Well, here we are, city number 3. Edinburgh.

We've only been here a few hours, but already we have a clear leader. This city kicks major league ass. It's just the most beautiful, historic place, with majestic buildings and surrounding scenery to match.

The difference between this hostel and the one in London is like the difference between a McCain Pom Noisette from the freezer section of coles and a Truffle. Just amazing, this place is an old castle with the better facilities than I have seen in a lot of hotels. I only have 17 mins of internet time left, and I have a lot of other cool stuff to tell you about so I won't talk about it too much right now, but lets just say tommorrow morning is pencilled in for a big sleep in.

There is a lot of people here in town at the moment, with the Festival and the Tattoo on all at once. A lot of them, who probably are more organised than I am, have similar ideas to me. Ticket to the Tattoo? Try the scalpers, if you are lucky you'll get one for less than triple the face value. Hmmm. Round of Golf on the old course at St Andrews? Did you book six months ago? Maybe you can go in the lottery for a cancellation spot (the one where if you win, you get to pay nearly $600A for a round of golf). Ticket to see Nancy Cartrights show in the fringe? Dreaming. Bugger!

The vibe of the fringe in the city is absolutely electric though, and there are literally thousands of shows to see, we have caught a couple already. The first was called improverty, an 5 person improv group from the University of Edinburgh. Champagne comedy. We actually saw them in London a couple of days ago but I forgot to mention it but they are up here now and this seemed like a good time to mention it.

The show we actually caught this afternoon was another couple of locals doing a show called "The Joy of Wine", a bit of Gang show standard sketch comedy taking the piss out of wine tasting. Had it's moments, and the toilet humour double entendres were a scream (for a juvenille like me anyway), but on the whole worth about the 4 quid we paid to see it.

We also saw the opening pageant today with all of the pipe bands in town for the Tattoo in it, so I don't feel so bad about missing the Tattoo now. I suspect that won't be the last set of bagpipes I will hear this week either.

Tommorrow is two for one day, so Karen and I are going to Fringe out and see a stack of shows so we can do some other sight seeing later in the week.

On a final note, this hostel has good access to the internet so I'll keep the breakfast updates coming.