We are up earlier this morning as we need to get moving for our last day in Edinburgh.  This is our little studio in Edinburgh.  We are paying the equivalent of $115 CAD per night.  We paid the equivalent of $128.50 CAD per night in St. Andrews.  Much better per square foot in this place 🙂

As I have already mentioned the Fringe Festival is happening in town right now.  This is a HUGE festival.  We spoke with a Canadian comedian yesterday.  She is performing at 1:30pm most days.  We had the Castle Tour yesterday so we decided to catch her show today.  She mentioned that she would be at the Vancouver Fringe in September.  But we won’t be back for that.  We have heard of Fringe in Vancouver, but have never gone to any performances or experienced it in any way.  Our experience is totally from here.  This is the guide.  It is HUGE as I said!  We will check out Fringe in Vancouver in 2018.

Off we go to the Action Zone.  On the way we see a bus driver in training.  This is an incredibly busy city.  This training can’t be easy.

We have passed this scene for the past 3 days.  They are tearing down an old shopping mall, the St. James Center.  It is a place where you will always find people stopping to watch for a while.  It definitely seems to fascinate people.

The shopping centre, along with the former Thistle Hotel, the New St Andrew’s House office block and the multi-storey car park, come down to make way for a £1 billion redevelopment of the area.

Demolition is expected to take around 18 months to complete. The new development will include a five-star W hotel, 85 new shops, 20 restaurants, three new public spaces, 150 private apartments, an ultra-luxury cinema and 1600 car parking spaces.

We stop at the Waverly Train Station to purchase our tickets to Inverness for tomorrow.  The Waverly is just below the Balmoral Hotel.  We pay 43.10 £ per person for our fare.  Approximately $70 CAD each for a 4 hour train journey.  This is the train station.  A very large area covered with glass roofs.

Also on our way we see an interesting red phone booth conversion.  At phone on one side and an ATM on the other.

The sun is shining today so we get some nicer photos of the Harry Potter style buildings just off the High Street.

Today we saw 3 Fringe productions.  The first one, we decided to attend after we met the actors handing out fliers on the High Street.  They promised a serious subject with a twist and some funny bits.  It was definitely a serious subject.  Thankfully our next one was our Canadian comedian.  Her show did have a serious side as well.  But there was humor so we were feeling a bit more upbeat.  Our 3rd performance was the best of all.  It was a troupe called “Men with Coconuts”.  They did a James Bond style improv.  It was what they call a “Free Fringe” where you pay what you think it was worth.  Some shows have set prices, but a lot are the “Free Fringe” type.  We gave them 20 £ for this show. Wandering around we have people telling us of the next great thing, starting in 30 minutes!!  There are so many we want to see, but obviously not enough time.  We feel that we haven’t seen a lot of the historic sites here, but can’t resist the opportunity to take advantage of all the entertainment at our finger tips.  The venues vary.  Most are not full time theaters.  This one below is where we saw In Stiches, performed by our Canadian.  Probably could have used another couple of days here.

Here are a few more shots of this amazing city.