Tags
Celebration of Lights, Edinburgh Fireworks, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh Symphony Orchestra, Inverleith Park, Marnie, On the Waterfront, Tattoo
The Fringe festival is finally over, and the tourist numbers in the city centre have come way down. On Sunday night, they celebrated with fireworks and the Edinburgh Symphony Orchestra. The band is set up right below the castle in Princes Street Gardens and the fireworks are setup on the old battlements and launched upwards, lighting up the whole castle in the process.
I’d been down to the Royal Mile a few times since the festival had ended and its a completely different atmosphere. The chaos is way down, and you can mostly walk down the streets without getting close enough to know what your fellow tourists had eaten for lunch.
I watched the fireworks from Inverleith Park outside the city centre near the Botanical Gardens. They’d set up a big screen, speakers and a few food vendors to serve the two or three thousand people who were watching from there. I wanted to get an idea how Vancouver Festival of Light’s compared to the Edinburgh show.
The orchestra was playing a few classical pieces composed for movies like On the Waterfront and Marnie. I’ve heard of both but don’t really know either well enough to have any memory of the music. Marnie actually stars Sean Connery. The orchestra was excellent, and I got to hear a few pieces of music that I don’t think I’ve really listened to before and enjoyed all of them. It got really cold later in the evening, but the orchestra was the biggest difference from the Celebration of Lights, which I think I still preferred in the end.
The Edinburgh show had a very unique piece though. There was a waterfall effect created down the side of the castle and hillside. Not many cities have such a backdrop to work with, and the people doing the show knew how to make the best use of it.
They’re probably very practiced from the Tattoo, which closes each show with a short fireworks demonstration above the castle.
Excellent backdrop for a very unique show.