I would fully endorse Roy's appraisal of the GROS which is located at the east end of Princes St. in a magnificent building. A day ticket is undoubtedly the way to go and if you hurry you will just catch the tail end of the Festival as a bonus. The one snag is as ever, bring a brolly. Cheers Frank from Bonnie (soggy) Scotland My words, what an eye opener compared with the GRO for England and Wales! The Scottish birth, marriage and death records are simply wonderful, even though they didn't start until January 1855. As Nivard says, after you've paid the daily fee (£18 at the time, as far as I recall), you could then see everything (including the more recent records) and get printout copies of BMDs from the registers for just 50p. You don't need to buy the full certificates because the registers contain everything you need to know. Scottish birth registers give not only the full names of the parents but the actual date and location of their marriage, so you don't need to go searching for it. The marriage registers give the parents of both parties (mother as well as father) and death registers also show the parenthood of the deceased. I know that within a couple of days I had got my MPs ancestry back to a full complement of gt-gt-grandparents, a number of whom had come from Ireland. It may be more convenient to use ScotlandsPeople online (and I have no intention to getting into the debate about whether it's value for money or not) but I would advise anyone with Scottish ancestry to go to Edinburgh and the GROS just once in their life. And, of course, Edinburgh is a wonderful city for a holiday anyway! -- Roy Stockdill Genealogical researcher, writer & lecturer Famous family trees blog: http://blog.findmypast.co.uk/tag/roy-stockdill/ "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about." OSCAR WILDE ..... Ancestors in Yorkshire? http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/index.html; www.ryedalefamilyhistory.org; www.wharfedalefhg.org.uk; www.yorkshireparishregisters.com; www.yorkshireroots.org.uk; ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to YORKSGEN-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message