Edinburgh is a very big city, and very crowded at present.  Usually there are half a million people that live in the area.  Currently there are over a million people in town.  Why?  Someone thought it was a great idea to have every festival the city hosts during the month of August.  The streets are packed with people attending the International Festival of Music and Drama, The Fringe Festival, the Film Festival, Jazz and Blues Festival, the Book Festival, the Arts and Crafts Festival, and the Military Tattoo, that alone attracts 10,000 people each night.  Lots and lots of people. 

It is kind of fun though to walk down the streets and everywhere you look there are venues of the Fringe Festival.  These are the acts that want to participate in the Festival of Music and Drama but didn’t get into the more traditional venues.  Yesterday I got to hear several music acts and witnessed a play being performed in the doorway of a men’s restroom.  Unique to say the least.

The big highlight of the day was touring Edinburgh Castle.  Everywhere you look in the city center, the castle is there, perched atop a rock bluff.  You enter through the front gate, cross the stone bridge, then proceed through five gates and an iron portcullis before you reach the lower level of the castle.  Very impressive and effective security.  And still the castle was taken over at least twice in its history.  Another highlight of the castle tour for me was seeing the Honors of Scotland—the crown, the scepter, the sword, and the Stone of Destiny that I featured in my first book, The Warrior Trainer.  It looks exactly as I imagined.

The afternoon found me at Roslyn Chapel.  The guide at Roslyn Chapel said two miracles have come to the chapel.  The first being that Cromwell did not destroy the place during his campaign through Scotland.  He housed his horses in the chapel, destroyed the nearby Roslyn Castle, but left the chapel untouched.  The second miracle was Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code.  So many visitor have flooded to the chapel since the launch of the book and the subsequent movie, that much needed funds have come to the chapel that have allowed for massive restoration efforts to preserve what was starting to decay.

Tomorrow, I get to stay put in Edinburgh for a while and do some necessary research.  Check in with me tomorrow to see where I’ll be.

--Gerri