Day Eleven- Linlithgow!

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Today we (me and T, B and T, and J and K) ventured out of Edinburgh to Linlithgow to see Trudi’s paternal grandparents. It was only a 20 minute train trip (another tiny detail about the UK that I would love to have in Australia- they put tables on the four seater sections on their trains! It’s a tiny detail but think about how many games of poker you could play with a table on the train).

Linlithgow was lovely. We were met at the station by Trudi’s grandparents, Aunty and cousins, and then went for a long walk around Linlithgow Loch. It was nice to hear about the town’s history, like the fact that because the mascot is a black dog everyone born in Linlithgow is known as a Black Bitch. Not too classy, but definitely humorous.

We ended up walking all the way around the Loch and hitting Linlithgow Palace, the palace that Mary Queen of Scots lived in when she was first born. We had some adorable 10 year-olds take us on a tour (during school holidays kids volunteer to tour people around the palace for extra credit/ work experience). It’s a beautiful palace, even if a lot of it was burnt in the great fire. After the tour we climbed up to the highest point of the palace, possibly where guards watched over the courtyard, and I actually had to come back down after only a minute it was that high. I’m not normally afraid of heights but below us was solid concrete, there was a strong wind, and the barrier isn’t terribly tall up there.

After the castle we headed a little way out of Linlithgow to a beautiful place for lunch next to a canal. I had a smoked chicken open focaccia with a mango mayonnaise and apple slices! Surprisingly it tasted absolutely amazing with all those ingredients on a fork. We came back to Linlithgow and walked down the high street to a little sweets shop where I tried Scottish Tablet ice cream- not sure why they’ve used the word tablet but it’s basically fudge and it’s to die for.

We headed home at around 4:45pm, and went straight to trudi’s maternal grandparents to see her mum, dad and brother who all arrived today. We all went out for dinner at Pizza Express, and then decided to go out for a drink. We went to Brewdog, a pub chain that sold merchandise and unnecessarily expensive drinks ($9.75, for a vodka lemonade- I almost cried). Plus their bathrooms were disgusting.

Anyway, we moved on to another bar which I don’t actually know the name of, considering it was tucked away under some flats in a completely empty street. This bar was a lot classier, their bathrooms were cleaner and their vodka lemonades were only £3.50 ($6.25). We all stayed here for a while then decided to head home at 11 because we were all tired.

As soon as we walked through the front door, Trudi, Bec, Taylor and I all felt like a cup of tea and a quick game of cards. This turned into two cups of tea each, half a block of galaxy chocolate, and countless games of Bighead, until we realised it was 1am and definitely time for bed. Trudi and I then stayed up until 1:45am packing our bags to leave tomorrow, sad times. That’s it for Thursday the 5th, my favourite day in Scotland so far.

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