Fringe Weekend Part Deux

Another slow wake up. If my mind serves me correctly, about 12pm! I had my first hot breakfast of bacon ready to start the next day. We had booked in a tour the day before called Mary King's Close. It is a tour of an old close that is underground as over time it has been built upon. The Old Town (Royal Mile) was gradually built up and this is one of very few old Closes you can access that is underground. A Close is basically an alleyway down two buildings that had houses you can enter off it. Not just houses, but pubs, shops etc. I was keen to munch down some Maccas before we had the tour as it started at 3pm so we went and got some junk food and ate it in about 10 minutes. Really quite disgusting but awfully satisfying at the same time.

We got to the Royal Mile on time for the tour which i was quite excited about. It's called Mary King's because she was a girl that lived there. The tour was run by a women who acted and dressed as a person from the 1500's. It was actually pretty cool. We headed downstairs and it was such a strange sight to see this Close now covered over, almost eery. The tour guide took us through houses there and also a pub and a place where they housed cows. They are all just shells now with some replica props...i mean it was hundreds of years ago! People lived in such terrible conditions it really is unimaginable. She explained to us that people pooped in a bucket over the course of the day and then at night time people just chucked the poo bucket down the sloping Close. So feral. It then ran down into a lake that used to be where Princes Street gardens are now and just stunk to high heaven. When women committed a crime they are drowned in that river. Imagine all the shit you'd ingest. Truly disgusting. She then tells us that Dr's didn't live a long life. It might have been due to the fact that when people gave Dr's urine samples because they thought they were sick they tested them by drinking the urine. Yes you read right, DRINKING it. The stories continued along this vein to the point that i have never been more relieved for the invention of the sewerage system. It was really cool to hear stories going back that far though as that's as far as i have ever gone in my travels. Any history I've learnt in my travels so far has been more recent. After the tour, which i highly recommend, we walked around for a bit.

We checked out some bars hoping to catch some free Fringe. Unfortunately there wasn't much going on at that time. We also checked out the Pink Bus art installation by accident. Interesting yet some what creepy. After this we headed back to the flat for dinner and to chillax before the next show. We ordered some Chinese food, delivered by a guy who stands at your door and doesn't knock. I think you are just supposed to 'sense' hes coming. The Chinese was really adding to my full fat diet weekend. Giving me even more reason to check out the local swimming pool soon. We then guzzied up and got ready for the Stephen K Amos show. I was quite excited about this as he is a headline act here for the festival and I've seen him on Australian TV and he's quite funny. It was held in the Edinburgh University gymnasium. Can i just say, FUNNY. One of the best shows I've seen recently He had me at the beginning when he had two girls come on stage and do the Single Ladies dance, to which he then joined them. If you have the opportunity to see him, do it. His show was called the Feel Good Factor as he just wanted you to leave feeling good, and i think we did. After the show we headed back to the flat and some zzz's.