IS THERE A PRIZE FOR EFFORT?...NEVER MIND

Ok I tried today. I honestly did. The day started out great as we had some healthy fruit for breakfast.

We then went to the City Centre and checked out some more of the Edinburgh Festival, which included stopping into St. Gilles Church to pray for the strength to eat healthy. After that we had a Flat Milk Coffee (I think that is what it is called). It looks really unhealthy but it is just steamed milk and coffee.

So far so good.

Catherine called and we stopped by her work...

Catherines Son Danny works here at "Brown Sugar" Cafe
and Catherine's catering business is below

...and then walked over to her sister Christine’s shop.  On the way there we noticed that stores are so much more original with their names than stores are in Canada.

A Sofa Store...get it? :-)

Self Explanatory

Christine doesn’t like her picture being posted on the Internet, so I will respect that but just to give you a sense of what she looks like I will post a picture of this other lady we saw that looks remarkably like her.

This is absolutely NOT Christine

Of course this is not Christine, but for some unexplainable reason “Not-Christine” hung out with us all afternoon. She even joined Catherine, Jamie and I at lunch time at the Pub up the street.

Not Christine Again

Catherine was amazingly disciplined and explained to the waitress that we were both trying to be healthy so we wanted something like a plate of vegetables with hummus. We got vegetables and hummus...yes…and fried chips, and fried something that tasted like crab that wasn’t and fried flat bread. I felt so horrible for poor Catherine having ordered all this healthy stuff and getting all this crap that I had no choice but to eat the chips, “not crab cakes” and bread for her just to save her from any temptation to eat them. I also knew she really wanted a beer, so I had two. I had one for me and one for her so that she could feel like she had one herself. I am such a considerate guy.

We tried

Seriously though I actually did leave half the chips (because Jamie took them away from me...but he was good and DIDN'T eat them) so I wasn’t totally bad.

After lunch Catherine went home and this strange lady who was definitely NOT Christine took us for a nice walk through an area known as “The Dean”.

 It was a beautiful and affluent area of Edinburgh. Walking through the lush trees and by the water up to the Cemetery was nothing short of breathtaking. 

"Not Christine" showed us around

We love Edinburgh.

“Not Christine” then left us and we wandered through the world of Surrealism at The Dean Art Gallery. Picture taking was not allowed but it was a nice way to spend the rest of the afternoon before heading back to our flat where Jamie had a nap and I wrote the blog up until where you are reading right now.  BLOG TO BE CONTINUED LATER>>>>

OK...it's 9:30pm now and we haven't had dinner. It is Monday night and we don't do the gay scene much anymore but we are going to head there for dinner to see what it is like.

>>>>IT IS NOW TUESDAY MORNING AND BLOG IS BEING CONTINUED>>>>

When we got downtown I was kind of excited because I can almost never get Jamie to go out to the Gay area in Toronto with me. It’s just not his thing. I do understand that, and rarely go out to the bars in Toronto myself now (like…maybe twice a year) but I did want to see what “the scene” was like in Edinburgh.

We hadn’t had dinner yet so Jamie suggested we go there, have dinner, and then stop into a bar or something. It was a Monday night so we knew things would be pretty dead but I was looking forward to it anyway.

When we got there Jamie wanted to eat in an Indian restaurant, which appeared to be one of the few “straight” places in the area. It wasn’t really my idea of “dinner in the gay village” but I knew he had been looking for an Indian place the other day and had been unsuccessful so I didn’t put up a fight. The dinner was actually delicious. As usual on this trip it was likely fattening, but delicious.

Half Eaten And Disgusting Looking
But SOOOOOOO GOOOOOD!

There is a week and a day to go on this trip and I am starting to wonder if I should be starting to panic about my eating. It is getting really bad. The only good news is that I am still excessively motivated for the long term so I know it will be a quick return to health when I get back.

After dinner we saw Sandwich Board advertising a drag show. These shows tend to attract crowds so we figured that was the place to go.

It was a small place but it was the right choice. We had fun.

We have to check availability but today we are hoping to see two short play at the Edinburgh Festival this afternoon and a Comedy show tonight. Hope we can get tickets!


Be healthy!

Alan