Day 2: Rock and Roll and Gimp Masks
You can never have too many phone charms!
g e t a m o v e o n
We had a plan B hotel, The Ballintrae, which was alright, if not a bit 70s. It was a striped wallpaper wet dream. We got a room for the next two nights, so we dumped our bags while our room was being prepared and headed out for some lunch. This is were Debbie and I differ; I'm big into sandwiches and lunch in general, there's not a lot of sandwiches I wont eat, but I'm a very picky eater when it comes to dinner time. Debbie however eats either tuna, or cheese. And woe betide anyone who puts mayonnaise near her food. Mayonnaise was the holiday villain this year, everywhere we went we ended up doing a very dramatic "no mayonnaise" gesture, the kind you do when you're on holiday in a country where they don't speak english, and you feel compelled to shout at them in broken sentences while doing semi-threatening gestures to describe what you want.
We traipsed around the street our hotel was on, and up towards Princes Street until we finally agreed on where to eat: a cafe covered in festival posters that sold the worlds most expensive sandwiches. Bastards. We headed over towards the 'alternative' side of Edinburgh to do some shopping and on the way we found a sweet shop called ''The Candy Shop".(cue impromptu singing of Fiddy Cent's 'candy shop' before an in-dept discussion about what flavour 'Formula 50', his flavour of Vitamin Water, would be.) I think this was probably one of my favourite shops of the whole trip. We bought some chocolate and headed on to the cutest shop were we bought waaay too many phone charms. (note: phone charms prevent crazy old men robbing your phone)
The next shop up was a shop called "Pie In The Sky", which is where I would do all my clothes shopping if I lived in Edinburgh. I suddenly got the urge to buy a latex dress when I went into this shop, an urge that has yet to die I might add. The shop sold some seriously amazing (yet horribly over-priced) clothes and jewellery - which is where I got my new favourite things, my giant diamond and my 'Trash' clip. I was on a bit of a latex buzz for some reason, so we headed to the nearest fetish shop (as one does) to stock up. That was about the time that I lost all interest in buying a latex dress in Edinburgh and we decided to head on to the street festival, sans latex.
Festivale
Having spent most of our day wandering around the finest adult stores Edinburgh has to offer, we stopped for some yummy frappachinos while we thought about what to do next. We sat down on some steps in the middle of the street festival (I mean in the middle of it going on, not blocking it or anything) and were promptly attacked by some seriously gammy pigeons. The Scottish pigeons are a lot more resilient then the Irish ones, you can't just swat them away, you need to give em a good boot up the hole in order to send them packing, and even then they'll come back. Not one for flying rats, Debbie was on her last nerve with the Zombie-like pigeons of Edinburgh and we moved on to have a look at the rest of the street festival. If you've never been in Edinburgh during festival season, then essentially it's just thousands of tourists being ambushed by performers trying to get them to come to see whatever show they're part of. There's face painting and dancing etc etc. The first thing we saw were some amazeballs dancers rocking out to the best of the 80's. Anything 80's is cool with me so I was in my element. The last song they danced to was "We Built This City On Rock And Roll" so of course we sang it the whole day. We got stopped by a man dressed as a dragon holding a chihuahua, I don't know what his act was, what he was selling or even what his name was. The point is, he had a chihuahua. Cute. (sidenote: My boyfriend wont let me get a chihuahua because he's convinced he'll sit on it and squash it)
"Courvoisier?..... as in.. "Pass the..?"
After we had our fill of the street festival, we started searching for a supermarket to get some vodka and snacks for later. We'd learned our lesson from last year, when we walked for over an hour to find an off license, so we asked a friendly bus driver where to go. She pointed us in the direction of Sainsburys, where we found 'Sainsbury's Brand Courvoisier'. I actually snorted when I saw that. I called over to Debbie and told her I'd found Courvoisier, she shouts back "Courvoisier?..... as in.. "Pass the..?" Besides stocking up on booze and snacks, we were on a neverending quest for Cheese Moments and honey in a bear-shaped bottle. Unfortunately we never did find the latter. The former we found in Glasgow on the last day. Success. We stocked up on a variety of fizzy drinks, grabbed some vodka and headed to The Black Rose Cafe for some dinner. Edinburgh is littered with random tiny metal bars in the most random places. This particular one is across from BHS (British Home Stores if you didn't know). Bang of my childhood of BHS as it goes.
"I think this might actually be a gimp mask..."
After walking around for two days and going to a gig, we decided to pamper ourselves a bit and some stuff from Superdrug. We stocked up on all the girly essentials and got some face masks and headed back to the hotel to get all dolled up for a night on the tiles. Doing face masks still makes me laugh. No matter how many of them you do, you still look like a twat with gunk all over your face. This particular face mask however was more like an orange-scented gimp mask. It had holes cut out for the eyes and mouth and had oranges drawn all over it. sexy. Debbie cackled when I put it on. We got our old skool beauty on with teabags on our eyes and had a lie down while watching / listening to Hollyoaks. No one can say I don't lead a glamorous and extravagant lifestyle. After we washed of the gimp masks we started getting dolled up, and all of a sudden there was a very angry knock on the door. The people in the room next to us were complaining that the fan in the room was too loud. I'm sorry the gentle hum of the ceiling fan is keeping you from going to bed at 10pm, but fxck off and come back when you have a real complaint. Needless to say we left said fan on. Also we started to whack out a few Adam Freeland tunes when they left.
o p i u m
We had originally planned to go and see "Dinosaur Pile Up" but we weren't really that bothered to be honest. Instead, we opted to head to our old watering hole, Opium for some cheap drinks. And when I say cheap, I mean £1. We headed upstairs to the booths / dancefloor and proceeded to get absolutely rat-arsed. Feeling like I was entering a sugar-coma after all the Cherry VKs, we switched onto Vodka and lemonade at which point we proceeded to table-dance to Nine Inch Nails and then a very tattooed barman dared us to dance with a crazy man (I later found out he was called Harry) who had some serious moves for a crazy old man. We agreed we would only dance if he put on "Beast And The Harlot" by Avenged Sevenfold. He dashed off and put it on straight away. Balls. A dare is a dare so we headed straight for the dancefloor, followed closely by about 15 blokes who just stood around in a circle. I'm putting that down to the fact that Debbie was wearing hotpants. I gestured to the old man to come over and dance with us, as per our agreement with the tattooed barman. He charged at me and pinned me against the wall. It was the single most disgusting thing that's ever happened to me on a dancefloor. He then charged at Debbie, and then at us both. We darted off the dancefloor when the song ended and held each other hoping he'd go away. *shudder* After he left we got up and danced a few more times, and thankfully more girls showed up and the dancefloor felt less like a stage.
During one of my smoke breaks I made friends with two girls who informed me that a great place to go in Edinburgh is Cabaret Voltaire. We headed there pretty much straight away and it turned out to be an absolute sweatbox. The kind of place where condensation drips from the ceiling. Lovely. We only stayed for one drink, and the whole time we hassled some bloke who refused to give us his cardigan. How rude of him. We headed back to Opium and kept on dancing and drinking until our poor feet could take no more. We headed back to the hotel and passed out on top of all our stuff.
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