26 July - Edinburgh

Got brave today and ventured into the Old Town.  So many people.  We went to Victoria Street which has a number of "Harry Potter" sights.  Guides in full throttle today swishing wands everywhere.  I was focused solely on returning to a lovely shop I had a bought a jacket at some months ago.  I'd been eyeing off their short sleeved jumpers online and decided it was now or never.  Seemed the tourists were distracted by the Harry Potter sights and largely had the shop to myself.  Purchase made and assured Stephen my shopping was officially done.

Then visited the National Library.  It has been modernised since I was last there.  Exhibition area is more sophisticated but smaller.  I was disappointed.  Last time they had a variety of  books on display that you could easily read; recording people's musings on typical Scottish activities. It was where I read about the happenings of the Scottish Skating Society and some drunk Captain who had prevented a ship from setting sail. Whoever had set these pages open had a sense of humour and a bit of originality.  Today's displays were less interesting. More bog standard historical stuff.  Was though an interesting map of Scotland in the 1600's. It was a bit like a very much reduced version of the British Library.  But it now has a nice coffee shop where we shared a sandwich and scone, away from the tourist hordes.  

And then we thought we may as well continue on down The Royal Mile and dropped into Cadenheads to see if any bottle was of interest (for taking home).  Good news was a delivery is expected this coming Friday - 2 days before we leave.  We will be there Friday morning.

Stephen has drawn up a schedule for our last week where we can work out what needs to be done before we go including what meals we will be cooking.  Trying to avoid having to throw too much stuff out.   I immediately made an inroad or threw our schedule into disarray - not sure which - by booking us a lunch at Kitchen.

Picked up the official Fringe booklet detailing all shows.  Having now seen just how many people there are around, now tossing up whether or not to go.  The jury is out at the moment.

And tonight we get to watch the Olympics Opening Ceremony at 6pm - instead of at 3am in Sydney (which I definitely would not have done).  Have realized that any Olympics watching that we do  will be from a UK perspective.  Hopefully we will inadvertently get to see a few competing Australians.