Aberdeen

This weekend was fantastic! Friday started off with Liz and I walking into town to go to the bank and the pie shop. After our morning stroll we wrapped up the cleaning stuff we hadn't finished yesterday, which was mainly laundry. After our lazy-ish morning I started to pack my bag for the weekend because I was headed up to Aberdeen to visit Knoxie.

My train didn't leave till 4:50, but I headed down to the train station around 4 because it was the first time I was going somewhere by myself, and we all know how directionally challenged I am! Thank God I knew myself well enough to get there early. I ended up sitting on a bench on one side of the tracks for about half an hour until a train showed up. I got on the train and sat down, but had a funny feeling that something was wrong so I asked the lady sitting across from me if this train stopped at Aberdeen. She gave me a strange look (I'm sure she was thinking, "No, dumbass!") and said, "No honey, that train over there does" as she pointed to a train on the other side of the tracks! So I jumped off the train, ran across the bridge, and hopped onto the right train with only minutes to spare.

After that little scare the rest of the journey went smoothly. I had to get switch trains at the Perth station and was a little nervous about it before I got there, but when I arrived there was only two platforms in the whole station so it would've been pretty hard to mess that up. I got to the Aberdeen station around 7:30, where Knox was waiting for me. 

We walked back to his flat so I could drop my stuff off and I got the grand tour. After about an hour we headed back into town to meet his friend Mike and watch the football game.

I expected that we would be in an old man kinda pub since we were going to watch the game, so I was pretty surprised when we walked into this place called Soul that was an old church converted into a swanky bar/club, with modern style chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, and the old stained glass windows still intact (you can see them in the picture below, which I stole from their website since I couldn't get any good ones the night we were there).  We ordered a beer and chatted about random things until Mike showed up. I had to pee after polishing off my third pint, so Mike said he would walk me over to where the bathrooms were (it was a big place).

  I didn't realize I was on my way to my first unisex bathroom experience. We walked through these double doors and I expected two more doors with the little man and woman pictures on them, but instead I was met with one ginormous bathroom. I was a little buzzed at this point and kind of confused, so I used the nearest stall and walked back over to the sinks to wash my hands, and there was a man standing beside me washing his hands too. There was a lady standing there with a towel and a whole tray full of soaps, perfumes, and lotions. I finished washing my hands and she came over to me and dried my hands off with her little towel. I was trying to go with the flow, but at this point I was thinking "What the hell is going on in here?" and I think Mike could see that look on my face because he just laughed at me, as he was getting his hands dried off beside me.

We walked back down to the bar where Knoxie was standing, and I went into a schpeil about how weird the unisex bathroom was; but he just laughed at me too. Apparently I morph into a comedian when I'm a little tipsy. After another pint or two we headed off to a pub that had a live band playing. When we got there, the place was absolutely packed and you couldn't hear a thing, so we took our drinks and sat at a cute little table outside. Mike entertained us for a few hours with stories of how he outran the cops twice in his life, and of the one time he got caught when the cops had a helicopter tailing him on the highway. We were enjoying ourselves when a pub employee came outside and told everyone that they were closing, so we finished our drinks and headed out.

Our last stop for the evening was this super posh bar called Orchid. It looked like something straight out of Sex and the City, with etched glass mirrors, black walls, and low lighting.

We had a few more drinks here, and after about an hour I was drunk and ready to go. So we were finally on the way home when we ran into a group of drunk girls on the street who needed directions to a nearby pub. Since I can barely walk around in my own flat without getting lost, and Knox was still new to the area, this was all up to Mike (which was totally ok with him since this particular group of girls was really hot).

One of the girls approached Knoxie and I and drunkenly slurred, "Oh my God, you two are so cute! You better keep your eye on her buddy, she looks like a keeper!" We both laughed and I said, "Thanks! Looks like you're having a good night, where..." and she interrupted me to scream, "Oh my God! You're American! What are you doing here? I'm Kathy from Canada! It's so good to meet someone here from home! *something was said here about maple syrup that I don't exactly recall* (looks to Knoxie) How did you land her? She's your girlfriend right? You guys are sooooo cute!" Naturally I was kind of embarrassed so I just blushed and laughed and tried to think of something witty to say, but I was drunk so I just kept giggling instead. Knoxie looked down at me, then looked at Kathy from Canada and said, "Yeah, I would say she's my girlfriend", then looked back down at me. I kept smiling and giggling, since thanks to all the Carlsberg I had earlier, I still couldn't think of anything coherent to say. By now Mike had finished giving directions, so we said bye to him and walked back to the flat. We finally got home around 3am and I immediately crashed out.

I woke up about noon on Saturday to the sound of Knox [warning - mushiness ahead!], my cute new Scottish boyfriend, singing along with some music in the kitchen. Curious, I hung-overdly (not a word I know, but how else do you make hung-over a verb?) walked into the kitchen to find him making breakfast. Made from scratch banana pancakes and pan-fried bananas! Can we say BEST hang over meal EVER??

After devouring breakfast, we decided to drive down to the beach since the weather was gorgeous. We got dressed, hopped in Chester (Knoxie's van, I call it Chester because it has no windows on the back and would be a perfect Chester the Molester Mobile), and made our way out of town. We made a mini pitstop at Morrison's and bought a cheap kite to take advantage of the windy Scottish shoreline. We parked, took our shoes off, and walked down to the beach where we put the kite together. Once assembled, Knox held the kite while I made a running start and....FAIL. After about 30 minutes of not getting the kite up in the air for more than half a second, I got frustrated (I mean, if an effing child can fly a kite, how hard can it really be?) and Knoxie suggested a bit of re-engineering. We fuddled around with the strings and gave it another go...and finally, success! Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of us kite flying, but here is a re-creation of what it probably looked like:

We had the kite up for a good 10 minutes before it crashed and burned in the sand, and I decided that the kite had put its time in, so we wrapped up the strings and put it in the sand by our shoes. Then we went on a wee (like that Scottish language flair?) romantic walk by the water, until the sun started setting and it was getting pretty chilly, at which point we decided to go home.

Once we got back to the flat I took a shower and put my pj's on while Knox fixed supper. My nose was greeted with a wonderful smell upon exiting the bathroom, so I wandered in the kitchen to find out what it was...only to be mildly disappointed that it was PORK chops. I hate pork chops. But I didn't have the heart to tell him that because he had obviously put a lot of time and effort into it, so I just smiled and said, "Looks good!". We sat down to eat and I thought to myself, "Ok, just eat at least half of it to be polite" and took a bite of the pork chop...wait a second...it's...actually...good?! I was pleasantly surprised to be eating, and more importantly enjoying it! I told him after dinner that I usually hated pork chops but that his were actually really yummy, to which he gave some response along the lines of, "If I'm cookin it, it's gonna be good". Annoyingly, he's right. Since he's an ex-chef, that pretty much qualifies him to be stellar in the kitchen. But I'm not complaining, especially since we all know how much I love food!

Anyway, after dinner we watched one of my favorite movies as a kid called The Dark Crystal, which I hadn't seen in over ten years, so it was just like watching it for the first time! After the movie we went to bed, as I was still pretty tired from the night before. Sunday we slept in till noon again, and after lunch we walked down to the station so I could catch my train back to Dunblane.

When I got home, Chris, Paul, and Liz were hanging out in the kitchen. I was informed that Liz and Keith were having a "mince-off", which was a competition to see who could make the best mince meal (mince is what they call hamburger meat here). Liz made a spaghetti-ish dish served over pasta, and Keith made his mince with herbs and served it with mashed potatoes. Beth got home just as they were finished cooking, so we all sat down to a great meal and talked and ate and drank until about 10, when Chris and Paul went home. Tired and stuffed, Liz, Beth, Keith and I went into the living room and watched some bad British TV before passing out.