Edinburgh

I've been slacking on my blogging for the past few days. In fact, I've been slacking on my journaling and price-recording and everything! I'm sort of liking the idea of curling up inside with a bunch of snacks and a good book for a few days. And I miss having a stove. But let me fill you in on a few days I've missed.

We left Glasgow on May 3, but before we did we got a few more pictures. We walked down to a big park called Glasgow Green. It's nice enough as far as parks go. The park is home to a large arch, a tall obelisk, and the People's Palace Museum (which we didn't go into for whatever reason). In front of the museum was a large terra cotta fountain that was really cool. It is "crowded with figurative groups representing Australia, Canada, India and South Africa" (from Living In Glasgow). Lovely fountain.



We also went and saw Wolverine at the gigantic Cineworld before we left Glasgow. It was about 10 stories high with a wide range of candy and snacks on each level. It was an experience! But after that we headed to Edinburgh via train. After leading us the wrong direction for about 10 minutes we found our place. It was a self-catering apartment, which I was very excited about because I would get to use a stove! Yay! But the drawback ended up being the incessant, never ending whistling of the wind through the windows in every room of the place... Gah!!

First day we went out to Edinburgh Castle which was interesting, but also crowded, cold and crazy windy. We got to see the crown jewels of Scotland, which were, of course, lovely. They had a really nice display leading up the room where the crown, sword, and scepter that make up the crown jewels were held. And they also had a great display through the prison area of the castle. And there were a few museums dedicated to the military and various wars that Scotland has been involved with. So great castle if you can ignore the wind and cold! I had a hard time ignoring it. We also saw Holyrood Palace where the queen stays when she's in town. We didn't go in though - we'd just spent 25.00 GBP on the castle, sooo... We also stopped into St. Giles Cathedral which was yet another nice cathedral. We've seen a few at this point - they're starting to blend!



Next day we stayed inside ALL DAY. Never set foot out of the apartment once. It was so nice!!! We read and watched TV shows online, only getting up off the couch to eat and pee. Was so nice to have a break. But the next day (May 6) we went out to Calton Park. There are a few monuments up there, but the best part is the view. It's basically a big hill in the middle of the city so the views from here are amazing. I insisted we wander around an old looking cemetery, too. Earliest death I remember seeing was 1792 I think.

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Glasgow I.ii

Well, I went to bed on the 27th feeling under the weather and woke up the next day feeling really, really bad. Chuck was a big sweetie though, and after breakfast took us to the pharmacy for Sudafed and suggested we stay in for the rest of the day so I could recover. So we didn't do much except for listen to my snorting and nose-blowing. Well, we did go out for an hour just to see the Scottish Exhibition Centre (it looks like a mini Sydney Opera House). But that was it!

The next day however, we went to see Doune Castle. Now, you may think you don't know anything about Doune Castle. You may think you've never seen it. you may say to yourself "Another castle?? How boring." But you probably have seen Doune Castle, unexpectedly hidden in a famous and popular movie called "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." Most of the castle scenes were filmed right in Doune Castle! It's the castle that the arrogant frenchman was taunting King Arthur from. The castle's kitchen was used as the home of the women who tried to seduce Gallahad. The singing prince who was being forced to marry by his father was locked away in one of the halls of the castle. And the audiotour that comes with castle's admission fee tells you about the various scenes that were filmed there as well as giving information on the much older history of the place. I'll admit that it's certainly not the grandest castle's around, but it has a good audiotour and a fun history. I'd recommend giving it a visit if you're in the neighborhood.



Since we're in Scotland we would be silly to neglect visiting a whiskey (or whisky as they spell it here) distillery. So on the 30th we took an expensive bus ride to the Glengoyne distillery. Because we had one of their brochures with a coupon in it, we got an extra dram of whiskey on our tour. So we got to try their 10 year and 17 year single malt whiskeys, both of which had very nice flavors. In the end we splurged on a very nice bottle of 12 year cask strength whiskey. I'm actually drinking it as we speak! Or, as I type... It has a very nice sweet, slightly syrupy texture and I can distinctly taste chocolate in the aftertaste. I like to pretend I'm a conoisseur now that I've been on a whiskey tour. Oh, the tour itself was good too. The guide was very friendly, had a good sense of humor, and was extremely knowledgeable about the whiskey making process. We saw the malt grinding machine, the tub where they heat the malt with water to extract the sugars, the $40,000 wooden tub where the yeast is added - the smell in here was very strong and malty, and the tub was full of bubbles slowly popping as the yeast did their work. They also have these huge copper chambers that are round at the bottom and taper as they rise to the ceiling. I don't quite understand what happens here, but somehow it's where the alcohol is separated from all the other stuff and purified for it's cask. Then it's just a matter of waiting 10 years to see the final product.

It was a fun day, despite waiting in the rain for the bus back to Glasgow. We finally got the chance to use our dinky little ponchos, and although they were dinky they got the job done for the most part. An English couple who had been on the tour with us was even kind enough to stop on their way down the road and offer us a ride to Glasgow. Being the cautious travelers that we are, we declined. But I thought it was really nice of them!

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Glasgow I.i

First things first - there are some advertisements here in the UK that make Chuck and me laugh. I would like to share one with you. It's an ad for some Glades product and it cracks me up: Glades Advert. I recommend taking a quick moment to watch it! Now, onto our travels.

We're now in Glasgow. We got here by taking a ferry from Belfast to Stranraer, Scotland, then we took a train up to Glasgow. The train trip was lovely! The countryside is so scenic here in the British Isles, and Scotland has not let us down. We got to see a ton of tiny little lambs frolicking around the fields, keeping near their mothers' sides. I also saw three bunnies, a deer, and a bunch of cattle. Oh, and of course green, rolling hills, bubbling creeks, and quaint stone bridges as well.

Of course, since our train ride into Glasgow was beautiful, sunny, and a bit warm, our first full day in the city was gloomy and overcast. We ended up going to the Kelvingrove Museum on a tip from a fellow traveler we met at our hotel. It turned out to be a pretty good choice as half the museum is dedicated to biology - mainly animals. They had various rooms highlighting different aspects such as prehistoric animals, extinct animals, evolution, etc. The funnest (most fun?) room was filled with taxidermied animals (including a giraffe and an elephant) that are "the biggest such-and-such," "the smallest such-and-such," "can smell the furthest," "swims the slowest," etc. One moth could smell a mate from seven miles away. The most venomous mammal is a platypus. The fastest growing plant is bamboo, growing as much as a meter a day. The slowest is a Lady's Slipper Orchid, taking up to 11 years to blossom. The seahorse is the slowest swimmer at .001 MPH. So there ya go! Some fun facts for ya.

The other half of the museum is art: paintings, busts, vases, dresses, furniture. Unfortunately I'm not so cultured as to be able to find a great interest in "art," but we did wander through and check everything out. I was drawn to one particular painting though: Anna Pavlova by John Lavery. I just liked its vibrance.

The last interesting event of the day was our choice of lunch. We stopped into a chip shop to get our fat-fix of the day and noticed a traditionally Scottish item on the menu called haggis. We couldn't quite remember what was in it, just that we wouldn't want to eat it if we did. So we got the haggis meal which consisted of chips (aka french fries) and a deep fried haggis sausage all traditionally wrapped up in brown paper. We got back to the hotel and unwrapped our strange little package and I gingerly took a bit, bracing for the worst. But it was good! It had a nice...meaty, nutty sort of flavor. Just a well flavored sausage really. After we ate it we looked up the ingredients: ground pig liver, heart, and lungs mixed with oatmeal and various spices. Ewww! Sounds so gross, but it was surprisingly tasty.



The next day, April 27, we had yet another lovely day... complete will dark skies and drizzling rain. But we ventured out despite the weather and ended up at the Glasgow Cathedral. There's nothing particularly special about it in comparison to other cathedrals we've seen - it was just another nice church. It did have one unique feature that we've yet to see: a basement, for lack of a better word. And I think there is a better word, I just don't know it... So it was kind of fun to go down the steps into the dimly lit darkness under the choir of the church to see a circle of chairs all facing towards the center of the stone room where an embroidered blue shroud was lain across an altar of some sort. I could just see some sort of sacrifice taking place down here...hehe. I guess I'm trying to say it had a ritualistic feel. We sat and had a chocolate here. Having chocolates is like a ritual for some people, so I felt it would be appropriate.

After visiting the church we went across the street to the Provand's Lordship. It's an old house from the 1400's or so that has been decorated to look as though it were still being lived in. The furniture throughout is from various time-periods, so it's not strictly 15th century. But it's neat to see even just the architecture. I still find the very low doorways interesting - were they really that short?? Or did they not mind ducking a lot? And I like when I come across an old set of stairs that has been walked on and used so often that it's worn a depression into the stone. Due to the weather we just headed back to the hotel for the rest of the day. So it was a short and sweet one.

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