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inannajones has already posted a narrative account, as it were, of the surprise trip to Edinburgh for my 30th birthday. So I'm going to skip merrily through and pick out a few highlights instead.Where are we going?
We'd had breakfast in Hobarts, come back to the house, picked up bags (I'd been told what to pack, and apart from ruling out white-water rafting or the like, it didn't tell me anything), and back into the car. We were headed North, which could include a lot of places, and the airport as well. My working theory was that we were going to catch an Aer Arann flight to Cork. Around Drumcondra,
inannajones told me to look in the glove compartment, wherein I found a thick white envelope. It contained our passports, web check-in stuff for a flight to Edinburgh (my favourite city in the world), and a booking for two nights in the Witchery's Libarary Suite (pretty much the best hotel in Edinburgh). My jaw actually physically dropped, and I think I managed to say something like "Wench!", but coherency was not available.OMG Suite
The Library Suite turned out to be awesome and fantastic beyond reason. It had dark red walls (cloth covers, none of this tacky paper stuff), old wooden floors, antique pictures, carvings, and furniture, windows looking out onto the Royal Mile, old books all over the place, a pre-laid breakfast table, lighting that could be turned up or down and lots of table and reading lamps, and a bathroom with a waist-high bath, heated tiled floor (so good you could nearly sleep on it), and more old books. The walls in there, and some of the doors elsewhere in the suite, were done in faux-bookshelf style. There was a bottle of champagne on ice awaiting our arrival, and much in the way of chocolates and so on. There was an entertainment centre that rose magically out of an ottoman at the touch of a remote, and a clock-radio-cd-player tuned to a classical station. I would quite happily move in there permanently. And they gave us more champagne the second day.
Conspirators
I figured
grutok and wyvernfriend were involved. This was confirmed with a phone call from grutok, trying to convince me he was on a train to Galway while we were still in the airport. Nina had said we were to meet people in the Jolly Judge, just a bit down the street, so we hauled ourselves out of the suite and went down. Coming in, I saw puritybrown, mr_wombat and followthebird already there. Again with the jaw-dropping, and it didn't get any easier to keep it up as the rest of the conspirators arrived. And it was excellent to meet loupblanc and sismith42 and to see dryad_wombat again.Pub!
After a few drinks there, we decamped to the Frankenstein Inn (a steampunky sort of place in a disused church building on George IV Bridge), where we had dinner, more beer, and cocktails. I had an excellent, excellent steak, and the rubgy game that was showing (France v. Argentina) was good enough that I enjoyed watching it in bits between conversations. I was still rather stunned.
Shops!
Some of Saturday was spent in shops - Transreal (the best scifi shop in the world), Deadhead Comics, Black Lion Games, and a second-hand bookshop somewhere out near the University, wherein I found an original printing of Hardy's Human Shows, Far Phantasies, Songs and Trifles, with some of the pages still uncut, for the princely sum of three pounds and fifty pence. And
olethros bought me the d20 edition of Dragon Lords of Melniboné in Black Lion Games, which is also excellent.Whisky!
grutok brought me on The Scotch Whisky Experience, and bought me membership - and therefore the four-sample tasting tray - afterward. That was excellent, and finally convinced me that some blended whisky might be worth trying.Dinner at the Witchery
Duly dressed in our glad rags, we arrived at the Witchery Restaurant for dinner. It was incredibly good.
And all weekend, I had this slightly stunned, terribly happy feeling. Enormous thanks to
inannajones for arranging it, and managing to keep it secret, and to everyone who turned up, or couldn't turn up, or sent birthday wishes by any medium at all. I'm still not too coherent about the whole thing...
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... Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week.
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And that sounds like a fabulous birthday.
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