YESTERDAY the roads were empty during the usual rush-hours. Curtains were still drawn, few were pounding the pavements and there were seats aplenty on the buses. Everyone, it seemed, was enjoying the Good Friday holiday.
This Easter weekend the shops, bars, restaurants, beaches and family-friendly destinations will be thronging with people enjoying their holiday and spending time with one another.
Others will be catching up on a spot of DIY , decorating, gardenin
g. And on Sunday, thousands of the Capital's children will be enjoying their Easter eggs.
Not so long ago, Easter was a different picture. Take this snapshot of excited children rolling their intricately decorated pace eggs down a hill at Regent Park in Regent Road. On that particular Easter weekend in 1956, hours would have been spent decorating the hard-boiled "pace" eggs with cake colouring before entering it in the annual race.
The aim was to see who could roll their egg down the hill the furthest without breaking it, in homage to the rolling away of the rock from Jesus Christ's tomb when he was resurrected.
As the hard-boiled eggs rolled away, excited children hope theirs would win. Those eggs which survived the ordeal would be eaten after the race as part of the traditional Easter picnic.
"Easter egg rolling was a real family occasion," recalls Mary Dunbar, 73, of Chesser. "We would spent ages in the kitchen decorating our pace eggs with food colouring to make it stand out, while mum got the picnic ready.
"Sometimes we would even use onion skins as the background colour for the eggs with leaves and flowers placed next to the shell.
"It was always really exciting - and we'd finish it off with some egg jarping [tapping] to see whose egg is best.
"All the family used to get competitive then. And then, if we were lucky, we would find chocolate on the Easter egg hunt around the church."
The first chocolate Easter egg was produced way back in 1873 by Fry's, and they soon became popular as gift to give and receive, synonymous with the religious celebration to symbolise continuing life.
The average chocolate Easter egg used to be the size of a small bird egg, so receiving a giant Easter egg would've been an amazing and unforgettable experience.
When RS McColl presented the children at the Princess Margaret Rose hospital with a larger-than-life chocolate egg, decorated with chocolate roses, on April 12, 1959, it's likely to have been the biggest piece of chocolate they'd ever encountered.
By the 1980s, the world-renowned Casey's sweet shop was creating hand-made chocolate Easter Bunnies and hens in the back room of their St Mary's Street shop - no mass-produced, factory-made novelties for them.
Casey's were an institution in Edinburgh, but sadly their two branches closed in 2006.
Another tradition of Easter past was the dress. On Easter people donned their Sunday best - the men wore a smart suit, while the ladies sported hats.
"Ah yes, the Easter bonnet," recalls Joseph Wise, 78, of East Linton. "Wearing a bonnet or just a nice formal hat to church was the custom a long time ago. It was very lovely to see the ladies dressed up like that for the occasion."
Our picture of Easter bonnets in Edwards French's millenary salon in 1960 shows how formal yet delicate the hats was.
Old and young alike got involved in making their own Easter bonnets, using anything from empty kitchen roll tubes to flowers.
"Bonnets were huge in Edinburgh," says Edinburgh milliner Yvette Jelfs of the Incorporation of Bonnet Makers and Dyers.
"It was the whole idea that spring had sprung and summer was coming - ladies could get dressed up, go out and go to parties.
The bonnets were very formal and glamorous, and the ladies would visit a milliner. It was a wonderful thing to see."
