Edinburgh Military Tattoo

August 24th--We took it pretty easy today because we knew we had a late night planned with a show at 9:00. By late morning, we all left the apartment and got on the bus. Mike and the kids got off at an earlier stop than me. They were heading to a park to burn off some energy and I was heading to the Royal Mile to do some last day shopping. My shopping trip was successful so about 2 hours later, I boarded the bus back to the apartment. The funniest thing happened though...on the way home, at one of the stops, I looked up and Mike and the kids were getting on the same bus I was on. What are the odds??? We all had a good laugh. So, we arrived back at the apartment and quickly ate a late lunch before putting the kids down for naps. We enforced naptime today due to the late night planned. After they got up from naps, we headed back to the Royal Mile to enjoy some street performers and dinner before heading to the Edinburgh Castle. A little after 8:00 p.m. we made the 1/2 mile walk to the castle. We had tickets for the 9pm Edinburgh Military Tattoo. This is a huge event and tickets sell out a year in advance. We were lucky to get tickets through the lady who rented us our apartment. We quickly found our seating after renting seat cushions first. The seats were set up bleacher style in the esplanade of the castle. We were all so excited about the show to start, but had a good 30 minutes before it would. Luckily, they filled the time with some "warm-up" groups. Once the show started, it was everything we hoped for. It was a 1 1/2 hour long show that combines the sounds of bagpipes and drums with modern aspects of the armed forces. It was a great performance by military bands from all over the world. Our favorite were seeing the Swiss Army Band and the Top Secret Drum Corps. The military aspect behind the show was very moving to us and especially made us think of our brother-in-law, Gabe, who is currently deployed in Afghanistan. The show finished up with a special tribute to the troops and some fireworks. We fought the crowd back down the Royal Mile to catch the bus back to to our apartment.