We arrived in Edinburgh at the stroke of a mid-November midnight. An exotically lit castle castled above us and at ground level there were fish and chips and people speaking English! Below us lay abandoned closes where the wallpaper had the power of killing us with a single touch because the arsenic component has separated from the paper component... but we didn’t know that yet.
We luxuriated in Edinburgh’s gothic beauty, haggis pies and horror stories for all of ten minutes, and then busied ourselves finding a home, jobs, bank accounts... it felt great once we got past that stage and on to the luxuriating in the gothic beauty and the dreaming-of-where-to-go-in-Europe-this-year stage.
Our six months there felt like a flash interspersed with an eternity - our time always seemed to be passing either really slowly or really quickly. Some highlights were the Hogmanay street party, playing Spanish fiesta songs at free guitar lessons, seeing weird and riveting movies at the incredibly diverse cinemas, the dreamy morning skies, living life within a grand architectural setting and getting to know the Scottish psyche: they drive left, walk right and are incredibly witty – I could not keep up and am hoping that some of it rubbed off on me while we were there. It’s got to be something in the water...
Capturing half a year in one blog is hard so... time for a MONTAGE!
We came to Scotland expecting William Wallace, awesome architecture and freezing cold... we got it all, and much more of course...
The castle was definitely epic... not quite Jodhpur fort epic but still very impressive.
Some bad weather, but plenty of nice clear days. Which unfortunately were still so so cold....
Cold, sleepy Edinburgh came to life when they won the football.... the lifeblood of any good Scotsman. Whenever I opened the paper to the sports section hoping for some cricket or rugby news, I was always greeted by at least 4 pages of football and (at the most) 1 page of ALL other sports. Dedicated.
Hogmanay was a blast, we laughed our way into the new year thanks to the Cuban Brothers and their unique brand of craziness.
Best way to keep warm in Edinburgh was to get moving, we walked a lot! Our favourite was Arthur's Seat which we climbed multiple times. That's it below looking amazing in the unseasonably warm weather we had for a week in March. For scale, those are people walking at the bottom.
The whole city poured into the parks during that week... was quite a change from the ghost city we were used to!
And as if to mock us, the warm weather came back on our last day in Edinburgh. While enjoying the sunshine we wandered through a Christian fair in the gardens and Sophie (losing focus for just a second) was pounced on and converted... note the flyer and sticker.
We luxuriated in Edinburgh’s gothic beauty, haggis pies and horror stories for all of ten minutes, and then busied ourselves finding a home, jobs, bank accounts... it felt great once we got past that stage and on to the luxuriating in the gothic beauty and the dreaming-of-where-to-go-in-Europe-this-year stage.
Our six months there felt like a flash interspersed with an eternity - our time always seemed to be passing either really slowly or really quickly. Some highlights were the Hogmanay street party, playing Spanish fiesta songs at free guitar lessons, seeing weird and riveting movies at the incredibly diverse cinemas, the dreamy morning skies, living life within a grand architectural setting and getting to know the Scottish psyche: they drive left, walk right and are incredibly witty – I could not keep up and am hoping that some of it rubbed off on me while we were there. It’s got to be something in the water...
Capturing half a year in one blog is hard so... time for a MONTAGE!
We came to Scotland expecting William Wallace, awesome architecture and freezing cold... we got it all, and much more of course...
The castle was definitely epic... not quite Jodhpur fort epic but still very impressive.
Some bad weather, but plenty of nice clear days. Which unfortunately were still so so cold....
Cold, sleepy Edinburgh came to life when they won the football.... the lifeblood of any good Scotsman. Whenever I opened the paper to the sports section hoping for some cricket or rugby news, I was always greeted by at least 4 pages of football and (at the most) 1 page of ALL other sports. Dedicated.
Hogmanay was a blast, we laughed our way into the new year thanks to the Cuban Brothers and their unique brand of craziness.
Best way to keep warm in Edinburgh was to get moving, we walked a lot! Our favourite was Arthur's Seat which we climbed multiple times. That's it below looking amazing in the unseasonably warm weather we had for a week in March. For scale, those are people walking at the bottom.
The whole city poured into the parks during that week... was quite a change from the ghost city we were used to!
And as if to mock us, the warm weather came back on our last day in Edinburgh. While enjoying the sunshine we wandered through a Christian fair in the gardens and Sophie (losing focus for just a second) was pounced on and converted... note the flyer and sticker.
Hi Dan and Sophie, Jos and I spent two weeks in a house-swap in Edinburgh last May and froze every day. I wore five layers of clothing and still couldn't get warm as I'd only brought NZ-type clothing. Still we did get to see all of the sites and also do lots of walking. Loved Stirling, Queensbury and Leith although mostly from inside a nice warm pub. The house we stayed in was warm and cosy with great central heating so that was good. Don't think I'd go back though.
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