We went and had our first UK pub meal(on Saturday night) - with Mushy peas - eww yuck! They are every bit as bad as I imagined they would be, however we were able to wash them down with a very nice Stella Artois - ON TAP!
On Sunday, we got up early, put our faces on(see photo below) and got to the train station for the trip back to Edinburgh for the Scotland vs All Blacks game. It was quite amusing walking through Glasgow to get to the train, as I think they didn't really understand why we were painted up!
Once we got to the train station, were learnt why people say that Brits/Scots know how to cue - there was a ginormous cue for the train to Edinburgh - all people with the same intentions as us. The cue went from inside the train station, to outside and around about four bends of a carpark! Once we arrived, although we had no clue where we were going, we just followed the sea of people and got to the stadium nice and early - however the extra time was spent having photos with tourists - they quite liked our painted faces! Some little kids in the stands beside us liked our faces so much that we did theirs for them too!
One thing that really astounded us, was that about 1 in 5 people that were dressed in All Blacks supporter clothing, weren't actually kiwi - but foreigners - we hadn't realised that the All Blacks were that popular outside of NZ.
We had a couple of big loud Kiwis in front of us, and they were really funny when the members of each team were introduced on the big screen - they cheered at each All Black, except didn't cheer for Reuben Thorne - making their lack of interest in him quite public.
Anyway, as you all know the game was a goody - bar all the dumb AB handling errors, (NZ 40 - Scotland 0)however I would say about 50% of the errors were due to the closeness of the jersey colours between the two teams - somebody majorly stuffed up there! After the game we hung back, and were able to see Jonah Lomu and Justin Marshall in the seats below us.
We then joined the sea of people walking back into Edinburgh - though the council hadn't closed the road, we did! No cars could get through. What was even funnier was that someone had brought a rugby ball with them, and they were kicking it up into the crowd, much to everyone's delight. It got lost a few times, in some scrub on the side of the road, or hitting a double decker bus or down a basement(below road level) it was greeted with cheers when it was booted up in the air again/or hit something.
One of the funniest incidences was this convertible with some pretty young girls in it, thinking they were cool with the top down of the car, waiting for the crowd to pass. A Kiwi guy takes a blow up Kiwi (bird) over to them and said something along the lines of "Safety kiwi thinks you should put your seat belts on" - that got a roar from the crowd as the girls weren't wearing seat belts, and felt obliged to put them on!
We then caught the train back to Glasgow for the night, just managing to get to a Buffet Indian restaurant for dinner - top class Indian food, and as much as you want mmmmm.
By the way we also learnt that Glasgow did have a festival on, so the large crowds were due to this!
The next morning(Monday) we again returned to Edinburgh, however we thought we would be clever and use the station beside our motel, however this turned out to be an hour longer then the other trip, with 18 stops around the Scottish suburbs! Oops!
Once in Edinburgh, we caught our first Black cab to our motel, dropped our stuff, then made our way back to town to do a couple of sightseeing bus tours - very interesting. As we were deciding on what to have for dinner that night, we bumped into a friend of Bev's from his Massey Uni hockey team! Such a small world!
On Tuesday we got up and left early for our 9am train back to London(we didn't miss it this time) - back to the grind of finding work and accommodation, and sleeping on the floor!
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