Jakface in the UK: Edinburgh Spooky Spa Trip!

The summer has started, everyone! Yesterday night was summer solstice, the longest day of the year! So much sun, so much hot! This flat is positively BOILING! But we're beating the beat with ice lollies and water, and trying to get outside as much as we can! All in all, a Glasgow summer is no different than a Vancouver summer! However, I've been told a few times that the weather isn't normally like this.. haw haw! I guess we brought the good weather from back home!

Speaking of back home, my best friend Steph took time off work to come to visit me in Scotland! She got here June 10th, and we've been chilling out, having teas, shopping, exploring, generally being awesome. Kody and I took her up to St. Mungo's Cathedral, the Necropolis, and other random bits of Glasgow. The West End Festival has also been going on, so we've checked out random bits of that. The day it started, I got my friend Greig to come with us to see some random things, like the Japanese Matsuri (which turned out to be just taiko drumming), the Greek Food Festival, and hanging out in Kelvingrove Gardens, checking out the cool garden displays and KILLER PLANTS! whoaaaaaAAa!

We also went to the Glasgow West End Festival Parade on Sunday the 13th. Lots of cool costumes and a super hot day, incredibly crowded in the park, but I got a lot of really good shots. We also met up with my friend Jamie one day and we went to a great Scottish restaurant called the Bothy and had super excellent food!

On Monday, Steph and I got up early to go to Queens St. Station to take a train into Edinburgh. We had lots of time to kill before we went on our Underground vaults tour, so we explored the Royal Mile, and the huge Scottish store behind Edinburgh castle, where they also made tartans. We explored Princes St, and I got a swanky watch from SWATCH. Unexpected purchase FTW!

We went into a cool cafe and had some wine, sambuca shots, and delicious hot chocolate with marshmallows. I had a Belgian waffle with bacon, brie cheese and maple syrup on it and the salad. Super delicious. The Underground Vaults tour we went on was pretty neat, we went in there with about 10 other people. Our guide was an Australian lady. It was quite dark, cramped and musty down there, and the lights played tricks with my eyes, but nothing crazy happened in the creepy vaults. We didn't go to the area with Mr. Boots or anything, but there was apparently supposed to be a Bridge Entity who was hostile.

Afterwards, we took the Airlink/Taxi to our hotel, which was Norton House Hotel and Spa. It was very nice there, down a windy bumpy path offroad. We were shown our room, which had a nice shower, LCD TV on the wall, and a strange painting I dubbed "the Vagina Wall". We jumped into our bathing suits and checked out the pool facilities and had a very short swim, but we got to test the hydropool, "experience shower", with fragrance, drench and cold water, sauna and steam room (which smelled like menthol and feet) .

Then went for our swanky dinner. We both had some fruity rose wine, and I had cauliflower soup, and salmon on cress/tomatoes and vanilla pannacotta with summer berries for dessert. It was really amazing, and the waiters were young with hilariously posh attitudes. I felt so out of place, haha. We rushed to get back to downtown to our City of the Dead tour, but we were too late and there wasn't enough people. We walked around a bit, and got hassled for a "fag" by a 14ish year old fiesty pikey girl. Then we decided to were tired and went back to the hotel after late shopping a bit more. We got into pjs and watched most of the movie 8MM which was on tv.

The next day we got up earlyish to pick up Linnea from the airport, who was arriving from Sweden! We first had a nice breakfast at the hotel and went on a nice walk in their Woodland park area, where we found an awesome clover patch. Couldn't find any with 4 leaves, but the clover was really soft!

After getting to the airport and picking up Linnea, we got ready to go on our spa adventure. We had a drink and then lunch, which was carrot coriander soup, aubergine flaked pastry, chicken tikka rolls and tasty seasoned chips, and vanilla pannacotta with rhubarb for dessert with a glass of champagne each. Then we got shown our lockers with slippers/rober after we took a swim. Our spa books had hilariously mispelled our names. Molly "Nemeses" (Nemecek) and Steph "Laserr" (Larsen). I got a back and leg massage which I kept falling asleep during, and a really nice facial. Then I met with Linnea and we went into the relaxation room for a snooze and a cup of peppermint tea as we waited for Steph.

After we enjoyed ourselves and changed, we got a taxi and bus back into Edinburgh where we dropped off Linnea's suit case so she didn't have to carry it. We had All You Can Eat Chinese at Jimmy Chung's by Waverly station. (Ice cream and syrup, yum!) Then we headed to the cathedral where we went on our much anticipated City of the Dead Tour. Ours had quite a lot of schoolkids attending on it, which were more amusing than annoying. This one girl actually reminded me of Tasli, which was really cute. :D Our tour guide was a cool blonde lady, and she made sure we got awesome stories. The Greyfriars kirkyard was creepy, especially since we were walking on over 250K dead bodies under the grass! Going into the Covenanter's Prison was especially creepy because she really warned everyone that poltergeist activity can happen. So we went into the crypt where all the stuff happens, and it felt really odd in there. After about 10 minutes of her talking about stuff in there, a guy with a werewolf mask or something came in to scare us. How cheesy! Oh well. It was a good tour, then afterward we bought some things from the souvenir store and went to the train station where we left for home to Glasgow.

The next 2 days consisted of beadmaking, shopping, visiting Steph's lovely Great Aunt Myrtle, planning for Inverness, and cooking. We met with Jamie again for Ketchup's burgers and drinks, and that was awesome. Yay!

Next on the list of updates is Inverness and Loch Ness, and Isle of Skye! Stay tuned shortly..