Absinthe and the return to Edinburgh

Day 22

With the Highland Lass heading out to the airport at stupid o’clock, Sparkles, Shakira and I decided to head back to Edinburgh.
Doris and the Highland Lass’s sisters were sad to see us go, and despite the offer of being able to stay a little bit longer, we didn’t want to intrude on their hospitality.

We had left overs from yesterday’s breakfast for today’s breakfast, and it was just as tasty the second time around.
Doris packed lunches for us from the left overs of the previous night’s dinner, and even wrote our names on them. I felt like I was heading off to school for the first time again.

Colin was nice enough to drive us out to the bus terminal. His belief was that since his bosses were away on holidays, and he tells people that his middle initial, ‘D’, stands for delegation he could justify rocking up to work late.
He pointed to an article in the newspaper regarding the redevelopment of an old park in Aberdeen. This park has some massive beautiful trees that were planted many moons ago by the original town planners, and the redevelopment is a bit of a contentious issue in Aberdeen. The population of Aberdeen went to a referendum on the matter and voted for the new park, but a recently elected mayor has said that he is against it and will fight the issue. The newspaper article spoke about 100 business leaders that were behind the project (of which Colin is one), and described how they were going to dig up the narrow park which lies next to a train line and a major motorway, and build a new park over the top of the train line and road, making it much larger with several centers for ants, and less of an attraction for the local heroin addicts.

At the bus terminal, we bought our bus tickets and waited for 30 minutes until our bus arrived. There was some confusion about whether this was our bus, as the original bus had broken down and they were running two slightly different services.
Fortunately it was our bus, and we jumped on, taking up the 3 middle seats in the back row. I had the middle seat, so I was able to stretch my legs out along the aisle.
Shakira sat next to an older man who looked like a Scottish version of Jack Thompson, and they chatted for most of the trip.
He was heading back home after visiting a folk music festival, and told her all about the country side that we drove through and a few things to look out for in Edinburgh.
Sparkles and I broke out our lunches, and although she tried to give me the one belonging to “Brie”, which was filled with cheese, I insisted that I have my one. The dinner left overs were still extremely tasty.

The bus arrived in Edinburgh shortly after 2pm, and the girls had booked accommodation in another area of the city to where I was staying. After a few initial navigational issues, the girls got to a bus stop that would take them to their accommodation, and I headed on to mine, the Caledonia Hostel.
This was a very sweet venue, and a great place to stay for the one night that I intended to stay before moving on into northern England.
The girls and I had agreed to meet at the pub that we had gone to on our last day in Edinburgh, the Bee Hive, and meet up at 5pm.
I knew that this was probably an unachievable timeframe for the girls, particularly since Shakira spoke of having a tactical snooze before meeting up.

I took this opportunity to head down to the post office and send a few things back to Australia so that I wouldn’t have to carry them around any longer.
Post post-office, I headed to the Bee Hive to see if the girls had arrived by 5.30. They hadn’t (as I was pretty sure would be the case), so I decided to make a mad dash to the local Games Workshop store to pick up their monthly magazine.

Edinburgh was really pumping at this time of the day, and I had to weave and wind my way through the masses of people along the major road that the GW store was located on. There were tourists milling around, performers trying to spruke their shows, and lots of people handing out fliers.
I had a very determined look on my face (let’s just say that I don’t tolerate very well large masses of people that mill around like herds of stupid animals), so the flyer people would turn to me and offer me a flyer, and then turn away once they looked at my face.
They probably just thought that I was a local.

I grabbed my magazine and (as quickly as was possible with the sea of stupidity I had to make my way through) headed back to the Bee Hive.
I ran into Sparkles as I was walking through to the beer garden, and she apologized profusely for her and Shakira not being there at 5pm like they had agreed.
I explained that I had been, gone and come back, which made her feel a little less guilty.
We decided to grab a few drinks before joining Shakira in the beer garden, but there was a long queue at the downstairs bar.
She jumped in this queue, and I headed upstairs to the other bar to grab a few drinks, hoping that one of us would be much quicker than the other.
There was still a decent wait at the top bar, but I picked up 3 ciders for us and headed back down to find Sparkles at the front of the queue. She decided to grab another 3 drinks anyway to save us another trip to the bar.

I wandered out and joined Shakira at the table in the beer garden, which we were sharing with two local girls who were having their own conversation. Sparkles rejoined us, and we decided to have some grub there as we were quite impressed with it last time we ate there.
After deciding on our fare, I offered to go inside to order and grab another couple of drinks. The two girls sitting at the table with us were also running low on their drinks, so I asked them if they wanted me to pick up some drinks for them while I was up. They were greatly appreciative and gave me an order, joining our conversation at the table.
Their names were easy to remember – Caroline and Lisa, the same as two of the Highland Lass’s sisters.
We chatted for a couple of hours, at which point Caroline had to leave to catch up with an ex-boyfriend (a long and complicated situation), so the three of us and Lisa headed upstairs to see a couple of local comedians perform at the Bee Hive.

The comedians were quite good. The first guy basically paid out the English and spoke about the woes of having them as a neighboring country. The second comedian was a young girl from Glasgow, who told quite a few dirty jokes, but has a bit of promise for a future in comedy. The third comedian started off saying that he was going to do an improvisational comedy show revolving around a question and answer session. I was a bit skeptical at first, but he turned out to be the funniest of the comedians. I missed the fourth comedian as I was stuck at the bar waiting for them to change the Magners keg downstairs.
We had one final drink after the show, and then Lisa departed to meet up with one of her friends.

The girls and I opted to stick around and have another couple of drinks, as this had originally been my final night in Edinburgh before moving on, but I quite enjoyed the place and a Foodies festival that Lisa and Caroline had recommended sounded quite good.
At the bar there was a barmaid that I had seen the last time we were there that I thought was pretty cute. After getting the first round and seeing her, I opted to go and get the second round, slipping her a note with my number on it..
Unfortunately I never heard from her.
Sigh.

We called it a night and headed back to our relevant sleeping abodes. At the Caledonian I wrote up another couple of blog entries and had a few more beers. I decided to call it a night and head downstairs for one more cigarette.
While I was down there a group of 6 (3*guys, 3*girls) spilled out of the bar next to the Caledonian. One of the guys in a local accent asked if he could roll a cigarette, and I proffered my rollie paraphernalia. When they heard me speak, the three girls turned around and exclaimed “ANOTHER AUSSIE!” They were all Aussies from Queensland.
One of the girls turned to me and said “We’re going to go to the park and drink some absinthe – wanna come join us?”
“Sure, if there’s absinthe going, I won’t say no” I replied.

We trundled around the corner to a park and grabbed out several cups, a bottle of absinthe, an absinthe spoon and some sugar. The girl with the bottle of absinthe, Jes, was very friendly and we chatted a fair bit about our travels and life in general. The other two girls were twins, and I think they were trying to line up two of the other boys to take them home.
After a couple of glasses (not shots) of absinthe, one of the guys got up told one of the other fellows to get up. The other guy, Jordan, had passed out and refused to move. The third fellow, an Irishman called (appropriately) Patty each grabbed an arm and carried Jordan to the street, where one of the twins and the first fellow had waved down a taxi. This twin jumped in the taxi with Jordan and the local fellow, and they headed off into the night.
This left Jes, the other twin, Patty and myself.
We each had another glass of absinthe, and Patty and the remaining twin started to get a little bit friendly. Jes and I asked him if he had any condoms – after all, us Aussies need to look out for each other! He declared that he didn’t, but he was a gentleman and so wouldn’t try to hit a home run.
Safe with that self-commendation, Jes and I wandered back to the Caledonian, where she was also staying.

We unsteadily headed off to bed at about 2.30am.