By the time I came to terms with the fact that I’m half asleep in Keflavik, Iceland, it’s time to get on another plane and fly to Scotland.

When I arrive I realise that, by coincidence, it happens to be festival time in Edinburgh.

How do I get lucky like this?

The city is bursting with people. Edinburgh is one of the most famous and popular arts festivals in the world.
Weirdos from every corner of the planet are here; comedians, musicians, artists, drag queens, burlesque dancers, magicians… even a few bloggers.

Edinburgh’s a beautiful place.
I’m completely unable to appreciate the architecture and scenery, unfortunately. My body feels like a sock full of 3 day old pork mince. My eyes get stuck in both the up and down positions now, they’re so crusty from 14 plus hours of aeroplane air.

I spend two days sleeping. I’m not exaggerating. I hardly even take breaks to eat. When I open my eyes long enough to urinate or drink water, my eyelids just sag closed again.
I’ve never had such nasty jet lag before. All that time bathing in stale, germy air on the plane. Maybe I got a dose of some yummy infection from one of my fellow inmates.

In the streets of Edinburgh, the festival party is jumping, but I can hardly find the energy to make a sandwich, let alone drag my sorry butt down the street to see a stand-up comedy night.

 
Tuesday:

I come good on the third day.
Luckily there is still almost another week of Festival.

I’ve already seen two amazing magic shows, about four hours of great stand-up and a busker doing balloon animal impressions while he rides a kids bicycle and juggles rabbits. Actually, that last one might have been a semi-hallucination. I’m still pretty spaced out.

This is one of my favourite shows I’ve seen.

These guys call their act ‘The Old Men‘. It’s a comedy magic show. The two characters, the ‘old men’ are former Las Vegas stars who are trying to make a comeback in their nineties. This show is like an unhealthy smoothie of ‘Jackass’ and ‘Little Britain’. I mean what’s funnier than a couple of disreputable senior citizens doing cheesy magic tricks, nailing each other to things, and flashing their wrinkly arses at the audience?

 
Thursday / Friday morning

There’s so much good stuff on every day and every night.

All the shows I’ve been seeing are part of the Edinburgh Festival ‘Free Fringe’. The way it works is like busking indoors. There are dozens of little venues in pubs and clubs and places like that. Some of the shows are not so good, but you don’t have to pay in advance, so it’s OK. If the show is awesome – and most of them are – you put money in the hat on your way out.

A lot of the shows I’ve watched are comedy magic shows. There are so many amazing and funny magicians at the festival. Besides ‘The Old Men’, a couple of my favourites were Paul Dabek and Dave Alnwick.

Edinburgh is not a massive city. Quite close to the middle of town there’s a huge parkland area along St Leonards Bank. A person could pitch their little tent and live in there for days. Just saying ;-)

It’s sunny one day, and grey and windy the next. Just like I remember Europe in 2013.

In some ways the grey weather actually accentuates the beauty of Edinburgh. Yesterday I took a walk around Greyfriars Cemetery and the cloudy skies definitely made the place more spooky and atmospheric.

As long as it doesn’t rain on me when I’m hitchhiking I’ll be happy.
I’ve got lots of hitchhiking coming up.

Check out these caged graves at Greyfriars. This is what people had to do to stop grave robbers back in the day.