Edinburgh

This weekend I went to the capital city of Scotland, Edinburgh. The British Council invited all the Comenius Assistants for a two day long information meeting in this lovely city, and to get more out of it we decided to spend the weekend there. The meeting was actually quite useful, and it was nice to meet other people in the same situation.

Mari and I stayed together at a lovely B&B quite close to the castle. We had a huge room and the breakfast was lovely. We were quite international in our meals; we did try a full Scottish breakfast, an American breakfast with pancakes, a British pub meal (Irish stew for me), Chinese sweet and sour and Italian pasta. All of it being delicious, except for the Black pudding that came with the full Scottish..

Thursday was Bonfire Night in UK, celebrating when Guy Fawkes was caught before he managed to blow up the Parliament in 1606. Luckily they were talking about this in school the day before I left for Edinburgh, so I did know a little bit about the story before seeing the celebrations. The night was celebrated with fireworks and bonfires all over the city, both private and public. We had a great view of the fireworks from the top of Calton Hill.

After spending a few hours at the meeting Thursday and Friday, we spent Saturday walking the streets of Edinburgh, seeing the West side of the city, Leith and Broughton. The weather was lovely; sunny but cold, and it was so nice just spending the days walking around the little shops that Edinburgh have to offer.

We also found this Swedish cafe: Peter's Yard. They had real Swedish/Scandinavian food, and of course we had to try it! The smoked salmon was delicious, and so were the cinnamon buns. They had the loveliest tea pots we just had to buy, and I stacked up on "tyttebærsylte" for my home made "kjøttkaker".

Sunday I finally made it to Arthur's Seat, and the view of the city from up there was marvelous! It was a great weekend where we got to see lots of new things, as well as the familiar ones (Bank Hotel), and it was nice to meet so many new people!