Hi from Edinburgh

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Hi all,
We have now finished our wonderful 6 days with Sue, Wayne and Tom Rogers in Hounslow. Apparently we were in the middle of a mini tornado when we were waiting outside Buckingham Palace for the Changing of the Guard at about 10:45 am on Thursday morning! We certainly had quite a bit of wind and rain and a little (small) hail but was able to walk along the street with sheltering under our umbrella (held in front of us)! We were very surprised to see the extreme damage done to buildings on the news that night! Apart from that the weather has been pretty fine - no snow so far! I think we'll have to wait until Finland for that!

We have now started our train travel around the United Kingdom - yesterday on Saturday 9 Dec we headed off from London Kings Cross Station on the Flying Scotsman train to Edinburgh. The train trip was very enjoyable through lovely countryside in fine weather. Luckily Wayne Rogers gave us a lift to the tube station in the morning, but we had to walk to our hostel in Edinburgh through what seemed like millions of people out shopping on Saturday afternoon and no-one makes any allowances for you even carrying a backpack and pulling a suitcase - not a pleasant experience! I immediately decided that we would catch a taxi back to the station when we leave as the walk is mostly uphill.

We did recover enough to venture back out that evening to the Christmas festival and fair where Caitlin went on a few rides - a Helter Skelter (large spiral slippery slide), the ferris wheel (with me) which gave us fantastic views over the city as well as frostbite (almost), and a beautiful merry-go-round (carousel) on a horse called Kristy.

Well, I think this message is quite long enough now, so we'd better go for now.

Patrice & Caitlin

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