Highland tales

After months of waiting and a very long almost sleepless night, I am back in Edinburgh. I know when I left I swore I'd never come back but a few weeks of snow can do that to a girl. It feels strange to be back, to walk down streets that look familiar and yet don't and I feel

Like I am a tourist and a not a tourist at the same time. 

I booked us on a early flight because they're cheaper and seeing as we both had work on Wednesday we got a bus to Dublin at 1.30 am. I had managed to grab a few hours of sleep and Stephen is adamant that he had less than me. I suppose I'l have to take his word for it because I was dead to the world at the time. When we were boarding the bus later I was barely awake and in full on groggy, cranky mode when eight annoying girls on their way to potential stis ( judging by the conversation I over heard) in Santa Ponsa. Some of the stuff they were coming out with was so stupid, I think my iq dropped several points just listening to them. 

We eventually managed to escape which is probably the only reason none of them left the bus maimed and in our new sears they were far enough away to be relegated to annoying background noise. I managed to grab another hours sleep before we arrived at the airport but was still half zombie wandering through terminal 1. we grabbed some snacks and headed down to the gate to wait for our flight. We must have been there half an hour when I glanced up at the desk nearest to us and noticed that while it did say Edinburgh, it didn't have the same flight number as my boarding pass and it also said aer lingus. This lead to a panicked last minute dash across the airport but we made our flight in time. 

We arrived in Edinburgh a little worse for wear but checked our bags in anyway because we had touristing to do. In face we had a list. We didn't tick off as many things as planned but we didn't do too badly either. we went out for breakfast and a wander through a few shops . We even went to an art gallery that contained many paintings that all looked a bit grim and similar to me, we left soon after u expressed this out loud so I guess I'm an art ruiner. 

The highlight of my morning was finding a health store selling my favourite pukka teas a good bit cheaper than home and in my excitement I bought 3 different flavours but I stand by my impulse purchases. 

Because it was so lovely and sunny I decided we would head to Edinburgh zoo on foot. I knew it was far because we passed it on the airport bus but I don't think I'd calculated quite how far it was or 

Considered the fact that neither if us had the best foot wear on for such an expedition. Now I am somewhat sunburned and I can't feel my feet but the zoo was still well worth the trip. The price was a little Steep but I felt we got our money's worth. Also we had a bit of difficulty finding our way out but the upside of that is detours kept bringing us past animals we didn't realize we'd missed. We saw a lone lion and he was majestic looking, and the meercats were adorable. I think they were mostly standing on rocks to scope the place out but it looked a lot like they were posing. Plus the penguins were like very cute, formal birds. I enjoyed watching them walk around the place. I must say though that my absolute favourites were the monkeys. We did see some apes mostly sleeping With their butts exposed which was not so pleasant but all of the other monkeys seemed aware of our presence and you could see some human qualities in them. It took us almost 2 hours to do the full tour of the zoo and by the time we got out we were barely able to walk and starving . 

We got a bus back into town and then went looking for somewhere to eating using my map as guidance . We eventually found David bahns, one of the restaurants we'd been looking for half by accident and it seemed cheaper than we originally thought so we took a chance on it. I had the dish in the picture which was broccoli and tofu fritters and was pleasantly surprised to enjoy it. It's nice to eat somewhere that Lives up to its reviews.

The plan was to do more sightseeing but we were both in bits so we headed back to the hostel for a lie down, later we went to pizza express for dinner but it didn't take long Because I can't eat cold pizza so you could say I won the pizza race. After that we were at a loose end because we thought the cinema we wanted to get to was too far out if town. We got directions to a more mainstream one and then found the one we'd written off. It seemed like a happy coincidence so we headed in too see the hundred year old man. It was an excellent adaptation of the book but I was so shattered I missed the last half hour due to constantly falling asleep and then trying to force myself awake again. Fun times.were both heading to bed now and we haven't managed to kill each other yet so I'd say day one of our holiday is success