A Taste of Edinburgh

Qype has hosted a range of parties, meet-ups, classes and other cool events in London so far this year and when it came time to take the party outside London, Qypers all around the country made their voices heard in determining the location for the first non-London shindig. The outcome of a lengthy discussion thread on the Qype Party Forum was last week's trip to Edinburgh and the Qype Team thoroughly made the most of the 4h30 train ride up by spending an extra day exploring the city.

We met some of Edinburgh's finest Qypers on Thursday night, and took to the streets on Friday night for some good eating, ale drinking, and what was for me a most surreal insider view of Scottish culture being privy to some of the finest fiddling and folk music in the land during our mini pub crawl. I had my first Deuchars in the first pub stop, and all of a sudden I like ALE! Who knew?!

My Qype reviews of the pubs we visited cannot by any measure do justice to the amazing fiddlers, ridiculously smooth guitar pickin', and the incredible mix of funny, sad and touching folk songs belted out by performers and audience members throughout the night. Everyone in the Royal Oak seemed to have an amazing singing voice! Unbelievable all around. And I must give a special mention to Mike Duffy, who can always fall back on singing if the BBC thing doesn't pan out :)

Quite a memorable trip and next time I go to Edinburgh, I'll definitely make it to the castle, and I'm sure I'll be revisiting Sandy Bells to park myself right next to the guy with the 12(?)string guitar.