Lovely to see you the other day - you can read all about it on my blog to no one, if you've got the time and you're not too busy. Since then we've been through Edinburgh, Inverness, Isleham and London, and are entering the home stretch of our trip in sunny Portugal.
Edinburgh was excellent value as always - the day after we arrived the sun came out so we headed to the Royal Mile to take in the madness, watch the sword-swallowers, unicyclists, sea-shanty singers etc. until we were whisked underground to the cramped quarters of Mary King Close, for a tour full of tales of plagues, pestilence and chamber pots given by a flamboyant Dutch man in a cape. After a quick pasty in Waverley station we headed up to the castle and on to Princes Street Gardens, moving on to the New York Steam Packet for STEAK and the Guilded Balloon for "Spontaneous Potter", an amusing improvised take on the Expanded Potterverse.
The next day we packed up and shipped out to a parking lot on the outskirts of Edinburgh Airport, where after a tortuous exchange with the Ryanair of car rental companies (they tried to rent us a white van, and we almost wrecked the car they eventually let us have before we got the hang of the handbrake and gearstick) we hit the road to Inverness, up through the Highlands via Midhope Castle and Culross (both locations in the popular TV series Outlander, for any Outlander fans out there).
Once in town we got some dinner, checked out the local tartan shop and adjourned to our cosy Airbnb, then the next day we went to Culloden for a wander round the battlefield and to Loch Ness and the ruins of Urquhart Castle - both cut short by sudden showers for which we were laughably unprepared, but awesome in their own way (we even got a rainbow over Loch Ness! No monster though). Having purchased a tartan shawl to wrap Gaby up in, we went to a tiny seaside village for a slap-up dinner and headed back to bed. The entire next day was spent trying to get back to Isleham as Ryanair did their best to antagonise us - suffice to say next year we'll be doing our trip entirely by train, and hopefully they'll be bankrupt.
On Saturday we headed into London and our Airbnb, coincidentally on Inverness Terrace near Hyde Park. I left Gaby to her shopping spree and went to see Ben and Tom of Archway Castle fame at the former's Islington abode, for televised football and darts, before getting some Thai food and heading back to bed. Sunday was an extremely intense blur of reviews, walking, the South Bank, more walking and Fortnum & Mason, culminating in a quick trip to the Royal Albert Hall for the Proms, and a kebab nightcap. And on Monday we made a dash for Borough Market to eat lots of nice things, before another nightmarish Ryanair experience en route to Lisbon.
My phrase of the week translates as "you broke my legs" and means "you've left me in a pickle!" (i.e. "you said you'd bring the beers for our BBQ and didn't - you really broke my legs, man!") - it came to mind a few times during the more arduous of our recent trips around town. I have also made two new compilations and folks, it's an Aretha Franklin special. Driving through the Highlands to non-stop Aretha on the day she died was pretty special, if a little sad...
Enjoy, and speak soon,
Deep Fred Haggis
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