Tuesday 11 August 2009

A Mini-Break in Edinburgh, in 3 parts. Part 2

Part 2, 9 August: Together and Apart

Chris and I started out our day together. We were going to go to a military cavalcade but the weather wasn’t cooperating. I wasn’t thrilled about a parade but I thought Chris wanted to go (it turns out he thought I would want to go but wasn’t particularly attached to it). Once we figured that out, we decided to go to “Camera Obscura and World Of Illusions”. It was fantastic!!! There were 4 floors of optical illusions and other fun visual things and there was a 15 minute presentation using a camera obscura which was like a really sophisticated 360 degree periscope. I got some ideas of things to google to show my class next year too since we do a mini unit on sight and optical illusions.

We had lunch together and then went our separate ways. I went shopping and Chris went to Arthur’s Seat up on a mountain somewhere. I started out at the visitor center because I was feeling naked without my A to Z and needed some kind of map. In the square there was an exhibition of odd, real street signs. My camera got exhausted! I know there has been an e-mail circulated with this type of thing, but there were many many more than on the e-mail. I think I got a picture of about 90% of them. Hopefully I can photoshop them together with their captions because that makes them twice as funny.

I got some shopping done and wandered around the Royal Mile. I was feeling a blister coming on so I decided to head towards my venue for the show. I figured I could find where the queue was going to be and just sit. There were some other really nice people in the queue so we just chatted and the time passed really quickly which was great. The show itself was HILARIOUS! It was entitled, “Alistair McGowan, The One and The Many”. He’s a comedian/impressionist who I had seen on “The Graham Norton Show” back in April and he had mentioned then that he was going to be at the Fringe. I knew many of the people he was talking about and impersonating. Not as many as if I lived here, but it was still enjoyable because he was telling jokes at the same time. My favourite bit was when he was talking about who should narrate the nature films here since the gentleman who has been doing it for umpteen years has said he’s stopping. He chose Eddie Izzard as his choice and did a fabulous impression of Eddie. For those of you who don’t know this, Eddie Izzard is one of my favourite comedians EVER! Alistair did a great impression of Eddie. I was in stitches!

Once the show was over, I was eager to get back to my hotel before it got dark so I hailed a cab. I got to ride in one of the “Supernanny” black cabs. One more thing that was on my “To Do” list that can be checked off.

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