You Think, You Wink, You Do a Double Blink...

 Hey look! We're in Edinburgh!

O hai!

We had a very long and uncomfortable overnight coach trip to get here, after which we were sore, sleep-deprived, and hours too early to check in at our hostel, so we dropped our bags and went out into the city, fuelled only by painkillers and chocolate.

Can you get a refund if you don't like the one you get?

LLTG ensued.

We walked the length of the Royal Mile, and in a burst of that crazy energy that only comes after too much sugar and too little sleep, decided to climb to Arthur's Seat.

One does not simply walk up to Arthur's Seat.

So we did.

Well, to be perfectly accurate, we didn't - it turns out that Arthur's Seat was the really high bit that looked like something serious people in hiking boots might climb. But "we climbed to a highish bit of the Salisbury crags" doesn't have the same ring to it at all. Whatever; we're postmodern people. We're just offering a critique of the restrictions of naming.

Anyway, we survived the climb (with frequent rest and snack breaks). Our nemesis, Prince Philip, had sent some minions after us, but we managed to outwalk them. He couldn't come himself, of course, because he can't go out in direct sunlight.

The fun part came when we decided to take a more direct route down. Apparently, in mountains, that just means "really really steep". Oh, hindsight. The grass was wet and the mud was slippery, which meant we either had to crabwalk or fall and slide, all the while glaring at Sensible Couple, no doubt also sent by Prince Philip to taunt us, who took a casual stroll down the proper path and still ended up at the bottom before us.

I am elegance itself.

And thus we found ourselves muddy and soaking wet, but still unable to check into our hostel. By this stage, the exhaustion had started to kick in, so we struggled back up the hill with the help of some amazing dairy-free fudge, stopping in at the Museum of Childhood on our way. Maybe it was the fact that we were tired to the point of hallucination, but those toys seemed pretty terrifying.

Or maybe it was Prince Philip's work again.

We spent the next hour sleeping in reception until we could check in, whereafter we could sleep in actual beds, and did so, with gusto. After a brief two-hour nap, we dragged ourselves out of the hostel to buy groceries (the fact that we bought pasta sauce but no pasta testifies to our mental state at this point).

We then went in search of a vegetarian restaurant that turned out not to exist. There was a chalk drawing of its name on the pavement, however, so we thought, we winked, we did a double blink, we closed our eyes and jumped... but we had no luck. Maybe our cockney accents weren't bad enough. So instead, we ended up at Mum's Great Comfort Food (we didn't have the energy for gender politics), where they were friendly and delightful and came up with a vegan meal for me and helped Ro choose an interesting beer. The food was great, and we went back to the hostel for an early night.

It was nearly dark by the time we got back, so I think we can safely say that we've experienced the Edinburgh night life. What? It totally counts.