Today was our last full day in Scotland, and tomorrow we’re flying home. If all goes according to plan, we should be back home before midnight on Sunday. And then the Sunday and Civic Holiday will be spent resting, recovering from jet lag, and begging forgiveness from our cats for going away for so long.
However, we did have time for a few last hurrahs. Yesterday we took our third and final day trip to Edinburgh to see the Edinburgh Zoo, the National Museum of Scotland, and Greyfriars Kirk.
Our first stop was to the zoo, which was a journey and a half because Google Maps is clueless. It told us to get off the bus a stop early and walk through what eventually turned out to be some sort of secluded cancer treatment centre. I get the sense that this is an old, constant issue because not one, but TWO separate people there asked us if we were headed to the zoo and gave us directions.
In any event, we did not get to see Haggis, the baby pygmy hippo, the top motivator for this excursion. Neither did we get to see the Pallas cat. But we did see many other animals, some of which are not at the Toronto Zoo, our home turf.
After that, we went to the National Museum of Scotland. It had some Roman artifacts just like the Hunterian Museum, but it also had other examples of Roman-Celt trade, as well as artifacts from the middle ages and the present day.
However, the main event of the day was seeing shows at the Fringe Festival. We found out a few months ago that Alasdair Beckett-King was going to be performing while we were visiting Scotland, so we bought tickets to see a preview show. However, once we were in Edinburgh on the day, many random people walked up to us and tried to pitch their shows as we eating dinner outside.
Seriously, I was truly unprepared for just how many people were trying to get us to watch their shows. Most of these didn’t work for us in terms of scheduling or topic, but one canny promoter gave us a pair of free tickets to see Ben Hart, a stage magician and illusionist. His show ended about half an hour before Alasdair Beckett-King’s show started, which was perfect.
I wasn’t familiar with Ben Hart before, but he’s a very good showman. One trick he did in particular – involving audience participation, paint colour swatches and a disappearing stool – was a real how-did-he-pull-that-off moment. And Beckett-King had us howling. His show was a delightful mishmash of internet skits, animation, and meta-commentary that I feel truly lucky to have experienced.
Today, our final full day here, was much slower, focused on walking and shopping. However, we did have an amusing run-in with two local men. One of them called out to us because he recognized my husband – apparently, he had seen us all around town today, as we walked back and forth between Merchant City, the Buchanan Galleries, St. Enoch’s, and the Barras Market. So he shouted out to us in a delightful Glaswegian brogue, and asked us about our stay. We said that we had had a lovely time, and that maybe we’d run into him if he ever came down to Toronto; to which he pulled in his friend, who apparently has visited Hamilton before. Eventually, we parted ways, and he shook our hands and wished us well. It felt like we had a big spring in our step after that.
