Edinburgh
It’s a Sunday morning at the height of the Edinburgh Festival and the famously picturesque city is looking a little bleary-eyed. From my room overlooking Grassmarket Square I watch a street cleaner forlornly pushing a broom with one hand while sipping a rejuvenating can of Irn-Bru (a Scottish soft drink “made from girders”) with the other.
Last night was another blur of celebration – a riot of comedy, dance, theatre, music and art crammed into every nook and cranny of the city. Tonight will be the same. As will tomorrow. Six of the city’s 12 annual festivals take place in August – a month-long party of late nights and lie-ins. How do the locals survive? “Easy,” replies one with a rueful smile, “we sleep in September.”
Gradually the city is coaxed back to life. A group of musicians crosses the square, dragging their instruments behind them. A white-faced geisha in traditional costume shuffles up the hill. Cafes throw back shutters and set out tables and chairs. Soon the transformation will be complete. In a couple of hours the square will be filled once more with excited clusters of people huddled around an ever-changing roster of bands, jugglers, magicians and dancers.
The figures behind the festival are staggering. At its peak, 25,000 artists perform more than 1,000 shows a day. Performances take place in 300 venues, which range from private Georgian gardens to public toilets; phone boxes to pop-up Spiegeltents. During August, the entire city becomes a stage.
The first International Festival was held in Edinburgh in 1947 to boost morale after the Second World War. Eight theatre companies who turned up uninvited started the Fringe Festival, which, ironically, is now the largest of its kind in the world.
Throw in an arts festival spread across 40 museums and galleries, a book festival that attracts more than 800 authors and 220,000 visitors, the Mela festival that celebrates the city’s cultural diversity and the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo - an unmissable nightly spectacle of marching bands and fireworks performed within Edinburgh Castle - and you’ve got arguably the greatest party on the planet.
While tickets to some of the big name acts can sell out in advance, the joy of the Festival is that you can always buy tickets to hundreds of performances on the day. Some will be spectacularly good; others will be woefully bad… but that’s part of the fun. Ask around for recommendations and read reviews to see what’s creating the most buzz.
For an entertaining free sample, take a stroll along the Royal Mile, a historic cobbled street where every day hundreds of acts perform a sample of their shows. Pay attention because you could be looking at the next Robin Williams, Hugh Grant or Jude Law. They and many more household names got their big break in Edinburgh.