After school on Friday, we did some final packing and cleaning before heading to the DLR to catch the train to the airport. Murphy’s law, the train stopped moving two stations away and we had a quick rush to get an Uber – lucky City airport is only a 15 minute drive from our place! We had a similar kerfuffle of a lack of transport on the other end, but eventually met up with Peter’s cousin Bryan and his partner Ros at about 9. We walked back to their flat in North Edinburgh and had a quiet night catching up in their flat.

On Saturday morning we had quite a slow start, but by the early afternoon we were headed out the door and into the city. We made our way to the BrewDog in the financial district west of the city and sat down outside to burgers for lunch, where one of Peter’s friends from work joined us for a catch up. It was a fantastic day, around 23 degrees and sunny, although it was quite windy – which we were told was totally normal for Edinburgh. After lunch, Ros and Bryan led the way to a lovely garden bar on the other side of Calton Hill, where we sat in the sunshine and had some cocktails. They’d also made a booking for a pub for dinner so in the early evening we made our way east towards Leith, where we sat outside in the sunshine again for some food. I had a fantastic gluten free pie (pastry-less) and Peter had steak and chips. We finished the day with a wander down to Leith, which is on the water and a very pretty part of town.

On Sunday morning we had a similarly slow start but headed in to town for a walk up the Royal Mile and to find some lunch. We managed to get a table outdoors at a sausage & mash place that I’d tried to go to last time I was in Edinburgh. I had a fantastic smoked sausage with wholegrain mustard mash and Bryan and Ros were both really pleased with the vegetarian sausages they got. After lunch, we went for a walk down to Cowgate, where of course we had to stop at the other BrewDog so Peter could get his passport stamp. Bryan had lots of stories to tell about performing at Edinburgh Fringe venues in the area, and he pointed out a few spots that had been popular pre-COVID. Bryan and Peter wanted to watch the British Formula 1 race so from BrewDog we headed back to the apartment and watched what turned out to be quite an exciting race, with a big crash in the first lap and a surprising win from Hamilton. Peter and I were cooking dinner so once the race was finished we popped out to get ingredients and then  cooked salmon rice bowls. We are heading off in the morning so we’re aiming for a bit of an earlier night so we don’t mess around with everyone’s work schedules tomorrow.