a weekend away

Last week, I met the lovely Dorothy and Patrick from The Frog & PinguINN over in Edinburgh. They were at the end of a tour of Ireland and decided to add a few days in Scotland. We visited the Museum of Scotland together but we definitely chatted more than we viewed exhibits. I had such a lovely time and I really enjoyed meeting Dorothy and Patrick, old blog friends, in person. 

On Friday, Richard and I went to London. Before I tell you about this I need to vent. Trains in the UK are s**t. There, I said it. We had to change to a different service in Crewe but his service was cancelled because (and I am not joking) there was not enough staff to run it. We could not hop on the next service to London because it was operated by a different train company. The next available service had to accommodate all passengers from the cancelled connection. It was also very delayed. We had to stand for the entire trip. As you can imagine, this was not fun. On the way back we opted for the East Coast service because it can be faster and is usually more reliable than West Coast Avanti. Alas, not this time. We stopped outside York for more than 2 hours because of some signalling failure. Utter pish. If this was the first time, I would be less annoyed but it is a regular occurrence for train trips from Scotland to London, and back. Last time I had to make alternative arrangements because my train to Glasgow terminated in Preston for no obvious reasons. I am booked on the Caledonian Sleeper for a work trip to London at the end of the month and I hope it is a bit less terrible. 

I am done complaining now. 

Although delayed, we were just in time to drop our bags and get to our ballet performance at the Royal Opera in Covent Garden. I got us painfully expensive tickets for Don Quixote. It was marvellous, worth the money, for sure. I enjoyed every minute of it. The set was astounding, the cast impressive, the dancing beautiful. Just fabulous. I even feel forgiveness for the £11 pound hummus sandwich purchased at the bar for sharing before the performance (because we had no time for dinner). In my ballet class I am learning a short dance with music from Don Quixote. I was very excited to hear the segment, part of a solo dance by the main heroine in act one. We ended the evening with a very late and rather mediocre Lebanese dinner in the only open place we found. Where are all the chippies when you need them late at night? Maybe a Glaswegian thing? 

On Saturday we explored London on foot, eventually ending up at the Hayward Gallery in the Southbank Centre. It currently exhibits Hiroshi Sugimoto's work. He is an incredible photographer, really creative and not afraid of the unusual. I absolutely loved it, as did Richard. I can't decide if I liked his dioramas most, or the photographs of theatres and cinemas. I would be happy to hang his work in my house. Alas, no posters for sale and no money in the bank for a print. Maybe in my next life. We walked some more, had a spot of lunch in a Vietnamese restaurant and then went back to our hotel for a brief cooling down of our feet, and to get ready for the evening.

In the evening we attended the wedding reception of Richard's oldest school friend. It was a joyous party with good food, good speeches and good company, and a very happy couple. It was another late night for us but it was a wonderful evening and well worth being a bit tired the following day. I wore a bright green dress and trainers. Because the invite said dress to party and I knew there would be dancing because we were asked to submit favourite songs for the DJ. This, we forgot of course. I also didn't dance, I preferred to chat at the bar, which was more quiet.

Sunday after breakfast we made our way to Kings Cross for our trip back (see above).

Meanwhile in Glasgow, Sam was staying with James and Alistair. It is so nice to have a responsible adult child who is happy to spend time with his little brothers, feed them and help the do the school uniform laundry. James had a cross country race and Alistair went to his youth group. Other than that, I don't think they left the house much. The ate take-aways and bacon rolls and thought it was fabulous. 

Thanks for visiting 😊