Back in Edinbrurgh!

The name of the game was business againBack in Edinburgh again, almost exactly one year since my last visit. I was quite happy to visit my old student haunt again (although naturally I was very serious about the job assignment I was here to complete!).

Following some recommendations from Edinburgh colleagues, I decided to stay at the Parliament House, conveniently located just crawling distance from the pubs of Princes Street, at the foot of Carlton Hill. It's one of those historic British hotels full of character - which is mostly a positive, but not only, a positive thing. I certainly prefer a hotel like this to your average chain business hotel (like the Holiday Inn - or Horrible Inn as my colleagues refer to it as - just across the street form our office on Corstophine Road) - but there are some inconveniences (the fact that they converted the elevator to a phone booth is the most strikingly odd feature of the hotel - who needs a phone booth these days??).

After breakfast with Benoit, my colleague from Grenoble, we foolishly decided to try to take the bus to work - in theory an easy task - in practice it took as about an hour to get into the office. Still, we decided to take a bus back to the hotel after work - went better this time. My plan was to meet up with Athol & Colin at the Guildford Arms - unfortunately our poor planning was executed on Facebook, which I didn't have time to check before going to the pub. Naturally I didn't have their phone numbers either - so to cut a long story short, I spent about an hour in the pub alone, drinking beer, waiting in vain...

I eventually managed to figure out Athol wanted to postpone for Tuesday, and Colin wanted to meet later on - so I decided to trek up Carlton Hill for a bit of tourism instead. It's probably the best place in Edinburgh as far as panoramic views are concerned - there are great views towards both the old town, new town and Leith as well. Pretty cool place to take in the views - good thing I brought my camera!

Afterwards, I met up with Benoit for dinner (nice sea food in Thrift street), after which we joined Colin and a couple of mates of his in the Royal Mile in the Old Town at the World's End pub (which takes its name from the adjacent World's End Close, whimsically so named because this was in former times the last close in Edinburgh before entering the Canongate). After a pint there we headed back to the New Town (since I'd rather inconveniently left my camera at the restaurant), where we had a couple of pints more in a nice pub on Thrift Street. All in all, quite an excellent night out - good to see Colin again!

The next day, we decided to get all bold again, and decided to try out the newly completed Tramway for getting into work. Bad mistake again - we ended up taking a bus again, this time taking even longer to get into the office than the day before. The way back into town from the office wasn't easy either - the traffic jams were a real nightmare due to the One Direction gig at Murrayfield (it was quite fascinating observing the crowds querying for the concert - 99% of the audience must've been girls between the ages of 11-17, the rest being girls above 17 years old...  ).

So I ended up rather late for my rendez-vous with Athol, but didn't feel too bad about given that he'd stood me up the night before! Spent a couple of hours with him, first having a quick drink in a burger place, then having a walk around Princes Street (amazingly enough, enjoying a second sunny evening in a row - not a drop of rain yet!), and finally ending up in a pub. Then our ways parted, Athol had a hot date, and I was meeting up my colleagues Benoit and Sheena (here all the way from Noida in India) for dinner in a curry house on Shandwick Place, towards Haymarket. We had a pretty good meal - nice to try some hot curry, it's been a while since the last time! After the meal I had a nice walk back to the hotel, taking some "Edinburgh by night" shots... (especially the Old Town gets pretty atmospheric come night time).

All in all, a pretty good couple of days then, nice to check out some of the old student haunts. Edinburgh really is one of the coolest places in the UK, no make that all of Europe!