Edinburgh is Full

It's Edinburgh Festival time.  You can tell this by the fact that the natives forced to traverse the streets of the city going about their work have black scowls in their faces as their commute takes three times as long because the buses have been diverted to make way for the shacks, selling overpriced drinks and Disney-style souvenirs, that disfigure some of the most elegant streets in Europe and they have to dodge clowns prancing in their path trying to force flyers on them inviting them to shows where the performers will almost certainly outnumber the audience.

Those of us who are lucky enough to have a choice, forswear all visits to the center and stay at home and at night pull the duvets over our heads, hoping to sleep through the midnight fireworks at the Royal Military Tattoo and the bongo drums that play on till three in the morning.  Like many other Lonely Planet top tips for tourism,  Edinburgh has Had Enough.

I guess we've all been tourists.  I'm as guilty as anyone of wanting to see the Bucket List places and I've been very lucky - try Tutunkamen's tomb,  the Summer Palace in China, the Acropolis, Niagara Falls, the Doge's Palace in Venice, among others.  But these are the memories I cherish because at the time I visited none of them were so crowded that I was hemmed in on every side and couldn't look at what I wanted to see - look at, not take a photo or an i-Pad film - without being jostled.  Go very early in the morning - tourists tend to rise late - or choose an unpopular time of year, and you can be lucky.  (Tip here - if you want to see Venice at its best, book the weekend immediately after Easter.  At one point we were the only people on the Golden Staircase in the Doge's Palace, which was magical).

But there are other visits I've made where the crowds were so thick that that magic vanished - like the Winter Palace in St Petersburg when we had to move in unison with the people round about. Astonishing interiors, but only the sort of memory that ticks a box, like having seen the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, when all I can remember is the plastic screening and the queues.

Over-tourism has become a serious problem.  Of course it's a major boost to the local economy but the quality of life for the local inhabitants is increasingly threatened.    Venice is talking about imposing a charge for entering the city and limiting the number of tickets it sells as well as banning cruise ships above a certain size.  Popular Scottish islands like Skye and Orkney are also becoming overwhelmed.

Once the Edinburgh Festival was truly a feast of culture in a stunning setting.  The sad thing for me now is that while the festivalisation of Edinburgh goes on with more and more new 'festivals' being introduced every year, the visitors who genuinely want to see the glories of our beautiful city - the vistas of the Georgian buildings, the wonderful medieval Royal Mile, the views of the gardens and the Castle - are being cheated by the Ferris wheel that dominates Princes Street, the sordid market stalls by the National Gallery, the hoardings with tacky posters right along the famous Gardens.  Taxi drivers now say they are taking visitors back to the airport who say they're not coming back.  It didn't used to happen.

If you do want to see the real Edinburgh - the Edinburgh of Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson, of David Hume and Adam Smith, of Arthur Conan Doyle and yes, of Alexander McColl Smith and Ian Rankin - brave its weather (so much milder than New York's!) and come in January, when the old grey town truly reveals its soul.