It’s just about time to say goodbye to the awesome city of Edinburgh. We thought today we would take it easy and just roam the streets checking out the street performers. On just bout every block there were acrobats, musicians, artists, jugglers, and vendors selling their wares. One of the standout acts that had me mesmerized was Juzzie Smith who is a one-man-band from Australia. He had a crowd of about 90+ people all watching in awe as he played harmonica, an electric guitar, a stomp box, a tambourine, a maraca, and a didgeridoo all the while singing. If you ever have the chance to see him perform, run, don’t walk! I even shelled out £10 for his CD it was that amazing.
After Juzzie blew my mind we found these adorable little Asian girls…
…promoting a show called Taekwon vs. B-Boy. Sounded interesting and we had a 2 for 1 coupon, so we went down to venue 112 to check it out and were pleasantly surprised by the performance. The dancing and martial arts worked very well together on stage with a lot of cross over. It even had it’s own love story sub-plot which was quite funny.
After the show we took a quick photo with the crews…
…and then headed back to Linda’s house for a farewell drink with the flatmates.
A special thanks to Linda for making our stay in Edinburgh so enjoyable. We’ll never forget it!
After leaving the castle on Saturday, we passed by a building with a sign outside for “Camera Obscura and World of Illusions.” From the outside it looked like a tourist trap, but we later read some pretty favorable reviews, so today we decided to check it out, and it was actually pretty cool.
Lots of mirrors with lights…
…mirrors without lights…
…distortion mirrors…
…hidden images…
…plasma balls…
…and plasma cylinders…
The most fun part was a large dark hallway with glass on both walls stretching from floor to ceiling. Behind the glass were grids of of single points of lights that would change colors, and behind the light were mirrors. Standing in this hallway seemed like you were standing in the middle of space with multicolored stars all around you for as far as you could see.
I cranked up the exposure on the camera and moved it around a bit as the points of light changed colors to create these cool images.
Nope, we’re not back in California, and that was not a typo, and it wasn’t engrish. There really is a Holyrood Park here in Edinburgh, and it’s about the only point in the city that has a higher altitude than the castle.
Like most days in Scotland, the rain will come and go hour by hour. When we started on the hike near the uber-modern parliament building it was a beautiful sunny day.
But once we reached the base of this extinct volcano, the dark clouds started moving in.
We already came this far, so there is no tuning back now… Onwards ho!
Jay wasn’t too happy with his choice of attire once we got further up to find this was more like a hike through the Nile river.
But every few hundred yards, the slipping and slidding through mud puddles was all worth it when the sun would break through and reveal amazing views.
Both far away…
and close up…
The summit was INCREDIBLE! Both an incredible view…
We hiked back down the other side of the mountain, and explored the ruins of St. Anthony’s chapel that was built around 1426
It provided a nice place to practice rock climbing
After dominating Holyrood, we waked back up The Royal Mile, grabbed a bite to eat at a Thai/Indian restaurant, and then rushed off to one of the most popular comedy shows of the festival.
There was a Canadian on a unicycle juggling flaming clubs, but that was nothing compared to what we saw next.
Another Canadian in a nearby plaza had just rode in (from Canada) on a motorcycle! He was a Santa Cruz trained juggler with multiple world records. He was juggling chainsaws, grenades, machetes amoungst other things. He must have sensed his fellow Santa Cruzians in the audience as he selected Jay out of the crowd for a little assistance.
Check the video for the rest of the story as words just wouldn’t do it justice.
Today we woke up early and headed out to see some of the many sights the city had to offer. Our first stop was to be the Edinburgh Castle that just dominated the city skyline.
But first we had to fuel up…
After a 15 minute hike up Castle Rock we reached the summit…
…where we passed through the first line of defence, the outer castle gates…
…to the the first line of offense, the dozens of cannons…
…overlooking the entire city below.
After winding around the inner castle roads, and climbing a few flights of stairs…
…we breached the inner walls of the castle! Before us now was The Crown Room, where the infamous Crowned Jewels of Scotland are housed.
We instantly agreed that taking the Crowned Jewels back to America would be the ULTIMATE souvenir. Based on the history of the jewels (not to mention the vault they were stored in) we knew the Scotts would not lay down easily when we stormed the castle. So we first popped into the War Museum and suited up in armor…
…and selected our weapons carefully…
As you can see we opted for power over dexterity. Mons Meg was no joke when it came to POWER! This 6 ton bombard is capable of firing a 330 pound gun-stone nearly 2 miles!
Our choice of weapon backfired on us however. Turns out Meg’s barrel burst in 1681. So sadly we will have to return to The States empty handed. We fled the castle just as the drawbridge was closing.
And headed into town to check out some of the Edinburgh Festivals street performers. But wait, who is that guy on the far right?
Why it’s Jay! Stay tuned for the exciting story of Jay’s live performance…
