Day 6, Aug 15 (Wednesday)

Taking it easy today.  No shows today, other than our evening performance of the Scottish Military Tattoo.  No alcohol either, guts need a rest.

I'm still loving Barry.

Saw two smaller museums today.  Both were excellent displays of their stuff, both in neat old historical buildings.  The People’s Story Museum was mostly about how the “common people” of the respective era lived.  They covered the 1600’s through roughly World War 2.  It was in a narrow building, with about 3.5 stories of exhibits.  Somewhat typical of a nicer museum in a smaller to medium sized city here.  The second one was the Edinburgh Museum which was mostly about the story of the city from about the same period as the People’s Story above.  It also had a large display from Field Marshall Earl Haig, the commander of the British Expeditionary Force in WW1.  He a hero, or the “donkey general” depending on your opinion of his war of attrition strategy against the axis powers.

painted ceilings were a thing

they relocated this painted ceiling to the children's play area.

We also took in the Scottish National Museum.  This place is big, on par with a larger museum in any capital city.  This is the one where we stray from the normal reviews.  They get 2/4 stars, mostly for the t-rex skeleton.  The rest of it is not very well organized.  They clumped displays – all of which looked great and were of high quality – more or less randomly.  In the fashion/clothing section they had ladies dresses from the 1600’s through the 1980’s, but in no particular order (there was also some factually incorrect signage on a velvet dress from the 1890’s about it being too heavy to actually wear).  The natural museum had animals from 3 different continents displayed as if they were running together.  Again, no rhyme or reason, it’s as if they were displayed according to aesthetics, not any kind of regional, temporal, or other theme that makes any sense.  We wandered around for a bit, saw some performance art, and took some silly pictures of Dolly the cloned sheep.

The loving gaze at Dolly

Later we took a stroll through Greyfriar’s Kirkyard during the day and took some more pictures.  Also did some street photography for fun as well.

 

obligatory street scene from Victoria street

Marker indicating where many protestants were executed for their faith during the 1600's.

Diane said, "no thanks"

I love you too, Barry

This is an example of the multi level nature of Edinburgh.

We gave up on maps pretty early on.

The original skyscrapers.

With some time to burn before the Military Tattoo, we decided to do the Edinburgh Dungeon.  Having experience the epic lameness of the London Dungeon, I wasn’t optimistic about this one.  That was a pleasant surprise.  The Edinburgh Dungeon was surprisingly good with a larger cast, some good story telling, and funny characters. 

 This included “Judge Mental” who sentenced everyone to death and some people playing witches, including some, for a haunted house, pretty high tech special effects.  Diane had the misfortune of being next to a teenage boy that had some rather special challenges. We don’t know if he had a panic disorder, but it seemed like it.  He was in full on freak out mode a couple of times, including freezing up, hyper ventilation, etc.  The haunter in a least one of us wanted to fall upon like wolves and push him over the edge.  Sadly, this county has some confusing laws about incivility, so we kept our mouths shut and tolerated the distraction.

The Military Tattoo was amazing.  There were groups from several countries outside the UK including the Swiss, two sets of Americans (one the drill team from the USAF, the other a Revolutionary War outfit), a Czech drill team, Mexican dancers, a children’s group from an African country (missed which one in the announcement), and of course several units in the UK.  Naturally we are impartial to the Americans, but the Highland Pipers were incredible in their own right, and the Mexican performers (including male aria) were so quintessentially Mexican that I think they were my favorite.

The tattoo is a 'Change Your Life' kind of experience