Embrace the Crowds at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival

Every year, the city of Edinburgh doubles in size as tourists pour in from around the globe for the world’s largest arts festival, the Edinburgh Fringe. Figures can hardly describe the scale of this event, which lasts nearly the entire month of August. For example, last year there were:

• 31,320 performances
• 2,088 different shows
• 247 venues

If the festival actually ran every day of the month, that would have been 43.5 shows *every* hour of the day, 24 hours a day, for an entire month. Thus it goes without saying that Edinburgh can feel slightly crowded during the festival. Locals have quickly learned that to enjoy it, you must embrace it. So, here are a few tips for diving in and making the most of your Edinburgh Fringe Festival experience.

[Image credit: alui0000]

See a “free” show on the Royal Mile

. All day and nearly all night, the centre of the Royal Mile near the Fringe Box Office you’ll find performers showing off street acts and sometimes you’ll catch snippets of the most popular shows. The is the daytime epicentre of the Fringe scene and so it’s got a fantastic vibe that is a must-see.

Just smile and take one of the flyers. A word of warning in advance: from the time you disembark from the airport bus until you check back in for you flight home, you’ll have a friendly University student stuffing a brochure or postcard in your face for one play or another. It will get annoying after awhile. But smile, and have a look at it – it might just be your favourite show of the festival.

[Image credit: DNQA]

Go Check Out The Talent At The Half Price Tent

This is a classic experience in itself and it’s where you’ll find the skint locals hoping to catch a good show on sale. In the afternoon, the Fringe releases seats for shows that aren’t sold out, and you can pick them up 2-for-1 at the sales tent along Princes Street just above Waverley mall. Don’t forget your Fringe programme – you’ll see plenty of people out front, scouring the titles and hoping to find a diamond in the rough.

Dress in layers. Edinburgh weather is fickle, at best, even in August – which thankfully has some of the best weather of the year. But it can still pour rain and be hot and sunny on the same day, so dress in layers and be prepared for anything. One particularly important point to make is to dress appropriately for your Fringe show; many performances are held in makeshift venues which aren’t designed for a hundred people, loads of light equipment, and all the sound electronic equipment. This usually means you’ll find yourself wilting in an unbearably hot room for an hour’s performance.

Have a pub meal – so you can enjoy a drink while you wait. They say Edinburgh has the most restaurants per capita than any city in the UK, but I’m not sure who counted. Regardless, during the Festival, restaurants bulge with diners and struggle to cope. Venues who take reservations stop taking them during August, so you’ll just have to wait in the queue for a seat. So I guess you go enjoy a pub meal instead, so you can have a drink while you wait (and sometimes these places are slightly less busy than the restaurants, if you go early). Good pubs for food include Bobby’s Bar in the Old Town and the Queens Arms in the New Town. If you go to the trendy neighbourhood of Stockbridge, you’ll find yourself only with locals who know that there are few venues in the area and thus few tourists.

Stay out all night because you can. The Edinburgh licensing laws allows pubs and clubs to say open pretty late – or should we say early – during the festival. This means you can literally party all night long, and so you should, because everyone else will be. A hot spot is the clubs on the Cowgate, which often have performers heading in from the nearby venues. Last year’s top drinking destination was the centre of George Square, but since the Spiegeltent will not be returning this year, it remains to be seen where the revellers will head.

[Image credit: theedinburghblog]