Golden Girl.

I caught an early train today and was in Edinburgh to meet Mum by 10.30. The city is an absolute disaster zone at the minute with a huge refurb of the train station ongoing (scaffolding everywhere, dusty, cordoned-off areas reducing the platforms to pavement-width, noisy...) as well as the tramline project ripping through the city centre causing absolute chaos on most of the main thoroughfares. I love Edinburgh but new visitors to the city must be incredibly disappointed - I can't see how they could get a good impression of it. We attempted to drop off Mum's weekend bag at the baggage-storage but the queue was ridiculous so we ended up walking to the bus station and using a locker there: I'd strongly recommend this to any visitors with it being so much cheaper with no queue.

Once we were all sorted we took a wander up to the Royal Mile to pick our way through some of the performers; they were all brilliant! We saw an Aussie fire-juggling unicyclist, several zombies, Ariel from The Tempest and lots of Dickensien actors. We decided to go for an early lunch at the Hub cafe at the top of the Mile and had a brilliant burger and bottle of Heineken while watching everyone enjoy themselves.

After lunch, we took another walk through the Mile (the performers had all changed, and we stopped to listen to two AMAZING acoustic guitarists as well as watching this golden girl make dancing with a hula hoop look elegant) and then onto Stocksbridge where we stopped at a great little patisserie for a drink before wandering back into the main centre.

We saw a funeral carriage pulled by two plumed black horses carrying the Scottish actor David Hayman (of Trial and Retribution fame) to a play he was acting in; the horses were so lovely I totally forgot to take a photo of the actor himself!

Walking back up to St Andrew's Square we stopped at a couple of stalls, including one advertising a local wakeboarding club. I've tried wakeboarding a few times (and been absolutely useless) but they had an Indo Board you could practice on - which I CAN do! Indo Boards use the same muscle groups as surfing, and I used to use the Indo to improve my stance. I think I impressed a few of the kids by balancing quite easily and even pulling off a fairly difficult trick - what a show off :)

Finally, Mum and I stopped for a glass or two of wine and a light snack at Valvona and Crolla before heading back for our train. We had a lovely day and saw a lot of interesting acts; I think we both wished we could have stayed a bit longer.