Day 20: Edinburgh here we come!

I must have slept for about 12 hours but felt much better for it.....thank you Ibis!

Iain woke up really early, around 5am so when I awoke, he had already planned where we were going for breakfast; it was a 10 minute walk and apparently had the best “escargot aux pralines” in the city.

We showered and checked out of our hotel before wandering along the canal to find the Boulangerie. We ordered 2 lattes and the pastries and sat outside on the benches. The clientele were a mixture of foreigners and locals but the pastries were delicious.





After breakfast, we walked to the Gare du Nord. On the way, we passed what looked like a baguette vending machine. I had a spare Euro so we thought why not. We had to choose if we wanted it ‘well done’ and also if we wanted a bag. It then counted down 90 seconds, produced a bag then a baguette appeared which was crispy and reasonably tasty. We ate it as we walked.







We arrived at the train station, bought a ticket then found the platform, all reasonably easy. On arrival at the airport, we picked up our luggage and went to check in. TheAir France check-in machine wasn’t working for us so we had to queue to speak to someone. We were next in the queue and had plenty of time so we weren’t too worried. The woman disappeared and the queue was getting much longer behind us, we had been waiting almost 40 minutes. Next minute, we were told to go to another queue and as we were at the front, we ended up at the back as it was the opposite side to where we were standing; I was fuming! I went and complained while Iain stood in the queue, I was then told to go to another queue then a woman came and told us to follow her. After an hour waiting, we were finally getting checked in....or so we thought!

The woman at the desk said she had some bad news...we were standby passengers as we were so late checking in and they had oversold the flight; cue my temper rising! We were told to go through to departures and we would find out as the flight was boarding if we would get on or not. It was an anxious and very unenjoyable hour or so of waiting. There was an Australian couple in the same predicament as us but as we were sky priority, we got the first seats available....thank goodness! I am still not sure if they got on or not, but it didn’t look like it....

After boarding, it was a reasonably uneventful flight; we weren’t sitting together but given the flight takes 1 hour 20 minutes, it wasn’t really an issue. We arrived safely in Edinburgh to a temperature of 14 degrees, back to reality it is! 

Roll on our next adventure....

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