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Last year I traveled to California twice to visit @dreemsteem (our very own Dreemport Pirate Captain hehe) and, amongst other things, we had a blast playing board games with her family in the evenings. They introduced me to Mexican Train Dominos and Monopoly Deal - both super fun! If you've never played them before - you really should!!!

So, when she suggested that she might be able to come out and see me in January '23 (and drag @penderis along with her) and that we should book an Airbnb away for a few days in Scotland, I knew that I absolutely had to stock up on our games for the evenings.

So, I went into our local Smyth's Toys Superstores - a large toy store chain here in the UK - to look for the games in their massive games section and... they didn't have them!!! Whaaaaat? Shock! Horror! How could this be??? Anyway, I did find something else... called... wait for it... Rainbow Pirates!!! - I mean the name says it all, right? And looking at the box it came in, I just had to have it! It looked so cutesie and fun! And then off to my trusty Amazon account I headed and ordered the domino and monopoly deal games, and I borrowed a pack of playing cards from my 10-year-old. All in all it cost me about £60!!! But they will bring great joy for many years to come. Thankfully, everything arrived before my guests did and we were able to pack them with us for our trip!

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We headed up to Scotland on the 19th of January, stopping along the way to meet another Hive writer

@olawalium, and his family. We arranged to meet in an awesome little coffee shop that Dreemsteem found called The Book Cafe. How cool is this place???

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It's a self-styled quirky little restaurant cafe on the cobbled high street of Derby town centre and was a winner at the Food and Drinks Awards 2022. I ordered the veganised gluten-free avocado on toast with mushrooms on the side and the best damn oat chai latte with cinnamon syrup that you can buy. Seriously, it was the first time I have had one (having only drunk black chai tea before) and I was in Heaven. It was so damn good!!!

And the company was wonderful. I met @olawalium online on another platform before I found Hive and I really enjoyed his poetry! It was a joy to meet him and his beautiful family. We all had such a lovely time connecting that we arranged to meet on our return journey too!

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After satisfying our tummies and our hearts, we said our goodbyes and headed off to Kirkcaldy where we would be spending the next 5 nights. Soon after entering Scotland, we had to stop the car... because of this! And @penderis had not played in the snow before hehe...

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It was quite a long road trip up to Scotland from London so when we stopped to stretch our legs at a Farmer's Market Store which happened to be a Services too... we were super happy to find precooked frozen meals that we could grab to eat that evening. After browsing around the store, I bought a nice curry for dinner. There were quite a few interesting items to be seen... check these colourful Highland Coos (cows) out!!!

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Then they had a collection of Christmas cheeses... so fun! All on sale as it was mid-January already!

Popcorn on the cob! - which my kids would have loved haha
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And then this awesome brand of Scottish Vodka called Holy Grass (note to self: I MUST get this stuff next time!!!) But it was pretty pricy!!! One was a blend of vodka and coffee which I think the hubster would have enjoyed. The other sounded like a Scottish variant of gin as it was blended with scotch botanicals 😂

Finally, my dinner... a lovely potato and coconut curry... It was sooo good after a long day driving 😊

From the Services, it was a couple of hours' drive to our Airbnb just outside of Edinburgh in Kirkcaldy. Once we had settled in and had dinner, we started our board games... and @penderis proved to be an absolute card shark with the black cards "attacking, stealing and committing dastardly deeds" just as the game instructions describe 😂 and don't these cards look so much fun???

and then we played, laughed, chatted and generally enjoyed connecting and sharing time with special friends... til the early hours of the morning... 💗😂💗

This post has been for #marketfriday by the lovely @dswigle. If you'd like to join in the fun, come along and drop a post today in the MarketFriday Community Platform (#hive-196308) or if you are too late, drop in and visit next Friday. You can find out more here - and be sure to drop a link to your post in the comments to Denise's Market Friday post.