We eventually made it out of Spain and into Edinburgh, our flight was one of the few to take off that day, so we were lucky not to be stranded for another few days in Madrid. Although, it wouldn’t have been so bad–with all our expenses paid for and what not.
We arrived into Edinburgh late and missed the train to Barrow, in the lake district in England. So, we had some curry and a pint and caught the next one. We arrived into Ulverston, where Sam’s aunt and uncle live at around midnight…it was freezing. We were supposed to only have 2 days in the UK as our flight in had been delayed so much, and our flight out was with the oh so accommodating Ryan Air. We decided to pay the massive fees to change it back a bit so we would have some more time to actually see some of the area and some of Sam’s family.
We spent a couple days visiting Sam’s grandma and a few days hiking around different spots in the Lake District. We met up with some of Sam’s cousins as well. One of them has a nice farm out in the hills and three golden retrievers, so we took them out for a walk one morning. There were children around all the time; Emily, one of the grandchildren was with us for the first few days. She was so sweet, but quite shy at first. By the second day she was giving me kisses in the car and dancing with me; while Sam was less fortunate…he managed to make her cry every time he tried to play with her. As did her Uncle James, so perhaps she had a problem with men. We also had a chance to do some cooking (which was definitely nice to do after so many months without a kitchen–and when you get to make pad Thai…). I sampled some of the British cuisine…fish and chips and mushy peas…yum yum.
On our last day, we left for Edinburgh on one of the morning trains. Most of the flights out that day were cancelled; however, there was no word on ours. We went anyway, and spent the day wandering Edinburgh. The city was quite historic, with lovely big cobblestone streets. We saw one of the few sword swallowers in the world–we were supposed to look him up because apparently there is some website that verifies all the legitimate sword swallowers in the world, although I’m not sure what kind of regulatory board they would have for that. We checked out the castles and all those other wee Scottish things before heading to the airport for our flight to Barcelona.
