After finishing my recent Edinburgh vlog, there was still loads of practical information
I didn’t have the chance to cover, both specifically about the Festival and just visiting
the city in general: Questions like how do you best select what shows to see, how easy
is it to book them, and tips for not making an embarrassing faux pas at the so-called
free shows? But I also want to cover the more general Edinburgh questions like the best
tips for accommodation and location, public transport options to travel to Edinburgh within
the UK and a summary of some must do activities. So in this video I’ll be going through all
the behind the scenes planning we didn’t get to show you in our previous Edinburgh
vlog. If you’re new to this channel, we aim to make movies where the location is king,
hoping you might just find your next holiday inspiration. This is Suitcase Monkey, getting
ready for showtime.
So let’s start with some general Edinburgh tips and then I’ll go on to more specific
Festival tips afterwards. For me, taking a train to Edinburgh is always my preferred
option since it’s often the most affordable and most pleasant. Companies generally release
their cheapest tickets 12 weeks before travel and this can be quite a saving. For example,
these return dates fall just inside the 12 week window, for a price of £98 from London.
Changing this to the 13th week, and it suddenly becomes £146. This by the way, is the same
for almost all long distance train journeys around the UK and our preferred website and
app for bookings is TrainLine, which I’ll link to below. Another option, especially
if you’re in the south of England is taking a plane but I think there are a few cons that
aren’t immediately apparent here. The obvious pro is that it’s only an hour and 15 minutes
journey, compared to 5 hours for the train from London. But bear in mind you’ll need
more time to get in and out of the airport and once landed you’ll have to then take
a local train into the city centre so it isn’t as fast as it might first appear.
Next, let’s talk booking accommodation. If you are going in August, then the sooner
you book the better. With the Festival being super peak season for visitors, all the best
value and best luxury spots will go fast, some probably already booked by the performers
ahead of time. For reference, we booked 7 months ahead through Air BnB and although
we ended up with a really cute place, I noticed that a lot of the cheaper places were no longer
available. For this upcoming years festival, we booked a different Air BNB 9 months in
advance, and this time ended up 1 minute from the Royal Mile which certainly wouldn’t
have happened when booking last minute. Outside of August, this will of course be much more
relaxed.
In terms of location, most of the Fringe shows happen around here with most year round attractions
in this area too. We stayed a 15 minute walk out of the centre which was a perfectly fine
wander towards the action, and will always be cheaper because of this.
In terms of Festival specific tips, my very first one is to download the Ed Fringe App.
Released only a few months before the Festival, follow them on Twitter so you can be notified
of ticket releases and any updates throughout the year. There are over 3,000 shows each
year so the app is the best place to start your search. You can browse by location, start
time, and genre. We then favourited around 30 shows all together so it acted as a great
filter once we were in the thick of things, allowing us to see what worked best in terms
of our location at any given moment. You will be overwhelmed with what’s on offer so having
these favourites allowed us to focus on things we wanted to see and plan our day when shows
inevitably clash over their start times.
The next tip is about being prepared for the free shows. There are a number of shows at
the festival that are advertised as free and are therefore ticketless. For shows that you
think will be popular, it’s advisable to arrive 20 to 30 minutes before to guarantee
admission. Out of all the ticket-less shows we saw, about a third of them were turning
people away since capacity had been reached.
Connected to this, have some actual cash ready for these “free” shows. These are in truth,
better described as pay what you think it was worth. Generally £5 to £10 was the average
so it’s always useful having cash in hand so you can do the honours as you pass the
comedian on the way out. You don’t want to be the guy wondering whether its best to
hand in that £20 note or make a dramatically swift exit, avoiding all eye contact. Having
said that, there was one show that took contactless payments but you do still have that awkward
moment where you look the performer in the eye and give them an auditory valuation on
their efforts. So yeah, maybe cash is easier.
Next is about pre booking tickets. If there is a show you really want to see and would
be disappointed if you missed it, its best to pre book the tickets in advance. For us,
most of the shows we had favourited were still available the day of or day before they were
due to happen. We did however have a couple of times where a ticketed show that was showing
as available an hour before show time had sold out by the time we got to the venue.
So again, if it’s something you really want to see, then book it. The Edinburgh Fringe
app allows you to pre book your tickets to all the shows and collect them at a number
of locations scattered throughout the city. With only a tiny booking fee added on for
each ticket, it saved us wandering around the city going to each box office to purchase
in person so it was well worth it overall.
If time is precious to you and you want to maximise the chances of seeing great shows
only, then my next tip is to do some research on the shows you have favourited. Titles and
posters are everything at the Fringe and they are often the only thing you base your entire
judgment on when deciding to take the plunge. Just because a show has your favourite TV
shows name in it, does not mean it will be any good. Since the shows are being put on
mostly independently, we found the best way to research was to Google both the name of
the show and then the company putting it on. This information is again found in the Fringe
app and usually took us to their website. Here we could get a better idea of what the
company was all about, their style and whether it was right for us. There were a number of
occasions where the title and description had us all excited then after a few YouTube
videos, we realised it just wasn’t for us.
On the flip side, part of the joy of the fringe is that you never quite know what you are
getting yourself in for so I advise taking the plunge a little. With lots of shows around
£5 and rarely going over an hour, it’s fun to take a gamble and see what you end
up with. Some of our favourite shows were just this so if you go in with the attitude
that it will still be an experience either way, you can’t really go wrong. And even
if you do, it will all be over in 50 minutes. Something I didn’t cover in our Edinburgh
full length vlog was a show we didn’t do any research on. When we arrived we realised
it was basically a school production. If we would have known this beforehand, we probably
would’ve given it a miss, but it actually turned out to be a good show. So enjoy being
taken by surprise, for better or worse.
As a summary, here are a few final things I would suggest you add to your itinerary:
Arthurs Seat was a simple 2 hour round trip, with the best views of the city. There’s
also the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo which takes place right in front of the Castle.
It features music and parades and fireworks, and generally needs pre booking. If you are
a big Harry Potter fan, there’s the so called birthplace of the boy wizard where JK Rowling
wrote much of her early books. Cockburn Street is great for cafes and shops. Princes Street
Gardens has the best views of the Edinburgh Castle, Bristo Square has a lively outdoor
food and drinks area, Victoria Street has it’s picturesque colourful curve and the
main High Street itself, known as the Royal Mile is the heart of all live performances.
If you haven’t already, I’d advise you to check out my full length vlog with more
information on what we got up to during our time here. If there are tips you think we
missed then please leave a comment below and if you’ve found this useful, feel free to
give us a like since it really helps us spread the word. For more travel inspiration and
tips around the world, please subscribe for future videos, and I’ll be doing another
London video next. Thanks for watching Suitcase Monkey.