Saturday in the Park

Today has been a rather "dreich" day, as they say in the UK. (Look out for that in my next Glossary entry!) I woke up around 10:00 to falling snow (what happened to the hopeful spring-y weather of last week?!), decided that my planned outings for today weren't worth braving it, and promptly fell back asleep. I woke up again about an hour and a half later and found that not much snow had stuck, after all, and the precipitation had been reduced to a dull drizzle. I jumped out of bed, pulled on one of Mom's old sweaters that I brought with me so as to be nice and cozy, and headed out to the nearest postbox to ensure that my postcards would go out at noon today. (I made it with two minutes to spare!)
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I had originally planned to come back to the flat after that and properly get ready for the day (maybe - now, I realize that this is crazy - take a shower?! or something), but I realized that I was already on the way to another of my original goals for the day: the Edinburgh Farmers' Market. I decided to just continue on, and I'm glad that I did. I had originally planned to spend the meager remains of my weekly budget stipend on some street art that I eyed last weekend, but I talked with the stand supervisor last Saturday, and she said that they're out on the weekends, weather permitting. I was pretty sure that that was not today, so I figured that I may as well buy some good food!

Truthfully, the FM was pretty small, especially compared to some that I've been to (like this one that I went to on this day, for instance), and a lot of what was for sale was meat and cheese - not exactly my cup of tea. However, I did find some gems in bakery and sweets stands, not to mention a few organic vegetable stalls. I came home less than 10 pounds poorer and very excited about my prospects in the next few days: I purchased 120g of organic spinach, which I've been meaning to buy lately, anyway; a cup of hot chocolate, which was great - not too sweet, heavy on the cocoa, a good mix of different chocolate flavors plus added cardamom on top, at the vendor's recommendation; two truffles, my preferred method of chocolate consumption; and a contained of tablet crumbles.

Speaking of tablet - it's a traditional Scottish dessert that's basically all butter and sugar. YUM.

Anyway, you might be wondering by now from whence the title of this blog came. Well, after I wandered through the market and made my purchases, instead of making the perilous climb through the slush back home, I decided to continue downwards, and I found myself in a park. At first, I didn't realize exactly where I was, but I soon recognized it to be West Princes St. Gardens. (I felt very cool and accomplished and Edinburgh-y for this recognition, by the way.)

I walked around the park area a bit, climbed back up to find this flooding mess on Princes Street, and decided to go back into the gardens and walk around a bit, as the rain had let up. So, I found myself faced with the following juxtaposition, a vista that I see quite often, actually, on my walk home:

the modern rail system and the ancient castle.

I hadn't realized before how many paths the gardens had zigzagging through them! I explored just about all of them today, though. It was nice - even though the ground was a slushy mess, my trusty galoshes got me through.

...and this tree just reminded me of a Lorax.