We should have known that things were taking a turn for the worse when Marnie started to get sick. We crashed out in our flat after the long drive from the highlands to Edinburgh, desperate for the old heater to kick in and chase away the increasingly chilly weather. That evening we managed dinner at Bella Pasta and a pint at Ensign Ewart before calling it a very early night. The next morning we heard about an Icelandic volcano disrupting air traffic in the north of the UK. Isn't that hilarious? Good thing we're flying out of London!
In the insuing days, we still managed to visit most of our old haunts (Bow Bar, Oxford Bar, Royal Mile Whiskies, etc.), but the task was accomplished through a hazy stupor. An excess of drink, accompanied by a shortage of sleep and warm clothing had caught up with us, and I became ill as well on our last day in our beloved adopted hometown.
The next day we made the long journey through the Scottish Borders, through northeast England down to Bedford, just north of London. We were rewarded for our endeavor by an encounter with a psychotic French Canadian parking attendant, who proceeded to tell us the entire circumstances of how he came to live in England, including his recent divorce. Thanks for the update, dude.
Bedford is a bit like a seaside resort town during the off season. Everything is very nice and lovely along the waterway, but the abandoned store fronts and gangs of shiftless teens hanging about make it all seem a bit dodgy. On weekends a number of quaint street markets draw in the the crowds, but by this point Marnie and I were in no mood for further vacationing. It seemed that volcano was still churning out ash, and as the airspace ban spread in breadth across continental Europe, so too the time approached ever closer to our flight time. We went to bed that night with the ban extended until 7 pm, just an hour and a half before our flight home.
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