Visitors...and a parade

So, I got to see some friends from home today! Liz D. and Liz G. are in Edinburgh, before taking off with some of the other Brown/U.Edinburgh girls who I've met this semester on a trip around Scotland.

We got lunch, and as we were walking down to the library to check email etc, we saw these people.



Hmm, we thought. A marching band. Then we got to the library, and thought it would be a good idea to show our visitors the Meadows, the big, beautiful, don't-walk-in-it-after-dark park next door. Where we saw another marching band.



I mean fifty or so.



It turns out we stumbled on the march commemorating the 300th anniversary of the union between Scotland and England, being sponsored by the pro-union political groups against the Scottish nationalists. There were no Scottish flags we saw (except for the one at the pub in the first picture), but lots of Union Jacks:





Also lots of pro-Protestant sentiment. We were given leaflets by a man who told us it was necessary to prevent the separatists "cos otherwise we'll have to have a Pope."



On the other hand there were also plenty of cute kids.