Over the past week or so, I have been doing several smaller, yet still exciting things, like going to the Royal Botanic Gardens of Edinburgh and taking numerous wondrous trips to Holyrood.
To begin, my friends Blake and Alena and I all decided to visit the Botanic Gardens on Valentine’s Day (though not because of the day) and we walked there, as we are oft fond to do in Edinburgh - I have not yet taken a local bus here, as it is a very manageable city. However, we took a rather unique route, for reasons too complex and silly to explain, and we ended up walking quite a bit, somewhat lost, through Leith. Leith is basically Edinburgh’s port city - though I am uncertain of its status as a city and whether or not it is separate from Edinburgh - and it is much more working class, which was interesting to see. After quite a bit of meandering and searching, we found our way, but not before finding a magical paradise of a grocery store.
Now, as all of my friends live in flats, cooking is quite a happy occurrence, but since most of us live in the heart of the city, there are only small grocery stores available, which are understandably limited in their selection. So when we stumbled across a full-sized grocery store in Leith we were very excited. We stopped and found wonders. Alena found vanilla extract, which the entire city has seemed to lack before, and together we all excitedly laid our eyes on a 27 pack of Penguins. Now, Penguins are a phenomenon little surpassed by anything else, and I shall try my best to convey my love for them to you. A Penguin is in actual fact a chocolate biscuit, with a milk chocolate filling. It’s a small rectangular chocolate bar, basically. Now, you can just eat it as is, but you can do that with any old candy bar, like a Twix or something. An inconceivably better alternative is to bite two diagonally opposing corners and turn to your freshly made cup of Earl Grey (which you should always have at hand - this is Britain, after all) and place one end into the tea, and the other in your mouth. You then suck the hot tea through the biscuit, and after a couple of seconds, remove the biscuit which has been melted by the tea (especially the chocolate filling), and you then eat it. Or rather, you then experience the melted delicious chocolate sensation. I shall say no more but that it is the closest to doing and being addicted to any substance I have ever been.
But I digress. We arrived at the gardens, triumphant and weary, as shown in the picture above. We walked through, and it blew me away nearly as much as Penguins do. The expanses of trees, lakes, and small rugged hills lining the lovely paths which winded through them and around to the greenhouses filled with exotic and bizarre plants was all quite enough to take my breath away. Even with the cloudy skies and the wintry state of the trees and gardens, it was beautiful. And so quietly peaceful. We wandered, had a little picnic, and wandered some more. My feet didn’t feel so heavy in such a place. I especially loved this greenhouse, which was full of cacti:
We greatly enjoyed ourselves, and then soon afterwards we went back to Alena’s flat to prepare a cake for a birthday party of some reckoning that night.
Going back in time now, the previous Wednesday, Alena and I ventured up to the Seat of the King on Holyrood (Arthur’s Seat) and were, to put it simply, awestruck. Despite the fact that I have been to Holyrood many a time, this was my first time to the very summit. There was still some snow and ice present, and the sun reflected off of it brilliantly. Every picture I took seemed less and less real. And after surveying the view from the top, Alena and I sat on top of another crag, so peacefully content as the wind played and danced over the mountain for what seemed an endless moment. Here are some pictures from that to close this account:
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