To celebrate today’s beautiful (ahem) Scottish weather, we busted out winter coats and umbrellas and went for a walk. We wanted to head to the docks again, but this time cut about 5 miles from the Water of Leith walk we had taken weeks ago, and head straight to Leith. Leith Walk, as the street from New Town to Leith is called, used to be a decrepit, ghetto-ish (insofar as the Scottish can be “ghetto”) part of town, run down and poor. A few years ago, the city decided to revive it, and today it is a lively, very international strip, currently dominated by (what else) unsightly and obnoxious construction. It was a part of town we had never been to, despite its close proximity.

To our discovery, the Docks are rather close to where we live now. And by rather close, I mean about two miles. How much walking do you have to do in order for two miles to be an easy walking commute? Because that’s sure what it felt like. An easy walk. There’s a bar on a boat up that way that has a Latin night, and if I had known it was so close, I would have gone there sooner. Also, on our walk, I fell in love. Seriously. I fell in love with a Chinese Market. I’ve wanted to live in a Chinatown ever since I saw a few episodes of Kung Fu when I was a kid. Then my friend Libby lived in Chinatown in London when she studied there in college, and I burned with jealousy as she described the debauchery that occurred there. OK, so there isn’t a Chinatown here, per say, but Leith Walk certainly had its fair share of China Buffets and Forbidden Cities, and I had been looking for this particular desert for months. When I was in China, I discovered these balls of rice dough wrapped around sweet red bean paste and often covered in sesame seeds. They are only THE BEST THINGS EVER. I call them affectionately “sesame balls,” and the only place I have ever seen them served in the States was at this China Buffet in Athens, Ohio. I’ve been utterly disappointed here in the sesame ball department, and I spent an hour online one day trying to find the address for a Chinese market. So imagine my glee when, while taking a glance up from the constant Edinburgh drizzle, I see a big red sign declaring this exact spot to be the location of such a shop.

So we walk in, and I just love the feel. People are hanging out, speaking brisk Chinese to one another, discussing vegetables and the rain and I’m sure how much Americans suck or something useful. There were rows upon rows of strange things in packaging I couldn’t read. Shelves of dried roots and marinated jellyfish. An entire wall of tea. A fresh vegetable isle piled high with spiky, exotic lychees. And finally, around a corner in the back, a shelf of, you guessed it, sesame balls! They came in all shapes and flavors, some done up in sesame seeds and some without, as I had them in Korea. Giddy as a schoolboy, I practically skipped to the cash register and skipped down the road into the rain. I love sesame balls.

And I’m stoked that this place is so close. I have a feeling me and my new Chinese market friend will become very close in these last few months.