I was fortunate to head to the Edinburgh Christmas Market with some classmates before I headed home for Christmas. Having been to Christmas markets in Prague, Krakow and Budapest- I was definitely excited and looking forward to hit Scotland’s capital after handing in my last assignment. After the day was done, I could safely say I was not disappointed with what Edinburgh’s Christmas spirit and market had to offer!
The market was off Prince’s Street and had gorgeous stalls of various different knick-knacks that were great as presents (for family and friends and of course, yourself) as well as food and mulled wine stores. There was one stall selling mulled wine that fancied itself as quite the alcohol inventor and sold mulled wine cocktails of sorts. If there one thing I learnt that day is that mulled wine, end of semester and friends make for an excellent combination before heading back home.
Apart from there being an opportunity to rummage through the gorgeous Christmas ornaments, there was also a small ice-skating rink set up which obviously we headed to after a heart and limb warming mug of mulled wine. Ice – skating was all fun and games until as per tradition (i.e. the only other two times in my life that I have ice-skated) I landed on the ice. My ice-skating experience is very limited, but I have come to realise that the moment I think it is safe to venture away from the sides of the rink and try skate with the ‘big kids’, I end up in falling in a very unflattering way and land with a thud with limbs sprawled in the each direction of the compass if that is at all possible! You would think that third times the charm and I would learn to stick to the sides of the rink? Alas, no – there will forever be a part of me that foolishly thinks if I venture out towards the middle of the rink I will suddenly be spinning and jumping around the rink a la the Ice Princess in that Disney movie a few years back.
However, just like the two previous times, I picked myself up and spent a bit longer ice-skating. We stayed there until it was time for some food and more mulled wine. I decided on German food that looked to me to be potatoes, cheese and onion- and stuck to the same flavour of mulled wine as before. We strolled around the market for a bit longer and also headed into a department store to check out the Christmas decorations, which was great, as back home we don’t really have any huge department stores so the concept of having a huge Christmas tree inside an equally huge shop is completely foreign to me!
So after a lot of Oh-ing (for the good mulled wine, lovely ornaments and Christmas trees) and Ah-ing (when landing on my derriere while ice-skating ), we headed for the train back to St. Andrews with smiles on our faces.