First full day. Bjöggi had been smart enough to go for an early morning walk and found Tesco, and had rolls, ham, cheese and tomato for us all for breakfast.
Super, but time for action. For me, this meant a haircut. A haircut at Snip and Sip which offers refined casual haircuts, served with very sippable polish vodka. I finally got a nice summer haircut, and it feels great!
Oli, Steph and Bjöggi had come with me, being ready to get out of the house, and Oli managed to get a haircut as well, then we headed off for a leisurely lunch with Eggert and Bel at the City Cafe. But then, the reality of having an 8 person group set in, and we quickly split into the Cultural Team, the Fashion Team, and the Shopping Team. (Debate still rages about which team was fashion, and which was simply shopping)
Steph and I headed for Surgeon's Hall, for a nice exhibition on the history of anaesthesia, seeing the very first ever hypodermic needle, and then a rather extensive display of chunks of bone with bits of bullet in them. I had a bit of fun playing with a laparoscopy training kit, using the camera and some forceps to move little wodden blocks around inside the "body"
The Fashion team, which had gone off to find a vintage dress shirt and shoes to wear for the wedding, were waylaid upon finding that the Bow Bar was open, they managed about 300m from lunch.
The shopping team successfully found some shoes, then headed over to the Rose Street for their own bar time.
There was a plan for most of the group to meet up at the Scott Monument at 6pm, go up it for a look, then all get the bus down to shore at Leith for some Indian for dinner. As it turned out, only the Cultural Team made it up the Scott Monument. The Scott Monument was really awesome, and one of the first things I saw and wanted to do when we came into town on the bus.
It's a rather skeletal tower, with some rather disparaging remarks from people in the past, "It's like the church steeple, ripped off and stuck in the ground.", but I think it's neat. It had 4 landings, with a spiral staircase that kept getting tighter and tighter the higher you went. Great views in the afternoon sunlight.
The Fashion team got their act together briefly, buying a shirt at M&S, but forgot about shoes. They would wait until the day before the wedding. The socks would wait until about 30minutes before the wedding.
Indian, at The Raj was simply excellent. Far better than anything we get here in Iceland. Delicious. We disturbed a poor bargirl at the Waterline afterwards, ruining her early night by arriving half an hour before closing with 15 people. She was not impressed, and made it well known.
So, we had our first experience with scottish after hours, where most things are open til 3am, most days, and almost nothing is open any longer, no matter what the day. We got two taxis, and only left one person behind as we made it to yet one more bar for the day.
Grand total: two haircuts, two shots of vodka, two museums, two restaurants, only 4 bars I believe.
