The Amazing Edinburgh Foodies Festival

Day 23

Wow – last night escalated quickly! I was feeling a little bit shabby after last night’s absinthe drinking, and was ready to murder a coffee and some toast to help line the stomach.

I saw Jes as I was heading back to my room to pack my bags, and we discussed what we were thinking of doing during the day. I mentioned the Foodies Festival that we had been told about earlier the previous night, and that I had to check out of the hostel and was going to stay at the accommodation of the two girls.
Jes said she might come along to the Foodies Festival, depending on how she was feeling later on.

After packing my bags and checking out, I started the trek over to where Sparkles and Shakira were staying. My accommodation was on the western side of Edinburgh, and they were staying to the north east. It took me about 45 minutes to walk there, dragging my wheeled suitcase (trundle bag), and I swore that I would not do another trip with this bag.

The girls were staying in university student accommodation, and when I entered it looked like quite a nice building. They had a studio apartment there, which had a fridge, microwave, stove and large bench space. It also had a very hard wood floor, which I was going to be sleeping on that night.
They were just finishing getting ready and wolfing down some breakfast as I arrived. Sparkles took me down and showed me how to use the internet in the building, but it was an extremely frustrating experience. You had to log in, and then it only allowed you to use the wi-fi for 2 minutes. At which point you had to log in again.
Fortunately my phone remembered the password, so it was a simple affair. Sparkles’ iPad didn’t remember passwords, so she had to keep on typing in the log in and pass word.

I looked up on google maps how to get to the Foodies Festival, and it turned out that the park where it was located was at this end of the city – we had originally feared that it might be to the south east of the city.
It took us about 15 minutes to walk to the park, and once again the weather was spectacular.

The Foodies Festival was a place that small and large companies could set up stalls and provide samples of their wares as well as sell them. There were a number of alcohol stalls, cheese stalls, salami stalls, cooking additive stalls… it was quite a large affair.
When we arrived we kept an eye out for Lisa and Caroline around the champagne stand, but could not see them. We decided to go for a wander and see what was there, and then go back to the champagne stand.
I saw a food stall that was cooking up steaks and burgers from cows that the company bred. I decided that even though I had had some breakfast at the hostel, that was what I wanted to take care of my hangover.

The girls stayed at the champagne stand when we got back there, and I toddled back to get a steak burger with all the extras and an egg and bacon roll from the same place.
As I was standing in the queue for food, Jes walked past and we saw each other at the same point in time. She stuck with me until I got my food, and then we went back to meet Shakira and Sparkles. I introduced Jes to the other girls as the one from the previous night that had attempted to poison me with absinthe the night before.
Jes and I grabbed a Magners cider from the nearby Magners stand, and Sparkles and Shakira headed off to find a cider of their own.
They returned with some ‘natural’ ciders – I’m not quite sure how the brewing process differs from the Magners one, but I must say I did prefer my Magners Mixed Berry cider. Mmmmmmm.

The 4 of us sat on the grass and chatted, lounging around in the sun, heading back to the Magners stand for more (and more) ciders.
Sparkles and Shakira went off for a wander to look at the foods, and shortly afterwards Jes and I did as well. Jes was trying all of the samples, the cheeses, meats, crackers, etcetera etcetera. She ended up buying three wheels of cheese and a bag full of salamis. Afterwards she was kicking herself over buying so many salamis, as she really only wanted one.

Jes and I met up with Shakira and Sparkles, and after grabbing a few more ciders, we sat down near a stage area and listened to a couple of bands play. These bands were all performing in one of the Edinburgh festivals (there are about 10 running at the same time, so August is a super busy time in Edinburgh… hence why I was sleeping on the floor tonight).


The first group that we saw were dressed in bohemian style clothing, played covers and looked like they thoroughly enjoyed their music. They had an excellent drummer. They had a double bass. And they had a guy that played the saxophone and some kind of breath-driven keyboard. Very funky and fun.

The second group… well, guy… was a solo guitarist who started off recording some vocal and guitar tracks before breaking into his set. He started off slowly, but built a lot of goodwill from the crowd as he went on, and had everybody clapping along to his songs by the end. Shakira ended up buying one of his CDs, which I intend to ‘acquire by nefarious methods’.

It was getting on to 7pm by this stage, and the Foodies Festival was winding up by this stage. Jes and I headed over to try to pick up a take-away 3 pack of the tasty Magners ciders, but we had left our run too late and they had already packed up for the day.
So, our quartet decided to head back to Sparkles and Shakira’s accommodation via Tesco for a light repast of Foodies cheese and salami, biscuits, peanuts and popcorn. And gin. Lots of gin.

We ate and drank and chatted for a couple of hours, telling stories from our travels and home, and decided to call it a night about 11pm.
I walked Jes up to the end of the road where she caught a taxi, before rejoining Sparkles and Shakira. We had one more drink, before deciding to call it a night.

As the room only had a double bed, I had to sleep on the floor. The hard-wood floor. On a towel. With no blanket. Definitely not the most comfortable of places to sleep.
Plus, for some reason one of the other occupants of the building decided that it would be a good idea to smoke in their room.
So at 12.30am we were woken by a truly high-pitched and aurally invading smoke alarm which went on for ages.
We panicked for a moment, as I was not supposed to be staying there, and started to head out to the emergency evacuation point, but fortunately the alarm stopped while we were in the hallway of the building. We heard somebody explaining what was going on, and quickly headed back to the room before anybody noticed that the girls had snuck a boy into their room.
We attempted to go to sleep again, but were woken up at 1.30am by the smoke alarm going off again. Fortunately this time it only went off for about a minute.
And again at 2am.
I can’t believe those lazy shits didn’t learn their lesson the first time and couldn’t be bothered walking outside to have their smoke.
Sigh.