The Edinburgh Military Tattoo

This year is what Scotland is calling its Homecoming year; 2009 is the 250th anniversary of the birth of the poet Robert Burns (pretty much the most important person to come from Scotland--even Sir Sean Connery himself would probably agree), and the Edinburgh festivals are drawing massive crowds!

After our visit to Scotland last year, we've been itching to get back. We actually bought our tickets to the Edinburgh Military Tattoo right when they went on sale last December, and we've been looking forward to this trip for a long time. The Tattoo takes place in the esplanade of Edinburgh Castle, and it includes performances from around the world. We saw groups from Tonga, China, Switzerland, South Africa, Australia and, of course, Scotland and England. In this setting the word "tattoo" comes from a Dutch phrase from when British soldiers were battling in Flanders in the 1700s.

The castle as a backdrop for the performances was dramatic and beautiful; and some of the acts projected images onto the castle in really cool ways. One of the Swiss acts projected this photo of an Alpine tram (left), and the Tongan group projected a palm leaf pattern.

Here's a video of part of the performance, but it's a little long; if you fast-forward to about 1:10 you can get some good bagpipe action.

The other highlight of our time in Scotland was the deep-fried Mars bar. We also had a deep-fried Snickers and a fried pizza (they put the whole pizza in the fryer), but the Mars bar was the most delicious! They used batter similar to the fish batter (as in fish & chips), whereas at the fair in the US they'd use something more like funnel cake batter. (For those of you who don't know what a Mars bar is, it's like a Milky Way bar, only galaxies better.)