom/wetroom attached so fine for short stays.

We had a bit of a hiccup a week or so before departure in that the site of our hotel was changed from the city centre to Edinburgh Airport, on the outskirts of the city. However this was not really a huge problem as the airport site had free parking, buses and trams ran into Edinburgh every 10 mins during the day, and night buses every 30 mins at night, with the option to claim ticket costs back from the hotel if you wanted to, so really it did not limit what we wanted to see or do in Edinburgh or how late we stayed, as round the clock transport 'home' was available.

It started raining as we arrived at the airport and we spent some time hunting round in the drizzle for our accomodation - we found the car park easily enough, but the reception area and the rooms themselves evaded all detection. Luckily we were able to call up the booking conformation email on our phones and get the number of reception, who then directed us to the right place to drop off luggage and sign in etc. Nb All the various buildings were signposted correctly but in quite a makeshift manner (small signs A3-4 sort of size printouts, probably done on the office photocopier in a hurry when the hotel was relocated, and hard to read when you are in a car).

Once we found reception however, things did start to look up. The building was very funky with white leather barcelona style sofas and chairs, plus an area designated for complimentary tea, coffee and biscuits. The young lady who checked us in was cheery and efficient, explaining everything properly. We were allowed in our room a bit earlier than the normal check-in time of 2pm which partially made up for earlier troubles.

The room itself was quite a pleasant suprise - a very comfortable double bed, storage area, complimentary bottled water, an immaculate wetroom with towels and toiletries, aircon and heating. There was a small bunk/single bed over the foot of the double - no way was the room large enough for three to share really - we just used it as a dumping ground for our suitcases.

http://snoozeboxhotel.co.uk/

http://www.asiatophotel.com/united_k...inburgh_hotel/

We then headed into Edinburgh, using the tram. Tommy said that the buses were cheaper and (argueably) a bit quicker, but I love trams so was indulged. £5 per person for the 25 minute (or thereabouts) journey.

The tram system in Edinburgh is mildly contraversial in that construction came in late and over budget. However I found it very pleasant to use - clean and modern - admittedly not as much character as older 20th century trams - but they had bells that clanged cheerily and what more could you possibly want?

https://edinburghtrams.com/

As we got closer to Edinburgh we started to see the skyline that is so typical of most Scottish cities and which I love - turrets and small copper domes and all manner of gothic decoration and augmentation along the rooflines. Glasgow buildings are blond or red sandstone - Edinburgh slightly more grey - but both evoke Gotham and Gormeghast spectacularly

gertie3751

Wow, I like the idea of Snoozebox. So it just moves around the country to wherever the demand is... festivals, sports events, ... What a great idea. Have you ever come across them anywhere else?

And I always enjoy your cocktail sagas.

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Gertie - I'm not quite sure whether some of the sites are permanent now for the more popular festivals like Fringe and Goodwood, with just the private functions being temporary, or whether all the sites are temporary. Either way its a very affordeable option at what can sometimes be expensive events.

More cocktail sagas to follow....

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Friday Part 2

Arriving in the city centre we headed for a quick bite to eat to ensure we were fully fueled for art and culture. Wanting to make the most of our time we opted for fast food in the shape of Wannaburger which was just seconds walk from where the tram dropped us, along Queensferry Street. Wannaburger was a new experience for me - I was a bit tickled by the pagers they give you to tell when your food is ready (it's cooked to order), and by the free soda refills (though I would have been more impressed if the definition of 'soda' stretched to fruit juice, iced coffee or cocktails). We had Aberdeen Angus cheeseburgers with grilled onions and bacon - the patties were a bit meh but the fries excellent. I had a bit of a sulk though because it was only after we'd ordered that I spotted the Bobby Ewing burger complete with chipotle slaw and texan bbq pulled pork. Next time maybe...

After lunch we headed down toward the Prince’s Street Gardens to collect some tickets we'd prebooked for a play on at the Traverse theatre later that afternoon. There were a number of ticketing points around the city and the Prince’s Street Garden’s kiosk was surrounded by food carts and street perfomers. We felt a bit smug collecting our pre-booked tickets, because there was a separate shorter queue for pre-bookings – all you did was swipe your card through a wall mounted reader and out came the tix – no interaction with any human being necessary, unlike the longer queue snaking round the other side of the kiosk for people who were purchasing live, having not had the foresight to prebook.

As a result of this serendipitous experience we got into quite a slick routine of using the Fringe app on our mobile phones to search for shows and book tickets in a nice watering hole somewhere, picking up the tickets en-route to the show itself, never having to queue with the rabble.

A word about the Fringe website and mobile phone apps. Just brilliant! Really well designed, and very easy to search and book online. Great features such as the half-price hut and a search function specifically to pull up what is on nearby to you right now. Plus a full list of venues and how far away they are from you. Considering even a single days Fringe listings stretch to about 166 pages of A4, If you haven’t already bookmarked or downloaded the website and app you should right now.

Crash: Traverse Theatre. £18 per person

We had this recommended to us by a friend of Tommy's who works in film and tv (as a producer I think) and thus knows a lot of luvvies. This was a great play delivered as a monologue by one guy in a Mastermind-style black chair. A stockbroker is recovering from a personal tragedy, trying to cope with the pressures of a high flying job whilst attempting to rebuild his life. I can’t tell you any more because it would spoil it, but I will just say that you start to question his version of events, and any sympathy you intially feel for him begins to ebb as the play unfolds and a more sinister picture emerges.

The Traverse theatre itself was a very decent venue, two different stages or auditoriums, a small café on the ground floor and waiting area, and a large spotlit bar downstairs. Scripts were being sold for many of the plays while you queued and made for good souvenirs.

Our Verdict? Recommended!

After Crash, we headed for the Rose Street/Thistle Street area, replete with bars and eateries, having a quick pint in The Kenilworth – a flower-clad noisy Victorian pub with wood panelling and etched glass – before heading to Bon Vivant cocktail bar for a slightly more upmarket imbibing experience. In Bon Vivant (which was already heaving) we fortuitously managed to snag a table and enjoyed a couple of cocktails – something firey for Tommy with whisky and orange (sorry - can't remember the name), and a slightly mellower rum and rhubarb juice based concoction for me called a Ruby Triangle which was delicious. The bartender also furnished us with iced water which I think is a nice touch if you are intending to stay any length of time and need to cleanse your palette between boozes - however we had art and culture to see so sadly were not able to make full use of all the freebies foisted on us by the bar, Over drinks we perused the Fringe App and decided on our next show.

The Trepidation of the Tower Traipsing Troglodytes: C Nova: £9.50 per person

This was an excellent piece of physical theatre about two women living alone in an attic, never venturing into the outside world, lives revolving around Youtube clips, TV shows and Amazon deliveries. Their realisation they are being watched (by the audience) and their subsequent attempts to reintegrate into society are the main theme of the play. The performance was in a tiny attic room at the top of the theatre with seating for only about 15 people and thus very intimate. It was extremely well acted (and funny to boot) with a lot of audience participation (nice participation – not humiliation!). There were even souvenirs to take home, though I won’t spoil it by telling you what they were…

The C Nova venue is part of the India Building at the top of Victoria Street. This particular section of the Fringe focuses on new, up and coming writers, theatre companies and actors, and also has quite an international feel. Big focus on music and family entertainment in this particular venue too.

Our Verdict? Recommended!

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Friday Part 3

We left C Nova, stepping out into clearer and warmer weather replacing the drizzle of the afternoon, ready to hunt out our next drinking stop. I should perhaps point out now that central Edinburgh is divided in two by Princes Street Gardens and the railway, with the newer (18th century) part of town (Princes Street, Queen Street and George Street) to the north and the older (15th-18th century) part of town (The Castle, Royal Mile, Victoria St, Grassmarket etc) to the south. Thus we’d spent the first half of the day in various watering holes and the Traverse in the newer bit, and the evening across the park in the old town with its cobbles and curved terraces.

Tommy promised we’d come back to explore the old town again properly tomorrow when the weather was forecast to be sunnier and thus better for photographs, so we quickly headed down spiralling Victoria Street, hardly glancing at the jewel-like brightly coloured shopfronts topped by old sandstone buildings. Round the corner into Grassmarket (home of livestock trading and executions!) and into The Last Drop – a low ceilinged inn with blackened timbers and boozy customers downing pints or devouring huge plates of gammon and homemade pies. Over a quick drink we ascertained that just a few doors down in The Beehive a comedy night was about to start. This was a venue where you could pay on the door so drinks drunk, we made the short walk into the next venue.

Comedy Night: The Beehive Inn. £5 per person

This show was held upstairs in a function room over the bar. Intriugingly all the chairs had been lashed together with cable ties (I don’t know what this says about the normal clientele!) – however the venue was actually pretty decent – a large airy room where we sat by an open window getting a lovely evening breeze – and drinks allowed in to lubricate the laughs. I am thoroughly ashamed to say I cannot remember the names of any of the acts we saw (possibly due to the amnesiac properties of the huge G&T Tommy handed me) but they were all pretty decent. My favourite was a red haired guy who spent much of his set talking about the trials and tribulations of being ginger (apparently in New Zealand he was referred to a ‘ranga’ – which he initially assumed was some sort of term of endearment, but was later revealed to be short for orangutang!). There were four acts in total, each doing about 15-20 mins of standup. The compere was pretty decent too, doing the usual thing of going round the room finding out where everyone was from, but more entertainingly/less diplomatically later getting everyone to nominate the worst shows they’d seen so far in Fringe so we could all avoid them. We had a lot of laughs here and were disgourged into Grassmarket full of smiles.

I think we might have had another drink after this because I have some vague recollection of a duo playing electric violins and singing REM and David Grey tracks in some bar or other, but I honestly can’t remember where. I do know that eventually we headed back north to the ‘new’ town, looking for eats. By now it was after 11 – possibly closer to midnight and not a huge amount was open foodwise. Tommy remarked that in Glasgow we’d have had our pick of cuisines until the wee small hours. However we did eventually come across a tiny pizza parlour still plying its trade well into the night on Rose Street. We weren’t massively keen on the prospect of Italian at first, but actually the pizza place turned out to be a bit of a gem. There were only two or three tiny tables, each decorated with herbs growing in old tin cans, the counter, behind which was the wood-fired oven, and a tall tower of brown takeaway boxes. We plumped for a meat feast pizza to share, which was cooked to order – none of those reheated floppy slices under a heat lamp thank you very much. The pizza arrived on a plain wooden board with a cutter for us to divide it up as we saw fit, and was surprisingly delicious – I noticed from the menu that the restaurant were using some slightly more unusual ingredients like taleggio instead of mozzarella. We had no trouble scoffing our pizza washed down with San Pelligrino, using elaborate mimes to get the attention of staff when we needed kitchen towel for our greasy hands!

Approaching 1am, we queued on Princes Street for the night bus – unfortunately we’d just missed one according to the electronic display board so had nearly half an hour to wait, watching the revelry all around us. A woman came through the bus shelter demanding ‘high fives’ from everyone – being Fringe, at first I wasn’t entirely sure whether this was just drunken high spirits or yet another bit of street performance!

Back at the Snoozebox we had a pretty decent night’s sleep, putting the (somewhat noisy) aircon on around dawn but remarkeably remaining undisturbed by planes, trains or fellow party goers.

gertie3751

I'm enjoying this.
It sounds exactly the way I like to explore a new city and culture. Never done it in Edinburgh though. The weather and the crowds at the Festival have always put me off. Stories of finding hole-in-the-wall late-night eateries and queueing for the night bus are very familiar though.
I think I'm going to try out Snoozeboxes next UK trip.

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Thanks Gertie - I have just remembered the name of the hole in the wall pizza place - it's Dough

https://www.facebook.com/dough.172rosest

Bon Vivant:-

http://bonvivantedinburgh.co.uk/

The Last Drop:-

https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-L...85635894789296

annhig

sounds like you had a brilliant time. I've always imagined that it would be too crowded/expensive/complicated to go, but you've given me an idea for next year when I have a BIG BIRTHDAY - trouble is I've got lots of other ideas as well.

thanks for all the useful links too - and great photos!

uruabam

>I think we might have had another drink after this because I have some vague recollection of a duo playing electric violins and singing REM and David Grey tracks in some bar or other, but I honestly can’t remember where. <

http://www.scotsmanslounge.com/

Lightweight!

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The Scotsmans Lounge - that's it!

It was fab Ann - I loved every minute! As long as you can find affordeable accommodation I would recommend it to anyone as the shows themselves are really not that pricy, generally of a very high standard, and there is something for absolutely every taste. More tips on how to get round and avoid the crowds later...

gertie3751

Don't know what this says about me but I have drunk in all the places you mention so far...Dough is new to me though.

Bostonblondie226

What a great read!! I've always wanted to go to the Fringe Festival . . . and now I want to go even more badly! Great pics too! Thanks for sharing!

flanneruk

"I think I'm going to try out Snoozeboxes next UK trip."

Tough to try out Snoozeboxes - but the glamping boom in today's popup Britain does offer other, similar, options.

I think Snoozebox does have semi-permanent locations in a hostel at Cormwall's Eden Project and a hotel on the edge of the Silverstone racetrack (http://snoozeboxhotel.co.uk/hotel/silverstone/ ) adds usefully - like the local mini-boomette in Premier Inns and their clones - to the limited amount of budget hotels on the fringe of the Cotswolds.

But otherwise, they're just one of the glamping options at big short-term events. Snoozeboxes have a sporting bias, and you don't always need to have a ticket for the sporting event: but they're only there for the duration of that event, and you really wouldn't want to be in the area unless you were a rugby or TT fan. For most festivals - like Glastonbury or Latitude - you've also got to fork out the £100 or £200 to get into the festival grounds.

The growth in glamping, though, isn't limited to temporary events, and permanent locations for yurts, pods, tepees, shepherd's huts, containers and all the rest are getting developed - however hard some of us try to control them - all over the place, though they're usually inaccessible by public transport. Some are making their way into traditional "posh hotel" guides

Among sources:

Sawday's (once the stuffiest of all guides to chintz and unventilated dining rooms): http://www.canopyandstars.co.uk/
https://www.glamping-uk.co.uk/
https://www.coolcamping.co.uk/campsites/glamping
http://www.love-glamping.co.uk/

I think this is the first reference in this forum - apart from a posting I did on popup London eating at http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...-europe.cfm?16 - to the popup phenomenon, which is in many ways transforming Britain while remaining almost invisible to many foreign tourists, especially if they cling onto guides like Rick whatsit or other tourists' recommendations.

Popup shops might just be visible, and some huge events (like the Notting Hill Festival, or the Open) do make an impact on their immediate location - though even they are imperceptible a mile away, unless someone seriously cocks up the traffic management. The Edinburgh Fringe is almost unique in its impact on an entire city: most Londoners neither know nor care about Wimbledon and only notice it's on when they get home and find their TV schedules messed about with.

But the extraordinary growth in popup service businesses makes most events close to self-sufficient: the annual festival at the end of my street trucks in its own water, and has learned how to build and break a city for 30,000 to live in for five days without any of us noticing.

Most popups are fascinating going on life-changing to those interested in their subject or philosophy: they're irrelevant to the other 90% - and often, the other 99.9%

So for many questions (like where's the best place for opera in summer, for ice-skating in winter, for literary discussion in spring or autumn, for poetry reading any time of year, for new food ideas in London or even to be able to choose between a number of Michelin starred chefs) the answer is almost always these days going to be some kind of popup enterprise, unlisted in any guide.

Possibly not even on next year - and most people outside the obsession won't know about it at all anyway.