Flight to Edinburgh

 We flew from Edinburgh on Thursday for some away time. We were the first flight to leave City Airport for 4 hours, and the airport was deserted. We moved through security in record time, and a few people slowly gathered for our flight, but even that was barely a quarter full as so few were on the plane. Edinburgh airport too was like a ghost town with so few people. We wore masks the whole time (even in the taxi down to London and again in the taxi to the apartment), so it was good to finally get here and breath freely once more.

The woman greeting us was a cheerful hippy type in a long colourful dress and relaxed manner, reflected in the fresh apartment - one of Edinburgh's old stone buildings just behind the Royal Mile, with ultra high ceilings and vast rooms, expensively furnished in an eclectic style. She warned us to be careful with the dishwasher as she'd just had the engineer in because the door wouldn't shut properly. Soon after she left, the door wouldn't shut at all and the front fell off completely. What is it about dishwasher engineers that seems to turn them into useless tools? (See "how-to-fit-dishwasher")

On Thursday night we had a Deliveroo Thai meal to save shopping or cooking. It was supposed to be mild, but burnt our mouths out! But Friday made up for it with tea on the Royal Yacht Britannia, and a meal at one of our favourite veggie restaurants.

Our son Ben loves the Rebus books, so asked us to look up the "Ox" pub mentioned in the books as his local watering hole. It was favoured by Rankin because it is an old backstreet pub that was favoured by the Edinburgh police and has a unique atmosphere. We tracked it down after a long walk, but alas it was closed due to the Covid outbreak, with no sign of when it might reopen, so all we could do was take photos of the outside. It's official name is The Oxford Bar, so named because the Oxford University publishing house had business premises nearby. Interestingly, on the same street is another pub which was also closed for the duration, looks almost identical, and is called The Cambridge Bar.