Visiting the Edinburgh Castle too touristy? FUCK YOU, IT’S A GODDAMN CASTLE.

I’ve taken a bit of a break from the blog over the past few weeks because I’ve taken a break from life in general.

To wit, I’m newly returned from a two-week trip to Edinburgh and London, as I embarked on a mission to escape from the Heat & Humidity combo that characterizes the Maltese Islands during this time of the year, while also taking in two major cultural events I’ve always wanted to check out but have never really had the opportunity to until now, namely the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and LonCon (aka WorldCon, aka the World Science Fiction Convention aka The Geek Convention That Clearly Suffers From An Identity Crisis).

Having these big events as bookends to the holiday was useful, because I’m a pretty shitty traveller, by all accounts.

I’m certainly not an experienced one: having been stifled by a Serbian passport for the longest time, I’ve only been freed to embark on the kind of heedless global traipsing a lot of my peers take for granted after I was finally granted a Maltese passport.

And that was only two years ago.

So I’m an inexpert and often flustered map-reader, an inexpert and often nauseous train-traveller, and a persistent shyness (coupled with the fact that I’m socially spoiled by Malta’s insular and rapidly-mushrooming social circles) makes me hesitant to meet and mingle with locals unprompted.

But as luck would have it, I have friends in both Edinburgh and London who were – once again – more than willing to open their doors to me and let me crash at their respective abodes, which automatically calmed any Nerves of Displacement I may have had and allowed me to enjoy the stuffing out of my stay.

*

So I’ll be posting about some highlights from the trip in the coming days. Expect a few capsule reviews of Fringe Festival stuff I got to see, as well as some observations from LonCon.

Beyond these often wonderful ‘distractions’, you may catch hints of my total and complete love for Edinburgh: a gem of a city that somehow manages to be both cosy and cosmopolitan…

It’s also gorgeous at dusk.