A big highlight of our Scotland trip was Edinburgh. A beautiful town with a rich history with way more to do than we had time, even though we decided to stay an extra day. For us, a big highlight was an unexpected one – The Edinburgh Fringe Festival. We did not travel to Edinburgh to enjoy this festival – but many do. Think of it as a smorgasbord of theatre, comedy and musical performance. Performers on the street, people from everywhere and a big book listing performances from all over the world. What was amazing was the children’s selection – events for young kids, pre-teens and teens. So much choice. We settled on the following while wishing for more:

• Ian Billings Out of His Mind: A children’s stand-up with an entertaining story that the boys loved. Watch a video of him here.
• A Brief History of Scotland – We Done Loads: A laugh out loud one hour history of Scotland from top to bottom. Entertaining and we actually learned a good deal about Scotland. My only issue is that they claimed that the telephone was invented in Scotland. Sorry lads, check your facts … that would be Canada. 
• We then went on to see 2 shows run by James Campbell. The first being a true stand-up for kids including a young boy (10ish) who actually stood up and did his routine in front of 80 people, took a lot of guts. The other was his ‘black experimental comedy’ Shut-Up Stupid. I found it odd, but then I am not a deep artsy and probably missed the point (smile).

Below are a few pictures from the centre of the activity, the Royal Mile.

And that is without hitting the touristy things …. I have to say, if I lived in the UK I would plan to go back to the festival annually. This city is wonderful and the broad choice of entertainment at the Fringe is fantastic.

Wonderful event and a smart city for figuring out how to create an event to attract people beyond the castle and other sites. Of course, this assumes that they will have the ticketing system fixed by then (LOL).