Scotland 2025: Edinburgh - Fringe Festival

The timing of our vacation to Scotland revolved around the schedule for Edinburgh Fringe which runs annually during the first three weeks of August.  Rich and I love live theatre and regularly attend the Toronto Fringe Festival which launched in 1989 as part of an international network of Fringe festivals inspired by the original one in Edinburgh.  I have always wanted to attend the festival that started it all.

In 1947, the Edinburgh International Festival was initiated after World War II as an effort to celebrate art and reunite people through cultural exchange. The invited performers came from prestigious companies spanning music, theatre, dance and opera.  Eight lesser known and uninvited theatre groups arrived independently and set up their own shows in smaller, alternative venues, performing on the “fringes” of the main festival.  Over the years, the number of uninvited performers grew until the Fringe Festival was formalized in 1958, offering open access, unconventional venues and the spirit of creative independence, experimentation and public engagement.  Other countries joined in over the decades and as of 2025, there are around 300 Fringe festivals worldwide.

We decided to attend the last week of Edinburgh Fringe and selected 8 shows to watch in 5 days, which was a bit ambitious since we had a show on the day that we landed and were quite jetlagged and struggling to stay awake.  While the overall concept of Fringe is the same in Toronto, there were some marked differences that we noticed in Edinburgh. The Toronto Fringe festival runs for 12 days in July with around 100 shows at 22 venues, mostly in small, conventional theatre spaces.  Each show appears at the same venue throughout its run but varies in terms of start times so that there is opportunity for people to watch during the day or in the evening.

By contrast, the size and scope of Edinburgh Fringe is significantly larger.  In 2025, it featured 265 “theatre spaces” hosting more than 3350 shows over 25 days.  Each show played at the same location and the same time throughout the festival, which makes sense since it would have been a logistic nightmare otherwise.  However, this restricted us as to which shows we had time to see, since we also wanted to visit museums and other attractions during the day.  The types of spaces chosen for venues ranged widely from traditional theatres to churches, pubs, hotels, office meeting rooms, university classrooms, shops and stores, temporary tent structures and pretty much any space where rows of chairs could be set up.  Often, this made sightlines difficult since many of these spaces had no rake to speak of.

Attending the Edinburgh Fringe has much more of a drinking/party atmosphere.  You are expected to wait at the bar, drinking and listening to music until your show is announced just a few minutes before start time. At this point, you form a quick queue that is rushed into the theatre. However, those who wait in the bar tend to end up at the back of the line while those in the know figure out where the queue will start and just wait there.  This was more important than ever at this festival because the lack of a rake in the seating often meant I would not see if we were not seated in the front row.  Being from Toronto, we are used to queuing in line for at least 30-60 minutes if we wanted good seats, awaiting to be let into the theatre 15 minutes before the show starts.  For Edinburgh, we only showed up 20 minutes before start time but the volunteers were always shocked at how early we were!  The show starts almost immediately after you are seated. The quick turnover between shows was always impressive as immediately after a show ends, the entire cast participates in tearing down their sets and props to clear way for the next one.

The entire city is consumed by Fringe during these three weeks, to the point where restaurants don’t take reservations and some smaller attractions shut down their usual opening hours since they are hosting shows instead.  Given that the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo runs at the same time, over 1 million tourists descend on the city during this period. Every wall, lamppost, fence or other flat surface was plastered with advertisements for shows.  Given our scheduling time constraints, we pre-selected our shows ahead of time and pre-purchased our tickets so we unfortunately did not have time to add more.  Some of the titles and images for shows were hilarious or just plain weird.

In addition to the shows, the streets were lined with buskers singing, juggling, miming, performing feats of magic and even basketball tricks.  We were also inundated by hawkers trying to pass out flyers promoting their shows, often dressed in wild costumes from the shows and standing on bollards to attract attention.  On a daily basis, we walked by the same woman on Grassmarket, just a few steps from our apartment.  She was balanced on the same bollard each day in a different outfit trying to draw attention to her show.  It felt rude to continually refuse the flyers but also wasteful to take one since we knew we could not add more shows.  People tried all different ways to get us to take a flyer. One husband and wife duo were handing out the out together and the husband’s schtick was “Please take a flyer.  It’s the only way my wife will let me see the children!”.

Although it was exhausting visiting tourist attractions by day followed by watching theatre in the evening, we had fun with our Edinburgh Fringe experience.  We never really got used to the differences and continued to arrive early to await entry for each show.  We had selected 7 musicals and 1 comedy, of which 3 of the shows were historic in theme while 4 of them were detective/crime/mystery related and one was a meta-musical that dealt with the love of musicals.  Although selecting fringe shows is always a crapshoot, we figured we were safe with 7 musicals because even if the plot was dumb, at least there would be singing.  This didn’t quite work out as planned but at the end, six out of eight of our picks were winners which we thoroughly enjoyed.  That is not such a bad percentage since you never know what you get at Fringe, at least in Toronto.

We started out with our sole non-musical, which was the hilarious slapstick farce The Shoddy Detective and the Art of Deception. At a high level, the show was about the mystery of a missing priceless painting and a pair of hapless detectives who interview a slew of wacky suspects to try to solve the case.  But the plot was really incidental and more of a showcase for the comedic talents of four actors including two playing the eponymous and incompetent “Shoddy Detective” Stuart Pidcock and his adversary, the criminal mastermind turned detective Dusty Wills. 

The other two actors are each billed as “Multi-Roller” meaning they played many roles, switching them adeptly using the door on the left and a window on the right of the stage as means of exiting and re-entering in different costumes.  These include Lord and Lady Rayburn, the owners of the manor where the action takes place, the gardeners, the cook, the maid, and a Russian countess.  The male multi-roller also plays an insurance broker and his wife to great comedic effect by dressing half as the man and the other half as the woman, which he reveals as he turns in profile to expose each character.  Initially these characters are only seen from the door opening but eventually “they” come onto centre stage and have a hilarious fight with “each other”.  But the female multi-roller Becky Bartram was the standout playing all other female characters including the maid who is repeatedly struck in the face and flipped out of a window.  Her acrobatic prowess was astounding and it made sense to learn from reading the program that she is also a trained stuntwoman.

This first show was held in the Gilded Balloon at Appleton Tower which is an entertainment venue hub opened in 2023 that hosts 7 separate theatre spaces with capacities ranging from 44 to 300 seats.  The smaller spaces consist of rows of chairs or seats on the floor with no slope while the larger ones have raised stages and raked seats.  As with all the Fringe venues, there is also a lively bar.  As our show was more established and popular, it was held in one of the larger spaces so we sat in the second row and had fairly good sightlines.

We noticed that many of the venues were prefaced with “Gilded Balloon”.  It turns out that the name came from the original Fringe venue at Edinburgh’s Cowgate St, housed in a former warehouse built in 1823 for a silk merchant’s shop called “The Gilded Balloon”.  The name was retained when it became a comedy venue in 1986 but the building was destroyed in a fire in 2002.  As a tribute to this original space, some newly created Fringe venues have added “Gilded Balloon” to their names including the Appleton Tower where we watched this very entertaining show.  We were off to a great start.

Our next show was I Wish My Life Were Like A Musical, a song cycle describing both performers and audience members who love musicals (that’s me, so this was right up my alley).  The opening number self-referentially talked about a show’s opening number including the 5-minute warning before start time (which ironically, we didn’t get), no cellphones or noisy wrappers for candy (described as "boiled sweeties"), the heart-pumping anticipation for the actors as they hear the opening overture, and complaints about latecomers, timed hilariously just as actual latecomers were let into the show to a big laugh. Subsequent songs deal with aspects of musicals an actor’s perspective.  A song about the grind of auditioning included picking a “unique" song just to find out 3 people before you chose the same one, showing vocal and emotional range in your song, and touching up your photo so much that it no longer looks like you.  This song reminded me of Kathy's lament in the musical The Last Five Years.  

Next, an actor tries to adjust to a faulty piano accompaniment by changing the key of his song when a note played is too high, too low, to loud and then silent before finally giving up and singing acapella.  The vocal agility of the performer as he adapted to the change of key in each verse was admirable and made for a funny tune.  Other songs from the actor’s perspective included performing while sick, preparing for a role through sleep, diet and exercise regiments, requiring to kiss a co-star with bad breath, being the understudy guy that no one wanted to see, the diva and so on.  There were also a few songs from the audience’s point of view.  There was the superfan who buys all the soundtracks and dresses up like the characters including Elphaba from Wicked and the Phantom.  The final two actors came out in costumes that looked like Captain Hook and Smee from Peter Pan but turned out to be Hamilton and Cosette.  Then there were the secret musical lovers who outwardly would not seem like the types including a punk rocker, serious academic, tattoo artist and jock.  The theme song “I Wish My Life Were Like a Musical” was sung twice including the finale before ending with an Encore song.  As expected, I loved this meta-musical about musicals!

This time the show played in Gilded Balloon at the Museum, which is a venue at the back of the National Museum of Scotland with a 210-seat auditorium.  Once again, we had a real theatre with raked seating so we started to think that all of our shows would be like this.  We would find out by the next show that this was not the case.  For this one, we sat in the second row and found ourselves too close to the wide stage.  This became an ongoing dilemma between sitting up front so I could see or sitting further back to get a proper perspective.

Our next show, the “musical” Grey, gave us our first taste of how diverse and experimental Edinburgh Fringe could be both in terms of venue and performance. The show was held in Riddler’s Court, a historic structure built around 1590 as a luxurious townhouse for a wealthy local magistrate where banquets were hosted for royalty including King James VI. The location was first used for Fringe after a renovation in 2010 and now contains 4 small theatre spaces. 

Our show was in the Clover Studio, the smallest theatre that only holds up to 20 seats. The tiny claustrophobic space offered two rows of three folding chairs on each side with a centre aisle in between and no rake. The first row was so close to the performance area that your feet would be overlapping it. We had a split second to decide whether or not to sit in that front row and I wrongly chose not to. Unfortunately, from the second row, I could only see the top of the lone actress’ head for most of the performance.  At least I stuck to my guns and insisted that I sit on the aisle instead of shifting over as the ushers requested so I could lean across to see more whenever the actress moved to the centre of the stage.

Grey refers to Lady Jane Grey, a sixteen-year-old Protestant and great-granddaughter of Henry VII who became a political puppet and tragic martyr when she was proclaimed Queen of England and Ireland in 1553 by supporters who wanted a Protestant Monarch.  Known as the “Nine Days Queen”, she was deposed and imprisoned by the more powerful Mary Tudor who was Catholic.  The play opens with Jane in prison in a tiny room in the Tower of London (thus appropriate for this theatre space) with just some books, candles, writing material, a chair and a chest on the floor.  As she awaits her fate, still hoping that she will be set free, she reminisces about how she got there.  I use the word "play" instead of "musical" because we waited for almost half the show listening to a non-stop monologue before a song was sung. In total only 2 or 3 songs were performed over an hour-long show and they were for mood only as opposed to propelling the plot. By my standards, this does not qualify as a musical.  The play ends dramatically with Jane being blindfolded and beheaded.  Based on this, for our next 5 shows which were all supposed to be musicals, I held my breath until the first song was sung.  Luckily this always happened within the first few minutes so our experience with Grey was an anomaly.

This actually was not a bad show and I might have enjoyed it if I knew what to expect.  As it was, given that I could not see, had not properly researched the history to understand what was happening, and waited most of the hour for singing, I would pronounce this as our first dud.

Because of our experience with Grey, I was determined to sit in the first row whenever we walked into a theatre with no rake, as was the case for our next musical Dirty Money.  This one was held within a room within the Radisson Blue Hotel, which is a new building erected in 1990 but designed to look historic with a stone façade and a turret in front, in order to blend in with its surroundings.  Three spaces are allocated for the Edinburgh Fringe.  The one for Dirty Money consisted of a small floor space marked off for a thrust stage with chairs arranged on three sides.  We snagged the last two seats in the front row facing the stage, so seeing over heads was not a problem but we were too close so it was more difficult to see or hear any action on the other side of the floor in front of us.

Dirty Money opens with a ne’er do well named Luke, whose failed business enterprise resulted in a large debt owed to a violent mobster.  At the same time, a wealthy and powerful billionaire has been incarcerated for corruption and has offered half her fortune to anyone who can break her out of jail.  Forced by the mobster to attempt this jailbreak as a way of paying off his debt, Luke ropes in his friends in the caper, without telling them that the promised reward would all go to the gangster.  The musical had fun and sometimes heart-felt songs. Despite the cramped space and sparse staging consisting of a chair positioned within a wall-less metal enclosure and multiple wood tables that were stacked into various configurations, the stagecraft and clever choreography easily conveyed all the different settings dictated by the scenes.  A missed musical cue at the start of Luke’s big redemption song was handled adeptly by the actor who said “cue the music” twice before singing acapella until the score kicked in. 

We had started to notice at the end of Grey and again with this show that the bows at the end of the show were abrupt so that the actors could race off the stage and return quickly to dismantle the sets.  Such is the life of a Fringe performer.

Our next show Gladiatrix would become our favourite show of this festival.  It is based on the lesser-known historical existence of female gladiators (or gladiatrices) who competed in the Gladiator Games fighting each other or against exotic animals.  They were considered salacious novelty acts until Emperor Septimius Severus outlawed them in 200AD.  The musical explored the various possible reasons why a woman might become a gladiatrix with each of four actresses singing a song that revealed her reason.  One was a slave who signed a contract to fight 100 battles after which she was to be set free.  The second one had a birthmark which at the time was considered taboo and was shunned from her community.  A third was a servant whose affair with her rich patron was discovered by his jealous wife after which she was cast out.  And finally, a wealthy noblewoman did it for kicks, seeking excitement, fame and glory.  Two male gladiators acting as narrators and other roles as well as the Emperor himself filled out the cast.

This musical stood out not only for its wonderful songs but especially due to the stunning, acrobatic fight scenes with swords, shields and spears, often while singing.  One actress did cartwheels and flips as part of her battles.  Creative use of a long red cord was featured in a scene depicting the servant being beaten after her dalliance was discovered, and at the final battle scene to signify blood after a kill.  The actor playing Septimius Severus was hilarious and channeled the role of King Herod in Jesus Christ Superstar.

This show was held at “The Space @ Venue 45”, which is a historic theatre venue within the Old St. Paul’s Church Hall.  We walked into what felt like a large gym auditorium to find floor seats on three sides.  Once again, we took the front role but this time it was perfect since the stage area was huge to allow for the fights and we had the best view.  It was interesting seeing the actors dressed in the gladiator costumes hanging out with the audience in the bar area while waiting for the previous show to end so that they could take the stage.

Our next musical Detective Demise was another fun show held a unique location called Just the Tonic at the Caves, which is a venue with six performance spaces set in ancient underground chambers or caves.  Most of the spaces have just floor seats but our show was in the Fancy Room which has a very slight rake in the seating.  Because of this, we tried to sit in the second row to get more of a perspective of the stage and after sitting on my coat, I was able to get high enough to see most of the action.  The venue is quirky and whimsical on the outside as well since there are parts of the front or rear of cows jutting out of the façades.  Perhaps this is a nod to the space being on the street Cowgate which was once a medieval route for herding cows to market.

Detective’s Demise opens at the birthday party for police detective Ben Stone who is murdered by one of his five guests which include his materialistic wife Kate, alcoholic brother Alex, partner at the precinct and best friend Will, stepsister Lucy and Lucy’s boyfriend Joe.  When junior detective Arthur Evans comes calling after the death, he steps in to investigate and finds out that each of the suspects have a potential (some quite silly) motive for killing Ben.  As Arthur interviews each suspect, they recreate past scenarios in clever flashback numbers featuring Ben.  We thoroughly enjoyed this show with its great songs and good comedic acting.  We therefore had high hopes for the next one which was scheduled later in the evening at the exact same theatre and with the same theatre group, even featuring a few of the same actors.

Unfortunately, we did not like Escape Room at all as we found the plot convoluted and difficult to follow, and for some inexplicable reason, the sound quality was off so it was difficult the hear.  This was surprising since it was in the same theatre space and even reused a few of the backdrops from the previous show!  The overall premise was that six college friends are tricked into attending an Escape Room event (although it was supposed to be at Fringe in some meta way which made no sense).  Inexplicably, a seventh character showed up (presumably accidentally) but spoke mostly French so that the others (and the audience!) did not understand him for the most part.  As they work to solve puzzles to facilitate their escape, old conflicts and rivalries are brought to the surface that need to be worked through.  A few of the actors that we found so charming and endearing in the previous show just came across as annoying.  This became our second dud and we really hoped that we would enjoy the last pick since it is always better to end on a high note.

Luckily, we loved the final show very much and it became our second favourite.  Jackie! was a biographical musical about former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy starting from her early days as a young plucky reporter/photographer nee Jacqueline Lee Bouvier when she first met John F Kennedy.  Actress Nancy Edwards who plays Jackie was picture-perfect in the role and reminded me of Katie Holmes who also took on this role in a TV miniseries. 

The rest of the characters were played as caricatures, exaggerating (or maybe not?) aspects of their real-life counterparts. The actor who played JFK adopted an exaggerated Boston accent that was a bit jarring to hear at first. Patriarch Joseph Kennedy was depicted as controlling and domineering almost to the point of being mobster-like.  He welcomes Jackie to the family with the song “Bought and Paid For” talking about materialistic items that the family owned but also referring to Jackie herself.  Robert Kennedy was portrayed as the family idiot which seemed harsh and inaccurate and perhaps played for laughs.  The final actress in the cast played both Jackie’s sister Lee Radziwill as well as Marilyn Monroe, singing the infamous “Happy Birthday Mr. President” song to highlight JFK’s infidelity.  A throwaway line alluded to the rumour that Monroe was murdered when she became inconvenient to the Kennedys.  

It was quite impressive how a 60-minute show so adeptly portrayed Jackie’s journey from ingenue to First Lady, becoming a style icon admired for her intelligence, grace and beauty, to being beaten down by the political pressures and pressed to use drugs prescribed by “Dr. Feelgood”, to her rebellion before and after JFK’s assassination, and finally escaping the Kennedys’ grasp by marrying billionaire Aristotle Onassis (depicted as totally gay).

Held in the Gilded Balloon Patter House which hosts 10 performance spaces and is known for its bright pink façade, we were in the Big Yin theatre and finally back to having a real stage and racked seating.  This was a wonderful show and a joyous ending to our Edinburgh Fringe experience.  Fringe has been successful springboards for past shows which went on to achieve commercial success.  These include Six the Musical, Drowsy Chaperone, Kim's Convenience, Fleabag and more.  It would be great to see Gladiatrix and Jackie! expanded further into full professional productions.

Scotland 2025: Edinburgh - Flight, Grassmarket, Apartment

The days leading up to our flight to Edinburgh to begin our 23-day visit to Scotland was filled with a bit of angst for my husband Rich and myself. About 2 weeks before our flight, there were reports of Storm Floris which brought unusually strong wind gusts of over 85 mph and heavy rainfall causing transportation delays and cancelations as well as closures of venues such as the Glasgow Cathedral.  Then with 10 days to go, we learned that the hike we planned to take in Holyrood Park in Edinburgh would need to be delayed or curtailed since a fire had spread in Arthur’s Seat, an extinct volcano in that area, closing off some of the paths leading to it.  And finally, mere days before we were to fly, we were bombarded with news from the Air Canada flight attendants’ strike which was affecting passengers booked with that airline.  Luckily, we had booked with West Jet, which flew out of Terminal 3 in Pearson Airport, away from the chaos that ensued in Terminal 1. 

Despite all these potential setbacks, we ended up with an issueless flight that started off with a breeze through a short Nexxus security line where we didn’t have to remove liquids or laptops.  This was followed by a visit to the Plaza Premium Lounge were we dined on meatballs with tomato sauce and rice, and stir-fried noodles with chicken before heading to our boarding gate.  We had pre-paid for aisle seats across from each other which made it easier to get up during the flight and to access our bags from the overhead bin at the end.  But it also meant less space under the seat in front of us to store personal items and for legroom.  At one point during our flight, the man in the centre seat next to Rich looked at me and started gesturing wildly.  I didn’t understand what he was trying to say until he pointed at my t-shirt then revealed the tattoo on his forearm.  I had forgotten that I was wearing my Rush T-shirt with the iconic Starman logo from the Canadian band’s album 2112.  The man had the same tattoo on his arm!  It’s funny that I get reactions to this t-shirt all over the world but the truth is that I bought it at a market sale because it was $5 and looked cool.  I am not actually familiar with any Rush music!  This has happened so often that I have decided I need to start listening to Rush music to justify wearing the shirt.

Our flight landed on schedule and we took the airport tram into central Edinburgh, getting off at Princes Street near The Mound.  This was about a 20-minute walk (approximately 1km) to our rental apartment on Grassmarket but it felt longer and farther because we were lugging our carry-on bags up and down steep inclines. Fortunately, it was a bright, sunny and pleasant day.  In fact, we were lucky throughout our 7-day stay in Edinburgh as we had sunshine with just a spitting of rain the entire time.  That luck would last through 4 days in Glasgow before running out on our 11-day drive through the east coast of the Scottish Highlands.

Grassmarket is a historic, cobblestoned street dating back to the 14th Century that was the location of the city’s oldest marketplaces and a site for public executions in the 17th and 18th centuries.  Today, Grassmarket is a lively street filled with pubs, restaurants and shops selling crafts, and unique gifts and is the location for live musical performances and festivals.  There are many interesting pubs on this street including Maggie Dickson’s at 92 Grassmarket, named after a woman who survived her execution by hanging in 1724, earning her the nickname “Half Hangit Maggie”.  Along a similar theme was The Last Drop, a 17th century pub whose name refers to the last drink given before a hanging.  The inn is decorated with dangling nooses, photos and inscriptions on the walls that refer to the area’s dark history.  We had a quick lunch there while waiting to be able to check into our apartment. In the centre of Grassmarket is a circular monument erected in 1937 marking the site where over 100 Covenanters were executed in the late 17th Century for their religious beliefs and refusals to pledge allegiance to the crown.  There were many other interesting shops and eateries on Grassmarket including Mary’s Milk Bar, an artisanal hand-crafted ice cream parlour that had lengthy lineups every day that wrapped around the store and up a flight of stairs.  We never got close enough to find out what all the fuss was about.

Because our plane landed at 10:05am and we arrived in the Old Town by noon, it was much too early for us to check into our rental apartment or even to drop off our bags.  We were hoping to spend the time before check-in to explore some of the area in the vicinity. Luckily, we were referred to Bounce Luggage Storage which has locations worldwide and especially in United States and United Kingdom.  We found a location just a half block away from the apartment inside the Kickass Café.  The location included a funky bar/café and hostel as well as a locked luggage storage area. It cost £13 to store two large bags and one smaller bag but the fee was worth it since it allowed us to start exploring Edinburgh without being laden by our luggage.  We had a pretty packed schedule for this leg of our trip so we needed every hour.  We downloaded the Bounce app, pre-booked and pre-paid for our storage time indicating number of bags and were able to drop them off.  The attendant that took our luggage did not give us a receipt so I took a photo of the number tags attached to our bags.  Good thing I did, since the next attendant who retrieved our bags asked to see a photo to prove which were our bags.  It all went smoothly and we will keep this service in mind for the future.

Through Booking.com we rented a self-contained apartment at 1 Grassmarket within a historic 4-storey stone tenement building constructed in 1875 complete with baronial turrets typical of late 19th century Scottish architecture.  Alas my dream of staying in a turret was not fulfilled with this rental as our unit did not include one.  It was quite the complicated task to get into our apartment which included getting a code to retrieve the keys out of the assigned lockbox, figuring out which of two identical looking keys would open the heavy, big black wood front door, entering a 6-character code to enter the next door, climb a flight of stairs (luckily we were only one floor up), using the second identical key to enter the next door, walk down a long corridor, open another door onto a long outdoor balcony before finally reaching our apartment and opening it with the final key.  This was such a journey that we were sent an instruction video which we watched multiple times before our arrival.  After a couple of days, it became rote but the first few times were daunting.  I eventually put a piece of painter’s tape on one of the identical keys so that they were easily distinguishable.

The apartment itself contained a bed and sofa, full kitchen including a washing machine and a bathroom with a shower and heated towel rack, which unfortunately did not work.  We appreciated being able to wash our clothes but had to hang-dry them for several day.  There was no cell service in the stone building but luckily the WIFI signal was strong and encrypted with a secure password.  Our only complaint was that we never got hot water out of the bathroom or kitchen sinks but luckily the shower did have hot water so we made do.

For all its little quirks, we could not have found a better location to stay in terms of price and accessibility to the attractions that we wished to visit, especially during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival when accommodations were difficult to come by and prices were jacked up.  We were within 10-25 minutes walk to National museums, castles and palaces, the Royal Mile, parks and kirkyards (cemeteries) and all the shows that we had selected for Fringe.  Grassmarket itself was bustling with bars and restaurants busy every day and night.  We had a perfect view of the Edinburgh Castle from the base of our apartment building and were even able to catch the tail end of the fireworks and drone show that marked the grand finale of the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo show while standing across from our apartment.

A crafts and food market is held each Saturday on Grassmarket, offering artisan crafts, local products and street food.  We completed our Saturday itinerary in time to catch the tail end of the market and were able to pick up some items for dinner.  We had read about Lovely Paella and their offerings of seafood paella with jumbo prawns, mussels and squid, as well as chicken paella with green beans.  We bought one of each plus several sausage rolls to have for meals at “home” over the next few days.

Scotland 2025: Edinburgh, Glasgow, Highlands Drive

Continuing our goal to visit new countries in Western Europe that we haven’t been to before, this summer/fall, my husband Rich and I will be spending 23 days in Scotland.  We will fly into Edinburgh where we will stay for 7 days, take a train to Glasgow for a 4-day visit, then pick up a rental car to drive along the east coast of Scotland to tour the Highlands for 11 days. We considered driving further west to get to more popular scenic locations recommended by all of our friends including Isle of Skye, Loch Lomond and Loch Ness.  But this would involve much longer driving times and while we like outdoors and scenery, our preference is to spend more time exploring cities.  We will still get our fill of hikes, cliff walks and ocean views on Scotland’s east coast and it would hopefully be less crowded and a bit more off the beaten path, relatively speaking.

 Usually, we would not travel during the summer months because of heat and crowds, but being a lover of live theatre, I have always wanted to attend the Edinburgh Fringe Festival which runs through most of August.  We decided to arrive in Edinburgh during the last week of the theatre festival and will watch 8 shows mostly in the evenings after touring museums, art galleries and other tourist attractions during the day.  Most of the national museums are free in Edinburgh including the Scottish National Museum, Scottish National (Art) Gallery, Modern (Art) Museum and Portrait Gallery.  We also have tickets to visit Edinburgh Castle and Mary King’s Close and will check out the Greyfriar’s Cemetery (Kirkyard) and walk the ”Royal Mile” ending up in an area around Holyrood Palace.

Our stay in Glasgow will mostly involve looking at the designs and architecture of Charles Rennie Mackintosh including having high tea in the Mackintosh Willows tearooms.  We will also visit the Hunterian Art Gallery and Kelvingrove Museum.  Hopefully, this will be a more relaxing four days since we will have gone full tilt during our time in Edinburgh.

Finally, we will pick up a rental car near the Glasgow train station and drive out into the Highlands.  Our first stops will be to inspect the Falkirk Wheel and Kelpie Horses before ending up in Stirling where we will spend our first night after exploring the town.  The next morning, we will tour Stirling Castle before heading out to wander the gardens of Glamis Castle where there is a sculpture path called the “Macbeth Loop” featuring seven intricate wood carvings representing scenes from Shakespeare’s play Macbeth.  We will spend that night in Arbroath and hike the Arbroath Cliffs the next morning before continuing along the coast to Gourdon/Inverberbie, passing the Scurdie Ness Trail and Lighthouse along the way.

We will stay 2 nights in Inverberbie at Hallgreen Castle, a historic 3-storey mansion dating back to 14th Century that is set on 4 acres of land and still has gun loops or firing holes imbedded in the walls. We are hoping that our hosts will give us a tour of the castle during our stay.  From this town, we will take some more cliff walks in the area before heading to Stonehaven for 3 nights.  Using Stonehaven as a base, we will visit Dunnottar Castle, Cliffs and Woods as well as taking a day trip to Aberdeen.  That is as far north as we will traverse along the east coast of Scotland.  After that, we will head inland towards Balmoral, Braemar and Ballater, UK.  We had hoped to visit Balmoral Castle which has been the Scottish vacation property of the British monarchy since Queen Victoria's days, but unfortunately, it is closed for the season by September.  Instead, we will tour Crathes Castle and Braemar Castle as well as ride on the vintage Royal Deeside Railway train.  Our last two days will be spent around Blairgowie where we will go on a couple more hikes and admire more scenic views, Scone for one last castle, and finally Perth where we will do a sculpture walk along the River Tay.  From there, we will head back to Edinburgh, staying near the airport before our flight home the next morning.

This is not the typical itinerary for travelers to Scotland, but we are not the typical travelers.  This trip will give us plenty of the experiences that interest us including theatre, art, architecture, history, castles and natural beauty.

2025: Outdoor Sculpture Galleries in Ontario - Bloomfield, Singhampton

I have always loved viewing large-scaled sculptures and especially outdoor sculpture gardens where works are blended in with their natural surroundings.  My husband Rich and I always look for sculpture collections on our travels.

In the past, we visited the Haliburton Sculpture Forest, which is a unique outdoor sculpture gallery set in 1.5km of wooded trails near the village of Haliburton.  It features 40+ sculptures by Canadian, Indigenous and International artists plus 6 benches and 3 huts.  The works are made from a wide range of materials including granite, bronze, steel, cement, wood, and glass.  Some highlights included a colourful feather made of acrylic panels supported by a steel spine titled Redwing Frond by Darlene Bolahood, a red and white beaded stiletto called Fire and Ice: A Really Big Shoe by Charles O’Neil and the seed head of a mature dandelion plant titled “I See a Wish”, created by art students of Innisdale Secondary School in Barrie.

About an hour and a half north-west of Haliburton in Burk’s Falls is a weird and wonderful collection of gigantic concrete “Screaming Heads” created by retired high school art teacher Peter Camani. Consisting mostly of face-like sculptures with wide open mouths, but also dragons, dinosaurs, towers and other structures made of stone, the works are spread across 310 acres of rolling terrain with ponds and forest trails. The screaming heads symbolize nature’s protest against environmental destruction. 

As part of our trip to Detroit in 2024, we spent a few days in Windsor, Ontario and followed the Riverside Trail to view the works in Windsor Sculpture Park. Between 30-35 sculptures are positioned along the south shore of the Detroit River (in one of the few areas where Canada is south of the United States), with the scenic views of the water and the Detroit skyline as a stunning backdrop.

We have also toured the sculpture garden at 13th Street Winery in St. Catherines where large-scaled sculptures are scattered across an expansive grassy field next to the winery.  There was much thought put into the placement of some of the works including the metal wolves running through tall grass which is titled “The Hunt” by Ken Hall, and multiple of works by Floyd Elzinga who is known for his nature-inspired metalwork sculptures.  My favourites were “Prayer Seed”, an enormous thistle seed made from farming equipment parts and “Unzip the Earth” where clever placement of concrete teeth with a metal handle to create the image of a giant zipper that seems to be opening up the ground that it is laid upon.

This year, we took two short road trips that included visits to two more magnificent outdoor sculpture galleries.  The first was a visit to Prince Edward County where we stopped in Picton and Bloomfield.  The Oneo Gallery in Bloomfield, located on the property of Huff Estates Winery, has a large outdoor gallery that is quite similar to 13th Gallery.  It even has versions of Elzinga’s Prayer Seed and Unzip the Earth, and Ken Hall’s The Hunt.  While the sculpture gallery in St. Catherines is mostly an open field, the space in Bloomfield is much more landscaped with trees and shrubs, wild grasses, sage and lavender fields, flower beds and even a pond area.  The outdoor sculptures are rotated regularly with new works installed every spring.

The 3-acre sculpture garden opened in 2011 and displays over 60 large-scaled sculptures by Canadian and American artists, made from materials including glass, bronze, steel, granite, wood, fiberglass and resin.  While the Oneo Art Gallery and Huff Estates Winery have opening hours of 10am-5pm in the summer, the outdoor sculpture garden is available to visit daily from dawn to dusk.  We came to visit early in the morning before the buildings opened and managed to beat both the crowds and the heat, having the entire area to ourselves.

The Oneo Gallery was founded in 2003 and has a reputation for exhibiting and selling both contemporary and historical works of art. A smaller room displays paintings by The Group of Seven, Emily Carr, David Milne and more while the main space offers contemporary paintings, sculptures and other pieces.  The contemporary works rotate regularly and include artists such as Gilles and Marc, whose iconic Dogman and Rabbitwoman sculptures are found around the world including Toronto.  Rotating art exhibitions and other art events are also held regularly at the gallery as well as at pop-up locations in the area.

After touring the art gallery and sculpture garden, we went to walked across to Huff Estates Winery for a quick wine tasting and a pizza lunch El fresco on their covered outdoor patio.  Huff Estates has won multiple awards over the year including a 2021 Gold medal for the “Cuvée Peter Huff”, a sparkling white wine named after in honour of the deceased son of estate owners Lanny and Catherine Huff.  Surrounding the grounds of the winery are more sculptures including a tuktuk from Thailand and more outdoor pieces from Oneo Gallery.

The second outdoor sculpture gallery came during our stay in the Blue Mountain/Collingwood area.  We visited the Singhampton Sculpture Forest which is located on the large, forested property that is the home and art studio of the artists Marion Bartlett and her husband Rick Bino.  Marion creates large and small-scaled whimsical sculptures out of wood, concrete, clay and metal while Rich is a carver who makes functional wood pieces such as bowls and charcuterie boards. Based on that description, it seems like most if not all the works in the sculpture garden probably are Marion’s works.  Walking up the driveway towards their house and the start of the sculpture walk, we encountered a row of wooden posts, each with a different carved face and sporting a different hat.  One of the posts was positioned between two tree branches that seemed like arms from far away.  Closer to the house, we saw painted chairs with rubber rain boots covering the legs, painted walking sticks and various sculptures and installations including one where a dog is chasing a boy up a ladder.

Traversing deeper into the forest, we came across benches with sculptures on them, more faces carved into tree trunks, figures made from wire hanging from trees, and larger, more complex sculptures and installations.  Many of the works were named and had thoughtful quotes and poems associated with them.  Posted on a tree next to a metallic businessman holding a brief case is the text “Everyone has baggage.  Sometimes we need to help others carry theirs”.  An intricate installation titled “The Room” consists of a painted door depicting two women that leads to an open-air tearoom loosely delineated by the frames of walls.  Inside is a table covered with a lace tablecloth with a tea set on top, two chairs, an open frame with curtains representing a window and a stained-glass work hanging from a beam.  Interestingly, when you look at the back of the door, the two women are painted from behind.  We followed the main path and then took each of 3 “side paths” in order to view all the unique and quirky sculptures.

At the end of the outdoor tour, we were invited to enter the artist studio to see the works there.  We saw examples of Rick’s carvings including a beautiful chess board, on which he had individually crafted all the men.  There were many charming pieces on display including items for sale.  It was interesting to see some clay figures that had not been painted yet so that we could take in the entire process of creation.  In one corner were several porcelain representations of the artists’ family members.  This was a wonderful discovery so close to Collingwood that we had not known about before this year.

There are so many fun and eclectic locations to view sculptures around Ontario.  I would love to find more!