Yesterday’s foul mood had me doubting whether I’d like this city or not, but today’s adventures have brought me back around again.
Since it was a “fend for your selves” sort of day, Nathan and I took the opportunity to sleep in, lazing in bed until well after 0900. Once up, we set out for the little French café we spied last night, intent on the sort of pastries that make you roll your eyes back into your head in ecstasy. We were not, unfortunately, to have them- the café turned out to be less pastry, more sandwich-y, so we moved on with the idea of finding better fare elsewhere.
Our primary destination of the morning was Edinburgh castle, and I tell you we picked the most bass-ackwards manner of coming at that place. We cut through a park and popped up behind the castle, but the path we thought we’d follow up to it turned out to be closed, which meant we ended up having to find our way through winding streets around to the front. We eventually did, however, although by that time it was around noon and the ticket-queues were insane. We took one look at them and decided we’d just come back early tomorrow morning. That moved us to the second goal of the day, which was to stroll down the Royal Mile.
(Royal Mile)
We did so, ending up down by the Parliament building (which, I’m sorry, is just weird-looking and really kind of ugly) and Holyrood, but our true goal was the hike up to Arthur’s Seat.
(That's Arthur's Seat in the background...)
It was a pretty steep hike, but the views of Edinburgh were absolutely magnificent.
(See, see?)
Actually, if I’m going to be completely honest, we didn’t precisely make it all the way to Arthur’s Seat, per se. We reached a peak, and then the path started to go downhill, and we saw that there were stairs and a road not too far in the distance, so we figured it was just going to take us back down and that the views wouldn’t get any better than the ones we’d had- so we turned around. We later looked at a map and realized that we’d been on “the crags” rather than Arthur’s Seat. Whoops. Still, we got the view we were going for, so no point in feeling bad about it (except I do just a smidge and it will probably bother me forever until I get back to Edinburgh and do it properly…).
(Proof that I was there!)
On the way back down we had an encounter with the most beautiful, silky greyhound I’d ever had the privilege of caressing. He came trotting up to Nathan (who was crouched down taking a picture of me) just as friendly as can be, then helped himself to Nathan’s mocha, which made us both laugh.
(Good puppy!)
His owner’s were mortified, but we didn’t mind, and I took the opportunity to love on him. The fellow (in his delectable Scottish burr) told Nate that if he saw us in town again he’d buy him another coffee: definitely the Edinburgh dwellers are far superior to Londoners in terms of friendliness…
We got back down and considered going into Hollyrood, but it had an entrance fee and we decided to forgo it (saving the entrance fee for tomorrow’s visit to the castle) so instead we began the trudge back up the Royal Mile.
(Nyah! Didn't want to pay your entrance fee anyway!)
On the way Nathan managed to attract the attention of a crazy person (usually that’s my forte) who rambled conspiracy theories at him and wouldn’t let him take a photo… I eventually managed to disengage us, and we continued on our merry way. We stopped at a jewelry vendor I’d admired on the way down, and I bought an especially nice moonstone pendant, as well as a ring for my mom made from a shard of Delft pottery recovered from a shipwreck.
(This statue was near the jewelry vendors. What can I say? I heart capitalism!)
We made it back to the guest house in one piece, although Nathan’s Achilles tendon in his right leg was threatening some serious mutiny. After a sufficient recovery, he accompanied me back out to Waterstones, a giant book store. I wanted to pick up a new Sanderson novel, but I discovered that it’s not entirely easy to get American books at a UK chain store… (I’d thought it was going to be a used and new store akin to Powells, but alas- I was mistaken). I settled for an omnibus edition of leGuin’s Earthsea novels, and we returned to the house for some quiet time.
Later in the evening (after everyone else had trickled in and we’d all traded stories) Nate and I headed out to the Thai restaurant (Songkran) we’d attempted to patronize last night. When we got there we were met with a highly apologetic owner who explained that they were closed due to electrical problems, but that he could do take out if we’d like.
We definitely liked.
(The interior)
So he sat and chatted with us while our food was prepared (sweet potato, veg pad thai, and pad kra prao with beef for Nathan) and then we brought it back to make everyone else jealous. And I have to say it was amazing- best Thai I’ve had in years. I’m hoping to convince the family to go there tomorrow night for our big family dinner, but somehow I think I’ll get shot down…
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