It’s one of the best feelings in the world to celebrate your friends getting married, and I was so excited to return to the UK for Gene and Chloe’s big day! I met fellow College Board colleague and friend, Laura, at JFK for our super quick flight across the pond. We of course wanted extra time to explore Scotland since it was our first time visiting the Highlands. And the way the wedding date fell, we had some time to kill the week before at the renowned Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Upon landing and ditching our bags, we refueled with a full breakfast and hit the streets to try and beat jet lag. We were staying in a little Airbnb in Haymarket near the west end. Old Town Edinburgh was just a 20 minute walk away.

Edinburgh Castle sits on the site of an extinct volcano and has held up through 26 sieges over 1100 years. This makes it one of the most attacked places in the world.

Here you can see some of that Old Town charm that attracts the city’s tourists.

Every August this medieval city draws hundreds of thousands of people to attend comedy, art, dance, theater, musicals… you name it, it’s happening here. Artists like Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Craig Ferguson, and Rowan Atkinson have all had break out roles here at Fringe. Tickets are really reasonable (prices average around 12USD) which means you can cover a lot of fun venues and acts.

Fringe venues are scattered all over the city, and we hit the Assembly Square Gardens space on our first night. Drink and food carts are over to grab something before your show.

I snuck this photo from inside the tent where we saw the hilarious show ‘Tilda Swinton Answers an Ad on Craigslist’.

People are out into the very early hours during Fringe, but we hadn’t slept for about 22 hours at this point and we crashed hard that night. But woke up to a full day of wandering in Edinburgh.

How genius is this? City cats need to run free sometimes too!

We spent the morning hiking up to Arthur’s Seat which is the top of an extinct volcano in Holyrood Park. We chose the relatively easy way up, but definitely took the hard way down. Big thanks to Laura for supporting me on my slide down the hillside.

We (along with the crowds of others) did it!

How beautiful is this city?

I pretty much slid my way down this side of the hill.

A quick refresh at home and we tackled Fringe for another show, and this one I had been waiting months to see. I booked these Jessie Cave tickets the minute after I booked my flight to Scotland. She’s a creative and wonderful artist and comedian and her show was perfect. Can’t wait to see more from her.

Fringe sent us out with a spontaneous street show!

Sadly we had to leave Edinburgh, but good news! The fun only continued from there when we met Harrison to pick up our rental car. That’s right, people! We’re driving up into the Highlands next! Stay tuned…