Edinburgh Fringe Festival Pt 2

Wow.

Seriously, wow. It was AMAZING!

We saw so much stuff it would be too hard to list let alone explain and describe so I asked people for their highlights:

• Toby loved seeing Russell Howard again in his own stand up & at various other times throughout the festival.
• Belle's highlight was seeing 'Street Life' by Renegade Theatre (Germany) - it was an amazing mixture of street dance, live music and digital graffiti. The fact that it was held in a beautiful old church just gave it such a great atmosphere. At £12 a ticket it was probably our most expensive event but so worth it and everyone loved it. Chuffed.
• Mum loved it all and was glad we were able to fit in a walking tour of Edinburgh and the Auld Reekie tour which was pretty gruesome and scary. Being out and about in the street with a variety of performers doing their thing is so fun and thankfully the rain held off for most of it! A group of young guys called Out of the Blue were one of the best acts we saw doing a-cappella versions of pop & rock songs, very animated!
  

We ate well, drank well (Chocolate Soup, amazing), sang along, gasped, laughed and even fitted in quite a bit of dancing! Sitting on the grass in the sunshine underneath a beautiful weeping willow watching the last performance of the 'The Elephant Tree' was a welcome rest and a nice chance to reflect on all that was going on around us.

If you get the chance to go I definitely recommend it - I know that I'll be going again and again in future. A few tips for survival:

1. Get a programme from the website in advance, it's worth paying the small fee to prepare as you need an idea of what you want to see and where they are, some venues are far apart and there are lots of very steep hills in Edinburgh!!
2. Take a bottle of water an umbrella everywhere you go.
3. The Free Fringe was ace and we had some of our best laughs here so definitely worth investigating and get there early as smaller venues get very busy.
4. Sleep well in preparation, we started most days at 9am and were still out on the tiles sipping cocktails at 4am (some of the best jazz didn’t start til 3am!)
5. Don't panic. Its no fun if you’re rushing from venue to venue & getting stressed. Catch a bus/cab if you need to but mostly leave yourself plenty of time for mooching and relaxing in-between performances.