It’s August in Edinburgh, and we felt the buzz the moment we stepped off the train. Scotland’s capital city has a force field. 

In part it’s all the people clogging the street, so many that we could barely snake our way through with our pull bags and backpacks. 

In part it’s the festival, the original Edinburgh Festival and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which we sampled this evening.  

And then … there are the bagpipes.