We got my Knitting Dolly out on Tuesday, one of my Christmas presents. I expected Mum to be able to knit and get me started pretty pronto. I was a little wide of the mark. It took her ages to decipher the instructions and get herself 'cast on' or something? Anyway, once she had that sorted out I demanded she make me a top for said dolly straight away. I'm still waiting....
I had my first session of rugby this week at our new after school club. We've got a man from Newbury rugby club coming down to give us some coaching and we're hoping to get a team together to play against some other schools. I really enjoyed it and hope I make the team!
And while Ned was doing that I also had after school sports club. We played the toilet game! Not as unpleasant as it might sound really, more of a variation on a game of tag.
I'm obviously pretty busy after school these days so on Wednesday I had a bit of a melt down and said I didn't want to go to ballet. Dad took it really well...NOT! Anyway, I decided to go in the end and I think we're going to have a real think about what i'm going to do.
Had a much better time at dancing this week on Thursday after school. Really enjoyed it this week.
Friday then, snow forecast and our weekend trip hanging in the balance!
Yeah, it was a weird one as on one hand we love the snow and wanted to get stuck in with the snow men and sledging.
And on the other hand we'd been really looking forward to our weekend in Scotland to see the Panda's.
It's been booked for ages and I really wanted to go.
But it was looking pretty unlikely that we'd be going anywhere as it snowed pretty hard for ages.
We toughed it out at school for the day, came home and decided to load the car up and give it a go.
We checked on the internet and it looked like our flight hadn't been cancelled so it was on!
We waited form Mum to trudge home through the snow and then headed for Bristol.
The motorway was pretty good actually, well, the two lanes without snow in them were anyway. The snow-ploughs were doing the business, sending the snow they scraped up in a massive arc through the air.
We got to the airport okay, so far, so good.
The flight was delayed by an hour and twenty minutes so we had plenty of time for something to eat and drink:
We sat and waited, played on our I-pods and listened to the groans of people who's flights were being cancelled. I was really worried ours would be too.....
But it wasn't! We must have been really lucky and we were soon trudging through the snow across the runway to our aeroplane.
It was the smallest one we'd ever been on I reckon.
It still looked pretty big to me.
After some awesome 'pinned to the back of your seat' style acceleration we were soon up in the air, through the clouds and up in the stars.
And pretty soon after that we were making our way back down to land again, it was a very short flight.
By this time it was getting pretty late at night really. We caught a bus into Edinburgh City Centre and made our way to our hotel.
With the help of a very cheerful and drunk English man, who helped us locate the Castle (it was right in front of us).
And then two rather bemused looking Policemen, who were no doubt wondering why a 5 and an 8 year old were being walked through the city after midnight. Once they'd heard the story they offered us some advice on our route (avoiding a rowdy nightclub) and an endorsement that the hotel was very nice.
We were soon enough at the hotel and checking in.
Phew, what a journey, but we'd made it!
There was one last drama for the night though, I decided I wanted to take the stairs rather than the lift...it backfired horribly when I got totally lost and realised I didn't even know what room number we were staying in. Oops. Dad found me wandering back to reception in tears. Well, it was late.
After a monster well earned sleep, we drew back the curtains to be greeted by this sight:
Edinburgh Castle, a light dusting of snow and clear blue skies.
Quite different to what we'd left behind down south.
We headed off for breakfast, down to the lobby, only to find out it was actually served on floor 5!
Which had even better views of the castle, we loved it.
Then we packed up, wrapped up and headed off to find a bus to the zoo.
Which proved to be more difficult than it sounded, maybe because we aren't seasoned bus users? Anyway, we decided a taxi was a better option.
A taxi! We love Taxi's....NOT!
This one didn't seem to lurch off at quite the warp speed that they usually do and the driver told us we needn't rush as the Panda's didn't get up until lunch time anyway.
I'm still traumatised watching the money racking up on the trip meter it has to be said.
We entered the zoo, gave in our tickets and headed for the Panda enclosure:
We were so excited and couldn't wait to see them.
No, and they were every bit as cute and lovely as we thought they'd be:
Yes indeed they were. There was a male and a female apparently, I think the zoo are hoping that they will have some baby Pandas!
Which would be brilliant seeing how endangered they are. Anyway, there wasn't mush sign of baby making while we were there. In fact, there wasn't much sign of anything really, except sleeping:
With the occasional stir to reassure everyone that they were in fact real and not just massive cuddly teddy bears!
As the zoo wasn't that busy we got to stay in with them as long as we liked and got to ask the keeper some questions too. We found out that they sleep such a lot as the only food that they like (bamboo) only provides them with about 20% of the energy and animal of their size actually needs. Mad creatures, why not have a spaghetti bolognese or something? I could have stayed there all day I think, I was really quite taken with them.
I'd seen enough and wanted to explore what else we could see!
Well, as if the pandas weren't enough the rest of the zoo was brilliant, and the other animals seemed to know they had to compete.
The lions were brilliant and seemed to be really enjoying themselves in the snow:
I got right into my photography and caught this one:
As we left we dropped by their indoor enclosure to take a look. Just as we did they both came in and the lioness had a game with a load of old christmas trees. She buried herself underneath them and then rolled over, attacking them with her back legs just like Poppy used to.
There were some really fluffy and noisy baboons next door:
The zoo itself was on a bit of a hill, Mum needed a hand up some of it as her boots were pretty slippery:
I took another shot of these Zebras, they must have been really feeling the cold i'd have thought:
I don't think the tiger did, he was quite happy to lay his belly down on the snow for a feed:
These chaps must have been loving it though, the singing penguins:
These were my favourite animals of the day probably. The looked so funny shuffling about, but I really wanted them to go for a swim. Fortunately one of them duly obliged after a bit of wait. I was over the moon.
The park was all but deserted for some reason:
You've got to feel a little bit sorry for these lads haven't you? They would easily have won Cutest animal award in the absence of the panda's:
The chimpanzees weren't doing a lot:
But the Capuchins and squirrel monkeys were totally brilliant.
We had a great day out, well worth the late night!
We headed back to the hotel, I was still in a state of post Panda excitement:
We watched some You've been framed and then headed out across the road to a Pizza Restaurant Mum and Dad went to about 300 years ago before we were born.
It was pretty cool in there too!
When we'd finished the waitress told us there was a special treasure chest for well behaved children who used all their please and thank you's (and gave her advice on visiting Panda's as she hadn't even been).
We were allowed to take our pick of one toy each. I went with a smart hopping frog game.
And after about three hours of solid rummaging I came across one of my all time favourite items, a sticky rubber lizard!
We returned once again to the hotel and settled down to watch take me out and eat minstrels.
Standard Saturday night hotel activity for us by now!
The funniest thing we saw on telly though had to be an advert for a film called 'Wee man'
Apparently 'wee' means small in Scotland? Event though, we thought it sounded hilarious.
We had another monster sleep and just about woke up in time to catch some breakfast.
Which I made everyone bolt down as I wanted to go swimming!
The pool was right down on the ground floor, with a window out onto the street.
It was so cool watching everyone walk up and down while we splashed about.
We had the pool to ourselves for ages too, so there was plenty of jumping and diving.
After the swim we made ourselves nice and at home in the sauna too, it was lovely and warm in there.
Time was ticking on so we had to go back to our room to pack up the last few bits into our bags before checking out.
When we left the hotel we found that right next door there was a really cool traditional sweet shop!
Yeah, I know, it just keeps getting better!
We went in there and spent the money Ellis found in the ladies Swimming lockers...I didn't find any in the men's sadly.
We walked up the Royal Mile to the Castle at the top of the hill. You could see our hotel from up there and over to the snow topped hillsides beyond.
It was almost worth the hike up there!
We promised ourselves that we'd come back to visit the castle and take the Horrible Histories open topped bus trip too.
But then we made our way back down the other side to Princes street for lunch before getting the bus back to the Airport.
It had been a short but very sweet trip.
And we decided we really liked Scotland.
We did, and everyone we met along the way seemed really lovely too.
We were almost hoping the flight home would be cancelled and we'd have to stay on a bit longer.
But after a game of air hockey and a bag of crisps it was time to board and head home.
It was daylight this time, the view was brilliant out of the window.
It was pretty much dark when we got back to Bristol, but you could still see just how much snow was still around when we came in to land.
I didn't, I fell asleep just before we touched down. My timing is incredible.
As we hadn't checked any bags in we could just get off the plane and swan off to the car that we'd parked in the posh car park right outside the terminal and get off home.
It was so civilised!
We were home and in bed by half past seven. We'd made it, all the way there and back, through so called travel chaos as well.
And back to school on Monday.....I took some waking up!
Class was very light on numbers again today for some reason? A bit of snow? Pah, what a bunch of lightweights.
I'm getting a bit humpy about it actually, we're having to do like writing and stuff while everyone else is probably out playing in the snow. And cross country club was cancelled again this week, still, I didn't really fancy running round the field in the snow.
After school dance club was on for me though, yay! There wasn't many of us either, but we really enjoyed dancing to Kung Fu fighting.
While this was going on, Dad and I were doing Snowball fighting!
And once I got home we finally made a snow man, only about three days later than everyone else!
He's a good one though, will get somne pictures for next week as it was pretty dark by the time we finished him.
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