Week 23 - Heading to Europe

The week of my trip was here but I wasn't leaving until Saturday. Good thing it was a short week.

I had made plans to take bagels to Lori's for breakfast on Monday and we had a lovely morning of knitting in her beautiful yard. She had afternoon plans so I hit Aldi and then headed home to plant the last few straggler plants in my veg beds. With those in the ground, I really was done with my planting and it had been a lovely Memorial Day.

The work week flew by - I trained on Tuesday, got a cortisone shot first thing on Wednesday, thrifted at lunch and Ed fixed the dishwasher while I was at work. I had been piling clothes on my dresser all week and did my last load of laundry on Friday, drying it at Andrea's when I went to feed her cat since she was at a retreat. I finished packing Friday night, leaving on a few things to add to my bags on Saturday morning. I was ready to go!

I was up at the crack of dawn on Saturday and went to feed Andrea's cat at 6:30 in the morning. I finished packing and had time to relax before Heidi picked me up to take me to the airport. I met Anne and we were on our way! Our flights were uneventful and we ate dinner in Toronto before catching our last flight of the day - the overnight to Edinburgh. As of the day before, we still had an empty seat between us but got onto the flight and a man who had come from Lincoln was in between us. Anne moved to the middle and we settled in. I took a benadryl and was asleep right after dinner, getting the best sleep I've ever had on an overnight to Europe. We woke up in Edinburgh. Yay!

We took a cab to the hotel, dropped our bags and then took the train (we bought the wrong tickets so it was the real train instead of the tram and we had to wait a bit while trams went every 10 minutes). We got lunch at the pub in Grassmarket, which was right across from the hotel we stayed in on our last trip. From there we walked to a small yarn shop, waiting on the step for them to open and then finding some nice locally dyed sock yarn. We were starting to flag at this point so took a cab over to Princes Street looking for the Cath Kidston store, which had closed but we hit Lakeland, got Starbuck's and headed to the gardens. There was a big screen showing a Jubilee parade and there were lots of people. After enjoying some time knitting on a bench, we went to Marks & Spencers for some triangle sandwiches for supper and headed back to the hotel for a picnic.

We were spent and had walked 14,000 steps but had had a nice day in Edinburgh before we'd meet up with the tour on Monday. I'd call that an auspicious start to the trip with more fun to come.