Day Seven (Sorta)

SATURDAY!

And the weather was absolutely incredible. Daniel and I woke up and headed for the farmers market on Castle Terrace but somehow got detoured into the Kilt Making and Weaving Museum. 

It was interesting.  We learned that in the 1700s one could get imprisoned for 6 months or shipped to the colonies for 7 years simply for wearing the "elite" plaid.  Who knew?  We've been pricing kilts for Daniel--his very much wanted souvenir. They are really expensive (like 325 pounds...yikes), but we're still shopping. 
We also learned something else while out looking at kilts today and lets just say that when Daniel learned it, his face fell.  Technically, an individual's tartan comes from---the mother's maiden name.  It's an old rule so the shop attendant said that it didn't really matter, but if you want to stick with tradition, that's how to do it. Daniel is even mad that I'm putting this in here (which is beyond me--haha I guess he doesn't want anybody to know that he's thought wrong his whole life :-)).

Anyway, when we finally made it to the farmers market, I was a little disappointed: it was a bit smaller than I had anticipated.  (I guess I'm just used to Zerns and nothing can beat that place).  It was just a single street with a few carts along it selling vegetables, jams, meats, soaps, etc.  Daniel and I bought a chocolate croissant, a little donut like thing, and some beef for pretty cheap and then headed back to our apartment to make lunch.

The park a couple blocks from our house.  We relaxed here for a little bit before lunch.

 After lunch we decided that it was too pretty a day to waste, so we found our way to the Leith Walkway (a really pretty path along a river that leads to the ocean) and we walked for a long time.  We didn't get all the way to the ocean because our feet were hurting and we wanted to make it home before the Chelsea game at 5:30 but we got pretty close and it was really nice. 

Danile on Leith Walkway

Both of us on Leith Walkway

Me in conversation with a statue near the ocean

Daniel playing army man.

Some man who stopped in front of us and caused Daniel and I to have "fits of giggles"

After that we went to our first pub to watch the Chelsea game.  Daniel was the only person there cheering for Chelsea so he wasn't cheering very loudly because (and I quote), "I don't want to get beat up afterwords."--Daniel.  Haha it was pretty funny. We don't know etiquette for pubs so we just ordered an appetizer (sausage per Daniel's request) and two cokes. It was fun.

At 8:00 we headed up to the Beltane Fire Festival.  It was pretty much a pagan love fest... everybody was drunk out of their minds and the warning on the tickets stated, "Involves fire performance, uninhibited behaviour and semi-nudity.  Attendance at own risk" Needless to say, we didn't stay for too long--however, we stayed long enough to freeze our butts off in a crowd of stinky people, watch a small fire show and listen to some drums. Apparently we missed the "cool ending" which came at 12:00am (we stayed until about 11:30pm).  Oh well.  We heard that it was just a woman dressed in white (the May Queen) being ressurrected from the ground or something like that (the welcoming of summer) and then dirty dancing with some guy while fire was thrown around them and drums kept beating.  (A woman we work with told us that last year the May Queen had a baby nine months later-- doesn't leave much to the imagination of what happens after the final show ends. Yikes).  So yeah. 

Happy May!

PS.  It stays light until about 9:30pm and the show didn't actually start until then so alot of the time we were just standing around watching people make fools of themselves.


Scottish Words Learned:
Far oot-  Unfriendly, bad natured
Bairn-  Child
Creche-  Daycare center