I was away in London last week, I spent five days in the office doing everything from setting up an intrusion detection system to presenting the iPhone app I’ve been working on to our directors (who were really happy with it). While I was there I caught up with Mike & Katherine who are just starting their big stint over here in Europe living on the road and working when they feel like it, seems like a fantastic plan to me.
On Saturday I headed up to Edinburgh to visit Anna, who’s up there with a friend hanging out, practising English and generally having a good time. I’ve never been to Scotland before and Edinburgh is a really beautiful city, although it was going from raining to sunshine every five minutes and the way the locals reacted to this (e.g. they didn’t) indicated that this is pretty normal. I saw the castle (from the outside, it’s expensive), the botanic gardens, pretty much all of the old city along with a couple of museums and did the walk up to Arthur’s Seat (where Anna and I got caught in a very heavy but mercifully short rainstorm only to receive a message from Neus laughing at us for being up there in it).
The hostel where the girls are staying (and where I stayed while I was there) is basically occupied by two nationalities – Catalans and Australians. I was weird being around so many Australians, especially the rowdy sort that inhabit hostels, it’s been a fair while since I’ve been in that sort of situation. Of course I spent a lot of my time there speaking Spanish (albeit listening to Catalan). After living among people who speak at least two languages for so long I’d got used to the idea and was a little surprised at how impressed a lot of people were that, as an Australian, I could speak Spanish – that was nice.
So now it’s back to Barcelona and a few more uni things before the end of the month, then it’s really summer.