Earlier this month I decided to make an impromptu trip to Edinburgh to visit a friend. Because it was impromptu, my choices on cheap travel were a little limited, which meant on the morning of the 23rd January I was awake at 5am and heading out to get a VERY EARLY TRAIN.

The bonus to this was that I had a lovely journey watching the sun come up, firstly through the fog in York, lighting up the buildings in Newcastle and the finally sparkling over the sea along the beautiful East Coast. This part of the journey is just so beautiful, the train tracks running really close to the beach and it was really a rather enjoyable excursion reading my book and watching the view.

The other bonus of course, is that I got to Edinburgh before lunch!

My friend met me from the train and after a couple of stops in town we decided to walk to her apartment it being such a lovely day and only about 30 minutes walk out of town. When we arrived we had tea and some of the tasty vegan, gluten free, sugar free, super-healthy-we-can-eat-them-all-brownies I had made (they really are THAT good).

Whilst munching on brownies we decided what we would do with our day, and given that there was a beach a short bus ride away and I love the beach, the decision had to be BEACH! YAY BEACH!

I have to say it again because it’s such a novelty in Scotland, in January, but it was SUCH a lovely day and the beach just looked perfect, sparkling in the sun. We walked along the beach saying hello to the birds and laughing at the dogs and picking up shells and rocks, and just generally enjoying the beauty that is Edinburgh beach (it probably has a proper name and everything but I don’t know and it and I can’t be bothered to google!)

 

Finally we reached the end of beach, but we weren’t tired of walking so we continued on through not quite as nice scenery until we found a lovely little bar cafe called Roseleaf where we stopped for refreshments.  We had some delicious Cold Cure tea which was made with fresh lemon juice, root ginger, blossom honey and cloves and it was delicious.

Whilst at the cafe we both discovered that the other played Pokemon Go but had both not played it whilst walking out of consideration towards the other!  With this exciting discovery made we bemoaned the eggs we could have hatched on our walked and decided to walk back to the apartment so we could rectify this situation. The sun was just setting as we got back to the apartment so we headed to Holyrood Park nearby to see the sunset.  Because. Sunset!!

 

Back at the flat it was, of course, time for more tea, brownies and chat until it was time to go out for the evening.

As I am participating in Veganuary, my friend had arranged a gathering at a bar renowned for it’s vegan food, in particular it’s vegan nachos.  The venue was The Auld Hoose, a lovely bar that serves many beers, whiskeys and HUGE plates of nachos to the sound of goth, metal and punk music.

The nachos were indeed righteously renowned.  I ordered a plate of the regular vegan nachos, which states for two or one very hungry person, well I was very hungry, however, after a juice week followed by a juice and soup week, I was a little concerned that my eyes would be way way way too big for my stomach and I wasn’t wrong.  If I thought my regular plate was large though (and it was), it was nothing compared to the large plate that the others got to share.

The nachos consisted of a bowl of tortilla chips, covered in vegan cheese, topped with five bean chilli, more vegan cheese and guacamole, all stacked in a huge tower, which was rather precariously balanced and became a little like playing Kerplunk as I tried to retrieve a tortilla chip from the bottom of the pile without the rest of the stack collapsing.  Needless to say, I couldn’t even manage a quarter of it and everyone else had more than enough of the non-vegan nachos to keep them going for an eternity.

 

Plans for the next day were to go for a walk around Holyrood Park, then to a Burns Night event before heading back for dinner.  What actually happened was that we lay around in bed with coffee, smoothies and brownies and chatted until we were forced to get up and at least have a walk if we were going to do ANYTHING that day.

A quick wash and get dressed and we headed out for a walk around Holyrood Park.  We had planned to go up to the ruins but it was already getting too dark for that, so we walked right around it with a quick detour up the crags and it was just a very lovely walk, watching the sky turn different colours as the sun set, taking in the breathtaking views of Edinburgh (and ignoring the less breathtaking ones) and catching Pokemon when we remembered.

 

And that was my impromptu, very enjoyable trip to Scottishland, I hope I can make it a longer trip next time and not too far in the future, because I really want to visit those ruins!

 

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