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I’ve been looking forward to this for months and today was the day – the Scotland Geocaching Mega Event. I arrived in Edinburgh on Friday night and we were up early to catch the train to Perth, over the Firth of Forth fabulous bridge and through some gorgeous countryside to the small town. As we got our bearings outside the train station and headed towards the convention centre we started to see people walking about in classic cacher getup – hiking gear and a GPS. Turning one corner we found a small group gathered and sure enough, our first cache for the day was in hand. No need to hide it – we just handed to the next person together with the explanation of where it went.
At the convention centre we lined up to get our goodies – a silicon bracelet, name badge and lanyard and then we were in. A series of talks had been arranged, we went to the first but really they were’nt for us. In the main room we jostled to get to the vendor stands, I had a play with the new Garmin 62 series (nice kit and pretty colour) and looked at countless geocoins and cache containers. In the end I got a small log book and a roll of tape.
Of the cachers I knew who were going I only managed to run into Kevin and Karen. Kevin was running around like a mad kid who’d had too much red cordail! It was a total geek fest. After a few hours we decided to head out and do some actual caching.
In all we did 19 caches around Perth – it’s a beautiful city and we had such glorious weather, a truely perfect day out. Most of the caches we came across we found from ages away simply because we looked for where the crowds had gathered! In all we walked over 20kms, so we were utterly exhausted by the time we got home.
Photos to come soon!
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Blonde is a French/Scottish fusion restaurant, not really sure what that means – it looked like a largely french menu to me when I ate there early April 2010.
The place is stylish, although the seats are hard and uncomfortable. No sparkling by the glass so it was sparkling water for me.
For starters I had a terrine of pheasant, guinea-fowl and bacon for starters which was simply divine – it was all I could do to not lick my plate. For my main I had the Aberdeen Angus rib-eye steak; lemon and green peppercorn butter; stir fried vegetables served with fries. After that starter I was expecting great things and unfortunately this course didn’t live up to the standards. It was lovely, but the vegetables were typically meh for “stir fried” and there wasn’t enough of the butter, which certainly didn’t taste of much in the way of peppercorns.
My dessert was a whiskey poached pair with blackberry sorbet, while Christian had the rhubarb brulee – his was clearly the winning choice there. Both were fresh and light to taste with rich flavours.
For most of the evening the kitchen’s warming lamps gave a good amount of light, but every now and then they’d turn them off and plunge us into darkness – one tea light per table of 4 does not really give enough light to eat by! It was all rather disconcerting.
So all up, a pleasant enough place with some good food but definite room to improve.
Website – http://www.blonderestaurant.co.uk
Posted by Kersti | Comments : (0)
Category : Travel
Tags: Birthday, christian, driving, flight, florian, frankfurt, Fulda, german, Germany, helmut, inge, julia, party, restaurant, vapiano
Had an absolutely lovely long weekend in Fulda, Germany. I left work at lunchtime and headed to the airport where I met up with Christian who had flown in from Edinburgh. We then grabbed a flight out to Frankfurt. Sounds rather silly, but it was actually cheaper to do this than for Christian to fly out directly from Edinburgh, plus we got the added bonus of an extra few hours together which is pretty precious at the moment.
At Frankfurt airport Inge and Helmut were there to greet us, so lovely to see them again 
It was then off to Vapiano for dinner, I was quite chuffed with myself for remembering the address of the place too. Vapiano is a great concept – a pizza/pasta/salad place where you get a card on your way in and then head to the appropriate counter. They then make the food up for you on the spot and swipe your card – and it’s gorgeous food. Pasta is all freshly handmade and the pizzas are lovely – Christian always gets one with parma ham, figs and honey. Their coffee is good, being Illy. The only thing they don’t do well is the desserts. The first Vapiano I went to was in Antwerp. Since then I’ve visited them in Frankfurt, Hamburg and Munich. I know they’re in London and Brisbane too – so get yourself there! I digress…
Friday was a day of shopping and setting up the fabulous canteen in Helmut’s school for the party on Saturday night. We spent a good two hours getting it all organised and it looked fabulous. Inge had organised sheets of thick red paper, with rose-print serviettes, candles and vases on the tables. The vases would be filled with white tulips. With the red walls of the room and the bright green chairs it all went together very well. Later that night as we were waiting for Julia and Florian to arrive it started to snow. About 4 inches of it in two hours. I knew it had been cold!
The party itself on Saturday night was lovely. Inge and Helmut had gathered 70 of their friends and they introduced every one of the guests to the crowd with anecdotes of how they had met or with stories about them. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a large crowd of people so attentive for such a long time! Christian was translating where he could, but I’m getting better at understanding and a couple of the stories I understood pretty much in their entirety. We had a lovely buffet dinner (no sauerkraut) and the band played some great tracks (mainly in English). At the end of the night I drove us home….
Yes, I drove on the wrong side of the road. Granted it was 3am so the streets were pretty much deserted, however, the road was covered in ice which I’ve never driven on before and I had to make two trips – one to take Christian’s grandmother home and then the trip to take Christian, Flo and Juli home. The adrenaline was pumping pretty hard by the time I pulled up into the driveway but noone was hurt and no scratches on the car so I’d say a resounding success there.
Sunday was spent relaxing and Monday afternoon came around far too quickly. We were soon on the flights back to Dublin having had a wonderful weekend and a great celebration. Hope we can get back soon!
