On with the tales of my holiday…

Right, so I left the lake district on Sunday afternoon, sad to go, and even sadder to know that it will be a long time before I see any of the great people I met again. If ever. I caught a train to Edinburgh, a pleasant journey, and arrived in good time. With the help of a random stranger – who spotted the fact I was looking slightly confused – I managed to find my hostel.

In a fit of sheer genius I’d booked myself into a double with en-suite, absolute bliss after a weekend of communal dorms and shower rooms that stank. The weather in Edinburgh was lovely, and it was a gorgeous evening so I took a walk up the Royal Mile, half looking for the location of fabled firework show that was to happen later.

Edinburgh (well, the old part of it) is probably one of the loveliest cities I’ve been in. I knew very little about the place and it was magic to walk around ‘discovering’ all these beautiful buildings and views. I eventually found a flow of people, and then the flow of people petered out and there was a queue. So assuming this was a queue for the fireworks I joined it.

After standing there for five minutes I realised that, despite my conviction that I’m a Saffa through and through, I had just done the most English thing I could humanly conceive of doing (okay, maybe if I’d had a thermos of tea to keep me company that would have been one step further…) I had to share this so rang LaLa and spend the next while chatting to her, long enough for me to get to the end of the queue where I realised that, yes, it was for the fireworks, but it was for ticketed access to the Princess Street Gardens. Giggling to myself I climbed over a few booms and joined the rabble in Princess Street.

Time wore on and the hour for the fireworks came about. I’d managed to find myself a very good viewing spot, and the show was amazing. A co-ordinated show of hundreds and hundreds of fireworks set to the classical music piping up from the gardens below. The Castle looked like the scene of a battle during the lulls wreathed in smoke and lit up red. The final bang was such a massive explosion that standing a few hundred meters below it I could feel the heat and the pressure from it as it hit my face. It even set off a number of alarms in the shops in the area, and their wail cleared the street faster than the end of the spectacle and growing cold could have.

The next morning dawned, umm, dull and early. I had a three day bus tour of Scotland and Skye booked and I needed to be at the pick-up location at 8am. Fortunately that was 20 meters from the hostel.

The Haggis tour was good fun, but exhausting in it’s way. Hours and hours of sitting on a bus watching the country-side go by. The first day was sunny, the second gloomy and the third wet, so I guess I got to see Scotland in all the appropriate states. The heather was also in bloom, which was pretty, but all it served to do was set up a comparison to the Cape for me (since we’ve got a lot of heather, and a broader variety of kinds). I was home-sick already, and as lovely as the Highlands are, they’re not a patch on the Cape. At least our tour guide was interesting and he livened up the passing miles with anecdotes, history and personal observations.

Retuning to Edinburgh, a group of us from the tour had dinner followed by the best ice-cream sundae I’ve had in recent memory. When next in Edinburgh I thoroughly recommend going to the Bella Italia on the Royal Mile and having a ‘Godfather’ sundae (and ask for vanilla ice-cream instead of the cream!)

Anyway, the next day was a flurry of stress as I tried to get some shopping done for my gran, despite needing to be at the airport around 1, and being somewhat paranoid about missing flights. I’m the sort of person who if they recommend you’re there two hours before the flight, I like to set out allowing myself a further half hour ahead in case something goes wrong. I did succeed all round though and set out for the airport with a nice tartan blanket for granny in Buchanan colours.

I arrived back in London with a nightmare ahead of me. I had failed to calculate how long getting out of Stanstead and back home would take and arrived with less than an hour before I absolutely had to set off for Gatwick to make my flight to Barcelona that evening. To complicate things, I had yet to move out of my room, and the girl replacing me was moving in on the Sunday while I was gone, so I had to clear my stuff out before I left for the continent.

With a little help from a housemate I managed to clear my stuff out, re-pack my bag and I dashed out the door. I recall forgetting something and having to charge back for it, however it was only when I got to Victoria station, was seated on the Gatwick express (having missed the one I really needed to catch by a minute) contemplating if I’d make it to the EasyJet check in counter before it closed and feeling a little queasy about how exceedingly slim that possibility was that I realised that I’d managed to leave the keys to the apartment in Barcelona that I was borrowing in a bag at home.

Fortunately the Gatwick Express gives refunds. Unfortunately EasyJet does not. Fortunately I’d remember about the keys before I’d really gone anywhere. (Images of me arriving exhausted in Barcelona only to realise I had nowhere to stay left me exceedingly pleased that that had not happened!) Unfortunately the cheapest flight I could get for Barcelona was on Saturday morning giving me less than 24 hours in Barcelona and cost me more than a hundred pounds. However, overall I wasn’t totally disheartened. Missing my flight gave me time to calm down, clean my vacated room, sort the tip of stuff I’d left in the spare room, de-stress and I even got to go to Jitsu on the Friday night!

So enough of the holiday journal and back to present reality: I’ve bought myself a car, well, got dad to finance me a car that is, it’s a nice not-so-little Daewoo. It’s a bit old, but the mileage is low and it’s been well serviced. I suspect it’s somewhat of a gass-guzzler, but I’ve only put in a full tank last night so I’ll have to watch how fast I go through that.

The job offers have not been knocking down the door, but I’ve only been to see one agency since I’ve got back. At least they’ve been pleasant, positive and enthusiastic by appearances - you never really can tell with recruiters as being all of the above is part of the job description, but at least it’s better than the London agencies who tried hard to pretend I didn’t exist. I’m not keen on staying in Cape Town, but I’m also not going to turn down a great opportunity because of the location at this point.