Edinburgh, United Kingdom, Europe

I had a good night’s sleep in Sali’s guest room last night, in a nice comfortable bed. Gareth had his air mattress from camping, so he said he was happy enough to sleep on that and I could have the bed. We got up around 7:30am and I got to thank Sali for letting me stay before she went off to work. Sarah, Gareth and I made up some sandwiches and headed off to the airport around 10am. I was pretty optimistic that we would get out of Geneva today, but Gareth said he had a bad feeling about it.

We got to the airport and the only flights that were cancelled seemed to be the ones to France, Spain, and Portugal, and I assume that was because they had to fly over French air space. We kept a close eye on the departures board, hoping that if we stared at it for long enough it would give us a gate number instead of a cancellation notice. We got neither. We got a delay. Gareth really assumed that we weren’t going to get out after seeing that. He was sure that it was just delaying the inevitable of our flight being cancelled. I, on the other hand, held onto hope and it paid off. Our flight was pushed back from 13:25 to 15:00, but that was it. We were given a gate number around 2pm and from there everything went smoothly.

I was pretty happy to be flying with Easyjet instead of Ryanair today. I just have a bad feeling every time I fly with Ryanair. I assume something is going to go wrong. Either the flight will be delayed, or cancelled, or they’ll lose my bag, or I’ll be sat next to someone miserable on the plane. But Easyjet (while also a budget airline) never seems to be that bad. And they impressed me again with another trouble-free flight.

I arrived in Edinburgh at 4pm, got through immigration without a question, got my bag, and hopped on the airport bus to get into town. I’m staying with Paul while I’m back in Edinburgh, so of course I met him at our favorite pub in Edinburgh, The Melville. I went straight there from the airport, met up with Paul and caught up with the owners, John and Malcolm. I also had the lovely surprise of my good friend Jo showing up to say hi.

We stayed in the pub from 4:30pm until 11:30pm, and I think I drank more in this one night than I have in the last three months of being away. I’m not used to it at all, and I’m sure I’ll be paying for it tomorrow morning, but it was good to get back and catch up with people. I have a few things I have to take care of while I’m back so I’ll try to get those out of the way tomorrow and see some other people in the next few days. I don’t think I’ll be blogging, because I’m not going to be doing any sight-seeing while I’m back, but I’ll get back to it on 1 July when I fly to Barcelona. That’ll be here in no time!