5&6, Mary-Cecile and Molly! Molly Edition

Dear Blog Viewers,

I was so excited to have these two days because I wanted to write about both London and Edinburgh!

Turns out we were in London for a very short amount of time, but you still get to hear (read) about my short day adventure there!

Day 5 

Although we headed out early, I still enjoyed one last walk from our hostel, Clink 78, to the one and only King's Cross Station. On the way there though, we passed by the brand-new bakery Cecile and I had visited yesterday, to be one of his first customers!

He was very gracious in letting me take a picture with him! I'm fairly certain he was just as excited as I  was.

 It was a French bakery with classic, family owned recipes for pastries and breads perfected by years of experience. I got over excited and bought an entire loaf of bread that at first no one would eat, because who really just pulls at a loaf of bread? But once I got desperate in the airport, thinking that I would have to throw it out before going through security, I started forcing my wonderful bread on people (See Elsie, Mary, Maria, Elizabeth, and Jenny) and everyone loved the delicious loaf!

Going from Heathrow to Edinburgh Airport was great; a nice one hour flight- much better than 8-10 hour flights.

Good-bye London, hello Edinburgh!

Getting to our new hostel was a great first look at Edinburgh from the top seats of a double-decker bus! Although there was some confusion on which stop to take thanks to a prankster directions lady at the airport, we made it safely to one of the many hills in Edinburgh we frequented during our stay.

Upon arrival, we were given a scavenger hunt to find shows, maps, and all the shenanigans of the Fringe Festival, the theater festival our hostel was right next to. It was huge, and a by-product of another theater festival, the International Festival. Although we had already purchased tickets for a show to the International Festival, the Fringe Festival is where we spent most of our time in Edinburgh. We were then told to meet back at the hostel to finally head to the much anticipated Ceilidh, pronounced kay-lee. 

The box office where we purchased sweatshirts, tickets, and other paraphernalia!

This Ceilidh was nothing like we had imagined, but just as fun! We walked through Edinburgh to this ballroom where about fifteen or so couples stood in a circle, about to start a dance. Some men wore kilts, some were dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, and all the ladies were just as dressed up and down. I grabbed Elsie and hopped right in (I as the male, since neither she nor I had brought a partner) and the man in the center of the circle directing ran through the steps of the dance one more time for our group.

It was fantastic- imagine Celtic line dancing (line dancing as in country line dancing) to a bagpipe and an accordion. It was all partner dancing, and so sometimes someone would ask us to dance and sometimes we would grab each other and giggle through the whole thing.

After the Ceilidh we were left to our own devices and told to be up at 8 o'clock A.M. for our daily meeting.

 Day 6

At our meeting the next morning, at the oh-so-wonderful time of 8, we were given a Per Diem and instructions to go to a show on our list (the lists we had made from the scavenger hunt the day before, of what we would like to see) and a show on some one else's list.

I met back up with Elsie and Maria around eleven to see my first show of the festival, "Austen's Women." This was a one-woman play as she went through and spoke/acted about 13 different Jane Austen characters, as well as a narrator. To say the least some people must just be born to act, because she was fabulous. Her movements, tones of voice, attitude, it all changed per character and never faltered. She took direct passages from the book that characterized each woman and turned it into a production, not just a book reading. Although it made me realize I have a lot more Jane Austen books to read, she was still very entertaining. 

Although this wasn't at the Fringe Festival, this was just some of our  shenanigans! 

We then (after stopping for a strawberry-whipped cream crepe because it was lunch time and we needed something to tide us over) headed to the Free Sisters venue of the Fringe (one of about a hundred and forty eight venues) to meet up with Elizabeth and Mary for a comedy show titled "First-World Problems." There was about fifteen or seventeen people packed into a room where a guy did his sketch. It was an interesting to experience all kinds of shows at the festival, and this made for a good comparison to all the other productions we saw.

We then went to a show called "I <3 Ikea" put on by two actors about how "Making a guy fall in love with you is as easy as following the steps in an Ikea set up guide." There were some bumps in the road with the production, but overall I ended up liking the production because the male protagonist lies to the female protagonist at one point to make her realize she loves him (Even though she already had and was about to tell him) and at the very end of the play she finds out about his deceit and leaves him. In most movies it always irks me that the liar is able to fix the situation where they were caught lying, but not this time. This time she leaves him and means it, and I enjoyed that immensely.

After going out for more food (Trust me, the food is always worth mentioning- this time is was the wonderful Mediterranean food where we all got platters and shared- there were meatballs, eggplants, chickpeas, all different types of cheeses, spicy dips, mild dips, everything under the sun- it was fantastic!) we headed back to the hostel where I went for a nap and everyone went off to do there thing.

Later that night I convinced Maria and Mary to go to a show that was on my list, "Midnight at the Rue Morgue: The Mad Tales of Edgar Allan Poe." It was a cabaret at 10:40 at night in which there was one lady, Morgana, who was controlling all these different Poe characters. As the time went on she went around to each character and controlled them with her pocket watch. They started off all chanting "Annabelle Lee" and ended with "The Raven", and overall that was definitely in my top five shows. 

By that point it was past midnight and so we headed back to the hostel to get some sleep before another 8 A.M. meeting the next day, as well as shows galore.