Weekend goings on

On Sunday we went to Ikea to pick up a few things for the felting class I’m teaching next week. We also went because they have a super cheap Full Breakfast and hot chocolate at their restaurant. It doesn’t take much to make us happy. I think it might have been the opening weekend of their cafe because they had a jazz/ragtime band there!

Monday was a bank holiday in Edinburgh, so J had the day off work and we decided to take another of the walks in one of our walks around Edinburgh books. We started off at St Cuthbert’s church. It’s a relatively new church (1894) but supposedly there’s been a religious building there since the 7th century.


The walk took us around the graveyard.

We passed a watchtower which was constructed to prevent bodysnatchers from coming in.

We also passed an interesting entryway to a bank:

Then the walk took us to the Union Canal!

We had no idea there was a canal here. The canal was built from 1818 to 1822 to transport coal to Edinburgh and stretches 31 miles. The walk also took us to the campus of Napier University, where, at one end of the campus, still stands Mershiston Castle, built around 1454 and was the birthplace of John Napier, mathematician and inventor of logarithms.

After we finished our walk we went back home, ate some lunch, then went to the grand opening of a big Tesco nearby (we mainly only have little versions of chain stores near us right now, the big one closed 6 months ago). We expected to see balloons outside at least, but all they had were crowds and very long check-out lines. I'm wondering if baloons is just an American thing?

I’ve decided to work on my pastry-making skills, since I've made some pies in the last months with yummy fillings but disappointing home-made pastry shells. So last night I made some tomato and goat cheese “galettes” from Delia’s How to Cook book and it was my best pastry yet! So perhaps this week I’ll try to make plum pie again, this time with a decent pastry shell.

How was your weekend? I hope you had a nice one?