Monday, June 29, 2009

In search of Nessie.

5:39 PM London time

Today was probably the best day of our trip so far. it started off a little shaky, I got up really early, unnecessarily. And then we got out of the hotel too early and nothing was open which meant a lot of useless walking around. I should be used to this walking around by now. My mother loves to just walk around. Personally I'm not a huge fan AND the blisters on my feet were screaming at me to stop. Then we got on a Jacobite tour of Loch Ness. First we bussed from Inverness to the Loch. Then we jumped on a boat to go to Urquhart Castle which is really just the ruins of an old castle but that's what you see in a lot of pictures of Loch Ness. Anyway then we hit up the visitors centre there before getting back on the bus again to get to the Loch Ness exhibition centre. It was really interesting. I'm rather convinced now that the Loch Ness monster is a giant sturgeon.

Then we came back to Inverness on the bus and found a used book store where I picked up some book including a history of Scotland. I love books stores. I also love museums which is what we did before returning to our hotel.

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Our vacation Act II

8:31 London Time

For those of you who have been trying to follow my trip each day I do apologize for the sparseness of my blogging. I have only had free WiFi at one hotel that we've stayed at and well frankly I don't want to spend the money for the ridiculous internet rate over here. So that's what's been happening. That's also why you'll see some backdated entries.

Okay now on with the vacation update. Today we drove from Edinburgh to Inverness. The day started off kind of disastrous. We didn't get as big of a vehicle as we thought we would and we weren't sure if we could fit all the people and luggage into the van (there are 6 of us traveling in a 7 passenger van). But we packed it in there pretty tight and just barely made it.

The people we're traveling with are kind of difficult. Although this trip has been pretty difficult for me since I was the only person under 50 on the first part of the tour. One of the people that we're traveling with makes me particularly uneasy. And given such close quarters it's difficult to avoid him.

Tonight we actually went for supper at a restaurant owned by the cousins of one of the farmers we went to see on the earlier portion of our trip. It was very good. Funny story we ran into a tour guide outside the visitor's centre and told him where we wanted to eat and he laughed. He said he'd never been asked where that particular restaurant was and asked who recommended it. Then we had a nice little chat and we might go on one of his tours tomorrow. We'll see how we feel.

Tomorrow we're going to try to get on a boar cruise of Loch Ness. Of course I'll be keeping an eye out for Nessie. I'm almost done all of my shopping for this trip, at least the souvenirs for other people part. The rest of it I haven't quite decided.

Monday, June 22, 2009

Cattle Day

10:54 PM London time

Today was the first day of the cattle portion of our trip. I haven't been on the farm fr a while so I've kind of lost the ability to pick a good animal in a herd, but anyway. There was nothing really eventful today. Although I've noticed that they feed you really well on this trip. I do love e some food. We even had entertainment for our evening meal. It was a jazz band, they were pretty good for all I know about jazz music.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

The first day of the rest of my vacation


9:05 PM London time

So we've left Scotland and come back south to northern England to meet the rest of our crew. We're in the lake district and well these lakes are not exactly the most awesome lakes I've ever seen. I live in between 2 lakes that would be considered ginormous compared to these. Here's a picture that I took of the lake.

Here's another little detail that I failed to omit in my previous post mostly because if I had he would have read it over my shoulder but my seatmate from Montreal to London was super cute. I chatted him up for a while but it's hard to be flirty when your father is sitting in the seat in front of you. Anyway he was on transit to Israel and his name was Zach.


Alright moving on. Today we went to Gretna Green to meet the rest of our tour. Here's the deal with Gretna Green, way back in the day people didn't exactly have weddings. They just kind of said "hey we're married". Then a law was passed in England and the legal age was 21 and you had to get married in a church. But the law didn't apply to Scotland and the age of consent was 16. So English couples would trek over the border and Gretna Green was the first town they'd come to, so they'd get married in the Blacksmith's shop. We saw a mock wedding and visited the little shops and museum. One cool thing is that you can still get married or blessed there. Oh and they had a bagpiper (left) that you could hire out.
As I said we're in England but we're going back to Scotland the day after tomorrow.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Welcome to Scotland

8:47 PM London Time

I think I'm going to like it here the first thing I saw once we had gotten through the baggage claim here in Glasgow was Starbucks. It's reassuring that even so far from home I can find something that's just like home. That's the joy of the franchise industry. It's built for people exactly like me. Here's a picture we took of the special Scottish Edition Starbucks mug.

We just got back from supper in the restaurant in our hotel. Now I don't know if this is just a kind of high class establishment or if there really isn't anything like a hamburger in Scotland. Here's what we hate from supper.



Salad with Goat Cheese, Lamb Chops and Stuffed Chicken Breast















Friday, June 19, 2009

In the Middle of the Night

7:08 PM Montreal Time, 2:08 AM London Time

Wow it sure does get dark when you travel forward into the night. It's probably about midnight outside the plane right now even though it's only 8 PM back home. We're supposed to be landing at 7 AM in London so we've got another 5 hours on this place. Actually it'll probably be a bit longer since we got off a little bit late.

Is it pathetic that I've only been away about 12 hours and I'm about ready to come home? It's just been a long day is all. One down, 10 days to go.

Success!

7:08 Montreal Time

So I've made it to Montreal and now we're on our way across the Atlantic. It's pretty insane, but I'm super excited. The first part of our trip has not been without it's ups and downs. First of all my mother and I got into a bit of a row on the tail end of our last flight. Then mom and dad got into it just a little.

Everything at the airport is s incredibly expensive. Here I was thinking $25 was plenty of domestic currency to leave with me since after all we would be overseas after the first day. Clearly I was wrong about that.

I'm seated in the window seat and my poor seat mate is going to know more about my bathroom habits than anyone should about a complete stranger but I have been informed that he's not one for sleeping on planes so at least I know he'll be up. It's also really noisy since it's a large plane and I'm right behind the engine. Good seating choice mom/CAA. But at least my seat mate is cute.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

It's here it's here it's finally here

Well actually it doesn't arrive until tomorrow, and "it" is my first trans-Atlantic trip. I have seriously been planning and saving for this trip for well over a year and now it's finally arrived. We fly to Montreal and then to London and on to Glasgow tommorow and then return on the 3rd of July. I'll try to post some stuff while I'm over there but I'm not making any promises. I suspect there will be little to no internet access at some of the places we're going but we'll see.

I'm so excited I may not be able to sleep tonight.

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Why you shouldn't hang out with your brother's friends

I have a few brothers. Usually far more than I want to have but I'm pretty close with them. I'm particularly close with my younger brother, and since my friends can really only handle me in small doses I don't have a lot of people that I go out with regularly. So sometimes I end up hanging out with my brother and his friends. Which is fine until you realize that the guy you've been chatting up all night is 19. Of course this would never happen with my older brothers since they still refer to me as their little sister even though they date women younger then me and we don't hang out very often anyway.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

I changed my background again

The other one was super pretty but it just didn't do the things I needed it to do. So I've discovered this one which is oddly exactly what I'm all about. Yeah yeah I realize it just looks like a bit of denim to everyone else but it says something to me about my roots.