Part the fifth

We managed the unbelievable feat of getting all of our shit and all five of ourselves into a single cab. British cabs are bigger than their yellow American counterparts, but not by much. They look like what PT Cruisers try to be. Lynn had been gone all semester, so her shit quantity was particularly large. The train station was full of drama because, when my parents are involved, all travel is required to be difficult and stressful. My sister and I discussed the fact that, without the parents, trains, planes, busses and the like are really not that hard. With the parents, it's a huge fucking deal when and where and ohmigawd do we have everything and ohmigawd where is everyone and do we have enough food and no, you need to go get more food and if we aren't at the front of the line to board we might not all get to sit together (even if it's a huge freaking train with about 3 times the number of seats as there are people in the station) and then it will be the end of the world and we'll never see eachother again.

By the grace of God alone (because just reading the sign and getting in the right line and then walking onto the right train couldn't have anything to do with it) we ended up on a train to Edinburgh. I took Dramamine and fell asleep across two seats in the fetal position within the first half hour. I awoke several hours later to some loud annoying MIDI clip of electronic game triumph that played every minute or so for the last hour of the trip.

The queue for the cab was another Big Fucking Deal as my dad had to make sure we got one big enough to fit us back in and did we remember how we all sat in the last cab so it all fit and if the cab that comes when it's our turn is too small we'll let the person behind us go and the next and the next until there is a big enough cab and we all had to be informed of this 27 times and go over our positions in the cab and what bags went where 94 times. When the actual cab came, we only had to let one person in front of us and then getting in was (shocking!) not that fucking hard.


At last, we pulled into our Edinburgh Sheraton. Certainly not the Savoy, but still quite spacious and lovely, and they already had the cot set up when we checked in, so points for that. The funny thing about Edinburgh is much of it looks like a fairly average modern small city, except there's a HUGE FRIGGIN' CASTLE right in the middle of everything. Turn left to see the Gap, turn right to see the CASTLE. More to come on the castle...

We were hungry but it was late and nothing was both open and still serving food, so we ended up at a Chinese restaurant a few blocks from our hotel, even though the night before we'd been at the amazing Chinese place. I was actually quite happy because I was starving but still worried about digesting things so I got chicken fried rice and it was perfect. My brother wanted to go out and play but I just wanted to pass out so we went to bed with the promise of going out before the trip was over.

The next morning my dad was completely out of commission. Terrible vertigo and barfiness. We decided to move seeing the castle to the next day and went off to do things he wouldn't mind missing, which quickly became shopping shopping and more shopping. The post-Christmas sales were plentiful. Mark was still in willing-to-buy-fashionable-clothing mode, so we mostly looked for him, though we did spend well over an hour in Zara. Zara is a store I loved when I spent the summer in Vienna and apparently Lynn loved this past semester in Rome. I got a really cute sweater in an intense teal green that I like very much. We also saw the first 10,000 of what was to be 83 bazillion Scottish scarves. Apparently the reason for all the sheep-fucking is to make the cashmere softer and plaidier. My mom and brother went back to the hotel to check on my father, while my sister and I were supposed to meet them after we went to the drug store to look for single serving face masks. Unfortunately, I wasn't wearing the smartest shoes so my sister was walking in front of me, seemingly leading the way. I guess I'd forgotten who my sister was, because I assumed she was actually leading the way and knew where she was going. After several blocks of just trying to keep up I noticed we were going the wrong way and I hadn't paid attention to how we'd gotten there. My sister had been walking and assumed I'd tell her if she went the wrong way. Oops. Using the castle as a landmark I got us what I thought was back on track, but I wasn't sure so we tried asking someone. He didn't know where the Sheraton was, but I remembered there was a pub across the street called Shakespeare's and, according to Zach, all UK residents are alcoholics, so I asked if he knew where the pub was. This he did, though he wasn't sure how to get there, but he knew the street it was on and described its position in relation to a large clock. Zach, you were right. Well, we still didn't know for sure how to get back and I'm much more confident if I have a map, so we went into a convenience store and spent a pound and a half on a map of Edinburgh. I found our location and where we needed to go, at which point I realized we were half a block from where I would have known exactly where we were and should be going, anyway. Figures. At any rate, we made it back to the hotel not too late and the drug store we went to didn't even have face masks.
My dad was feeling sufficiently better to come with us for an afternoon of--what else--shopping! so we went to the nicer streets and wandered around and looked at more cashmere and wool. Before heading back to the hotel for naps, my siblings and I split off from my parents and went to a different drug store in search of the single-serving facial masks and voila! an entire section. We chose six: two relaxing, two deep-cleaning, and two peel-off exfoliating. I love those things.

Dinner. My dad had asked the concierge at the hotel to recommend a Scottish restaurant. My stomach was finally all better and wanted some real food, but we all knew it was possible we'd be eating bread and staring at blood pudding and going for munchies late that night. Oh how wrong we were. The menu had two pages to it: one with four appetizers and four entrees that made up the prix fixe menu (18 pounds) and the other had about six appetizers and entrees that could be chosen individually with individual prices. Pheasant, wood pigeon, venison, salmon herring and hare were the Scottier options with a few vegetarian dishes, steak, chicken, and assorted fish making up the rest of the menu. I had the venison, and it was seriously the best thing I ate the entire trip. It was incredible. Like a really fine, tender beef with a sauce that tasted like Jesus. I also had a Hoegaarden for the first time since my Maastricht/Vienna summer. I know it's not Scottish, but it's delicious. The general atmostphere was much more what I'd expected. It was dark and stone and kind of dank and castle-like. I sat next to the radiator, which was wonderful because it was motherfuckingcoldout. When we were more than sufficiently stuffed, we ordered dessert. My brother was having a moment (being 16 is a real piece of shit) and didn't help eat the dessert, so I completely overstuffed myself beyond reason.

After dinner we all walked back to the hotel. Lynn and I had both promised Mark we'd go out with him, but I was uncomfortably full and too damn lazy to go anywhere farther than Shakespeare's, so Shakespeare's it was. Lynn and I each got a pint of Tennents because it was Scottish and on tap. Verdict: not very good. We sat around and bonded like good siblings. Mark doesn't drink for somewhat medical reasons (it interferes with his crack habit) but he was by far the goofiest. I just wanted to go lay down and sleep from overstuffedness (beer is heavy, especially in an already full tummy), so once our single pints were drained, we waddled back to the hotel. Mark had the serious munchies (again, I point out he had consumed no altering substances) and he and Lynn went looking for food downstairs but were up only minutes after me as everything was closed except 24-hour room service. The boy ordered an enormous and expensive club sandwich that seemed to be making him very happy as I passed out in my food-induced coma for the night.