Edinburgh:
My dining experience
By Renato
de Oliveira Morais
Last November I went to Edinburgh on a Kaplan trip. It was eighteen students, Lee and Stefanie. On the second and last night in the city, Lee booked our dinner in a club with live music that was a little far from the hostel. We split the group in three taxis and went there. The club had two floors. The first looked like a pub where there were two guys singing and playing their guitars. In the second there were long tables for ten or twenty people. There was some misunderstanding about the reservations and we were seated on the first floor, where our group would have to be split in three or four tables. Lee talked with the manager and we all were transferred to one big table in the second floor, where we would get a special discount in the dinner – 33%!
While the group moved into the club, I decided to stay near Lee and our lovely friend Celine who, perhaps, could need same help with her wheel chair.
I was following them when I realized that they were going to a lift which was located to the side of the bar. So, I turned around, towards the exit, and passed through a door which, in that moment, looked like the exit door. It turned out to be the female rest room. I quickly noticed that is was not the correct door – white walls, good illumination. The door was still opened when I step back to the club and met a guy in front me saying “Sir, this is the ladies restroom”. I excused myself for this little and innocent mistake. He did not appear angry, he was even smiling.
Then I noticed that a lot of people were looking at me. I did not understand well why. A guy inside the lady’s toilet. Big deal. But everyone was looking at me. It was the first time that it happened with me. In all the others occasions, nobody gave a dam. No man had complained with me about that. Just the women, and was only twice. But it had not been my fault, I must say in my defense. In the first I had been drunk and in the second I had just woken up with a hangover (It had not been on consecutive days). Perhaps, I thought, it had been one some of these cultural clashes.
The food was very tasty and the talk with my travel mates very funny. After the dinner, we decided to go back to first floor to watch the show and I decided go the restroom. In this time, I went into the gents. When I was peeing a guy entered the bathroom, looked at me and started to laugh. It was really embarrassing. I remembered a joke that Bruno had told me about the guy who enter in the Subway (fast food restaurant) and, while he is ordering a sandwich, he says to attendant “It is not fair. Today is too cold for you ask me about the size”.
I was really nervous about that. Fortunately, I recognized him: he was the man who had told me that I had entered in the lady’s toilet. It was a relief.
When I tried to wash my hands I could find how to make the tap works. I put my hands besides it and nothing happened. I shook my hands without success. While I was looking the tap with my hands outstretched, that guy appeared again on my side. He was still laughing, louder in this time. He pressed a button in the wall (a black button in a black wall), the water came out of the tap, he washed his hands and left the bathroom as if he had seen a savage trying to operate a microwave oven. Ok, keep smiling and walking and I will pretend that you just you just wet your hand rather than washing them, I thought.
The rest of the night was without further incident. Edinburgh is a beautiful city and I would like to visit it again in the future, but to that club, I'm never coming back
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