Scotland: From Haddington to Stirling to Glasgow (Alternate Post Title: Braveheart day)

I checked out of my hotel this morning (Easter) and walked across the street to a cemetery/church. At 11am, the bells of the church started ringing and it seemed like the whole of the little town came to church. All the sudden, the roads were full of parked cars and people were passing me (the girl taking pictures of old headstones), wishing me a Happy Easter. 

It was a gorgeous, sunny day and warm. I didn't need a jacket at any point.

Last night, I decided that I wasn't going to drive to Glasgow in the morning, but rather I'd go to a city called Sterling. So, off I went with the National Wallace Monument in mind. On the way, I saw a street sign pointing to the Battle of Bannockburn. It is at this time that you should go watch Braveheart if you haven't seen it, because that's basically what I spent my day learning about. Also, it's a great movie. 

Then it was off to Stirling Castle, which I did not enter but took pictures of the outside. And then finally to the Wallace Monument. There were two awesome things about this monument. Firstly, there were two actors who dressed up and told the story of the Battle of Stirling Bridge. It was a simple story, told in a simple yet entertaining way. No over-the-top bullcrap like you'd get in the states. I feel like I really have a grip on the story of William Wallace, Andrew de Moray and Robert the Bruce, amongst others. The second awesome part was climbing the 246 steps to the top of the monument. 

I will now talk about the stairs - if you bore easily, skip this paragraph. The stairs are in a narrow spiral staircase. You couldn't fit two people shoulder to shoulder and you wouldn't want to because the stair itself is basically shaped like a triangle with the point in the middle. But this narrow passage was the only way up or down, so you would HAVE TO fit two people in there, one going up and one going down. And this is Easter. Every Scotsman and his wife brought their kids to the monument today (and the Battle of Bannockburn and Sterling Castle). Every 50 steps or so was a gallery. You could hop out of the stairwell to catch your breath and learn something new. For instance, William Wallace was studying to be a priest (strange, as he was always getting in trouble for his quick and violent temper) when the English burned his house down with his wife inside it. He fought the English residing throughout the country, in the hopes of having a Free (independent) Scotland. He became the "Guardian of Scotland". I'll refrain from more history lessons, but I had a great time today.

I enjoyed Scotland WAY more than I thought I would, and I really did think I'd enjoy it quite a bit. Two thumbs up to Scotland!

I've filled the car with fuel, re-packed my bags and am all settled in the Ramada (Glasgow Airport). I fly to Paris (through London) tomorrow morning at 6:55am. Looking forward to more adventures.

Scotland: Dundee to St Andrews to Edinburgh to Haddington

I might keep this entry short because I'm exhausted.

The main points I'd like to make right now are these:

• I've gotten my money's worth out of this rental car (it's been a beautiful, throaty, manual transmission, diesel, driver's dream - though now it's filthy)
• I bought a shirt at St Andrews Old Course (Scotland being the birthplace of Golf). Luckily it was 1/2 off. To give you an idea. If you were to buy a zip up golf jacket, you'd be looking at £230! I'm super excited about my shirt and will wear it every time I golf from now until I die.
• Edinburgh was an awesome touristy town. I took so many pictures of buildings, it's going to make for a painful slide show later. 
• Edinburgh castle was good, but without a tour guide or audio guide, I learned nothing. And ironically, that's a lesson learned.
• Booking a hotel BEFORE you get to a town is a brilliant move. I wasn't able to book a place in Edinburgh due to it being so pricey (especially on a Saturday...the day before Easter). I went to lunch today and used their wi-fi to book a place in Haddington, a 25 minute drive away. The place is quaint as hell and I'm loving it. They even gave me a key (like a real KEY) for my room. The hotel is called Maitlandfield House Hotel, if you want to look it up.

I might write more later, but for now, I'm off to dinner.

Scotland: From Inverness (down to Loch Ness and back) to Glamis Castle and Dundee

After so many hours on the road yesterday, I was exhausted last night and slept like the dead in my tiny room from 10-4:30am. Then I woke up for an hour or so and back to sleep until 9. It was great. A true holiday.

It was raining this morning, but not heavily. The drive down to Loch Ness (to buy my "Nessy" t-shirt) was along the same windy road I'd enjoyed so much yesterday. It's not as much fun in the rain and mud, but it wasn't that long on the road. 16 miles each way.

Then off to Glamis Castle (pronounced Gla-ms, like Glahms). The drive today wasn't as fun as yesterday for the 1st hour because I was in traffic on a fairly main road. We were traveling at 40 or 50 in a 60 or 70 zone - so we were moving, but slower than we all wanted. But then for the next hour or hour and a half, the rain cleared up and I felt like I was on my very own private road to the middle of nowhere. It was great. I got to drive through some snowy mountains (or, more likely, hills), saw lots of sheep, a few highland cows, beautiful birds, new windy roads and a great big castle!

Feel free to read up on Glamis castle here. It was the first day of the season for tours; they'd been closed for the winter. Good timing on my part. Also good timing was that when I showed up, a tour was starting in 5 minutes!

I wasn't allowed to take pictures on the tour, which is a bummer because there was some cool stuff inside. The best was the chapel. It was a fairly small room, which could hold maybe 45 people tops. There were 90 (or so) paintings in the room. Mostly painted directly on the ceiling. I did manage a sneaky photo of it, though it didn't turn out that great. After the tour, I ate a delicious (I mean D-licious!) meal of sea bass, new potatoes and a salad from the castle garden. Overall, the castle (and the meal) was pretty brilliant.

I am sure I didn't learn much about the history because I'm not up on my Kings and Queens but I can tell you that the Queen Mum (that's the current queen's mother, who died in 2002) spent her childhood here. Her sister was actually born in the castle. Here are the sparse facts I managed to remember:

• Mary Queen of Scots' father (James V) was banned from the castle for having Lady Glamis burned alive. He couldn't charge her with anything legit, so he said she was a witch.
• One of the Earl's was good friends with William Shakespeare - apparently this is the castle from Macbeth.
• 130 Years ago, the family (Bowes-Lyon) had a pet bear who got out one day into the garden and was killed by a Highland Cow. 
• This castle is haunted. The story goes that the Queen Mum's sister was going to go into the chapel to practice on the piano. She peered through the window in the door and saw a woman standing at the pulpit. She waited an hour for her to finish up, only to find that there was no one in the chapel.
• Most of the original artifacts from the castle were burned or stolen due to the many raids, wars, etc.
• During WWI, the castle was used by the army as a hospital...and the boys really screwed up the place, putting cigarette burns in the HUGE billiards table, etc.
• The Powder Room was the smallest room in the house and it was manned by a servant. After a long night of drinking by the fire, a man's make-up would harden and his head would be itchy because of the wig (and the lice). Men wore thick make up to hid their small pox scars, but then make-up became fashionable. Anyway, the man would head into the powder room - squeezing in there with all his attire, take off his wig and hand it to the servant. The servant would shake out the wig (and step on any bugs that fell out), refresh the man's make-up, powder the wig with any color so chosen and out would step the man...fresh and fancy.
• Any finally, I learned that the phrase "top drawer" meaning "of the best quality" comes from a literal set of drawers. The king's chest of drawers had 7 drawers. One for each day of the week. Sunday Best was on top. 

Oh and you know the movie "The King's Speech", I got to see the desk that the actual king used to write out the speech. Neat.

Now I'm in a town called Dundee. If I thought Glasgow roads were hard to figure out, Dundee showed me a whole new level of confusing.

It is at this point that I want to say THANK GOD for the invention of the GPS. Without it I'd never have gotten out of Glasgow, let alone gone all over Scotland!

 

Scotland: From Glasgow through Glencoe to Inverness

I arrived in Glasgow on April 1st (yesterday) around 2:30pm after a flight from Miami with a stopover in Heathrow. During the flights, I estimate getting 2 or 3 hours of interupted sleep, but that didn't stop me. I rented a car from the airport and (not having booked a hotel prior to arrival) punched in City Centre into the GPS.

Let me back up slightly. When I arrived in London, the Customs agent asked me the typical questions like "Where will you be staying?" and "What is your current employment". He quickly realised he wasn't going to be able to just stamp my passport and move on and was clearly going to go through a routine. I could see him try to remember the "extended questioning". He was very polite and did his job, "So, you don't know anyone in Glasgow? And you don't have a job? Where are you going to stay? How long are you planning on traveling?" Etc. He stamped my Aussie passport and through I went.

After arriving in Glasgow and picking up the rental car (a sweet black Citroën), I drove around for about 2 hours. Snapping pictures here and there. I took a picture of the building affectionately known as "The Armadillo", which is very similar to the Sydney Opera House. I also saw the BBC Scotland building and the Glasgow Science Centre. It was my intention to get free wi-fi somewhere and book a room online to save money, but the wi-fi at the McDonalds wasn't great, so I stopped by three different hotels asking for their cheapest room, eventually opting for the Travel Lodge, which was surprisingly nice. The room was big and clean and the shower was fantastic.

I opted to stay in for the rest of the night, unwind, book hotels for the next night and my last night and catch up on sleep and head off to Inverness in the morning.

That brings us to today.

I woke at 6:30am and took my sweet time getting ready. I walked a block and a half to a Tesco Express to pick up bananas, water, nuts, cereal...basic road food. I had been looking online for routes to Inverness and though there was a more direct route (3 1/2hr), I opted to take the A82 (highway) for one very specific reason. In Skyfall, the James Bond movie, Bond and M are driving through Scotland and stop to have a chat on the side of the road. The A82 is that road and I wanted to see that spot. It would add an extra hour of driving time, but 15 minutes into the drive I knew it was the right decision.

This is no exageration, the A82 was the most fun, most scenic, best paved, most beautiful road I've ever driven on. Even better than highway 1 in California or whatever that road is that goes around Ohau. This was breathtaking. And sure, I'm comparing beach roads to a mountain road, but this was SO FUN to drive. I stopped to take pictures more times that I can count and each time I stopped, I stayed as long as I would allow myself (knowing I still had a lot of road in front of me). The Merril hiking shoes I bought were given a workout. I climbed up small hills or followed footpaths, trudged through mud or snow, squished my way through whatever the ground in Scotland is made of. At one point, I was climbing up this small hill and could've sworn I was on that hill in the Neverending Story that sneezed. I took pictures of mountains and sheep, waterfalls, roadsigns, the road itself and none of the pictures did the place justice.

One hotel/café I stopped at had a sign that read "walkers welcome" and just as I was about to leave, there they were. Backpackers about to walk into the wild white mountains. Scotland is super accommodating to tourists who want to enjoy nature walks or just stop to take a picture every 400 yards. There were SO MANY opportunities to stop on the two lane road. I was worried I'd never get to Inverness because I couldn't tear myself away.

Eventually (after about 3 1/2 hours), I had to turn right onto B852. Again, AMAZING road and I'm sure the views were good, but I couldn't really stop to look becuase this is a 1 lane road...going both ways. So, if a car was coming your way, you'd have to pull over or move into a "passing place" - so labeled because they were 1/2 circles of pavement every so often to allow for squeezing by other drivers. I was 100% focused on the road. There was VERY LITTLE traffic on this road though. I could drive for 10 minutes and not see anyone. At one point a sheep was my oncoming traffic, but he ambled over to some more interesting grass.

Finally, I arrived in Inverness and found my hotel. Again, pleasantly surprised by the room. This time, I booked ahead and paid nearly 1/2 as much as I did for the Travel Lodge. The room at the Glen Mohr is probably 1/5th the size. You know when you're walking up some stairs and there's a landing, you turn, and then you walk up the rest of the stairs. Well, my room is on the landing. I opened the door to find a spectacularly clean room about the size of a prison cell...maybe a little longer, but possibly narrower. This is not a complaint. The room is fine. The twin sized bed is comfortable, the bathroom looks new and clean and the heater will take no time at all to fill the room with warmth. There is room service available, but I don't know where they'd put it. =)

Making the decision to come to Scotland (and to travel in general) was the right choice. I knew it on the A82 today. I knew it on the windy road leading me between two snowy mountains. I smiled for at least a solid hour, talking to myself out loud, "Best decision ever!" or "Ha! Snow!" or "Sheep! oooooooh, cute little baby lamb!" Seriously good day.

California Continued

I am already in Florida and have been for days. It is much harder to blog while travelling than I expected. I get to the end of my days and am exhausted. When the next day comes, I want to get up an go enjoy new experiences.

For the most part, California was low-key. I only saw a few friends, which is really how I wanted it. I had been there twice in the past year and felt like focusing, rather than seeing and doing as many things as possible. Also, it is my hope that at the tail end of this adventure, I will go back to the Bay Area and catch up with everyone (or get a job there...depending on the circumstances).

I slept in nearly every day, went to dinner with a few people and mostly hung out with my friend Kate. I got a SIM card with AT&T for use within the US. This is not something I'd done before. Every other trip to the US, I've either been fine without a phone or only had wi-fi, but I have to say this was so much better. I was able to text on the go, or check where I was on a map. I felt more mobile and more connected. I felt safe. In hindsight, I think I would rather have gone with Verizon as AT&T doesn't have great service where I am in Florida, but it's been fine.

One day, I had a public transportation adventure trying to get from Castro Valley to Palo Alto. I took a local bus to the Bayfair BART station (Bay Area Rapid Transit) then Caltrain from Milbrae to Palo Also. The whole trip took me about two and a half hours. When I got to Palo Alto, I had lunch at a cafe which shared it's space with a co-op art gallery. I had a nice chat with a woman who had been making art there for 25 years. 

Another highlight of my Bay Area trip included helping Kate buy a BRAND NEW CAR! On my second to last day in town, we went to a few dealerships in the morning and then back to the Ford dealership to haggle and negotiate for a fully loaded Ford Escape - Titanium edition. I had a blast! Seriously, the process of buying a car and getting a good deal is exhilarating. And BOY did we get a good deal. The finance guy showed us that the dealership lost $2,100 on the car. It's the first time I'd ever seen someone not lose money the minute they drove off the lot. 

The weather in California was sunny every day, which isn't saying much because they are in a massive draught, but still...I enjoyed it. The temperature was very reasonable except for the day we went car shopping. It was windy and cold (probably 50). Keep in mind, I'd come from Summer in Australia. 50 F was not pleasant.

When I left Australia, I took all my belongings with me to California. This consisted of two VERY FULL suitcases (30kg & 23kg) and one very full backpack. I reorganised my belongings and left one of those full suitcases at Kate's house. It was full of clothes, books and my laptop...things I am not going to need while travelling. 

On Feb 28th Kate took me to the San Francisco airport in her fancy new car. I had one full sized suitcase (45lbs) and one backpack to take with me to Seattle...

I landed in California 4 days ago, but it feels like I've only been here 1 day. Jet lag, I guess.

The first thing I did after being picked up at the airport and sitting in typical California traffic was get some In n Out burger! Cheeseburger, Fries and a Barq's root beer. SO GOOD.

Most days/nights have been a blur since then. I've been sleeping a lot. I can easily sleep to 11am if not longer. Partially because I can't fall asleep until 3am (on average) but also because the room I'm in is so dark. It's luxurious and I'm enjoying every minute of sleep.

Friday night, Kate and I went to Chili's (Buffalo Chicken Salad) in San Leandro. It was packed. We waited for about 30 minutes to be seated, which I enjoyed tremendously. Taking in the cultural diversities was entertainment enough. I'd say the clientele were 90% African American and Latino, 10% Caucasian (and that might be generous). 

Saturday night was Chipotle (Salad with Chicken and Guacamole) and then over to a friends' for Cards Against Humanity, which I can only describe as a Mad Libs style card game where you can only fill in the blanks with the most offensive options available to you. Check your sensibilities at the door, and it's WHOLE LOT of fun. 

Sunday was spent shopping with Kate and then we had Casper's (Cheesedog with a little mustard) from the Hayward location. I once got very stoned in college and ate TWO of these foot long hotdogs. I did NOT feel well afterwards. But then, I didn't really care either.

It may seem like I'm having a food tour of the bay area, but a girl's gotta eat and I am enjoying all my favorite things. Even Thin Mint Girl Scout Cookies and Trader Joe's frozen burritos and tamales. 

Two posts ago, I said I was concerned that US me would want to stay in the US and that Australian Me would be out of luck. Well, US me is still concerned for Australian me, but at this point and for the next few months, I'm going to relieve myself of the burden of figuring out "the rest of my life". There is no great sin in enjoying where you are in the moment and future me is just going to have to live with that. Wherever that may be.

So far, I'm having a great time taking it easy and enjoying myself with no agenda.

Last night in Oz

It's my last night in Australia before the big adventure. Everything's all taken care of. I've checked into my flights, booked an airport shuttle, packed my bags and enlisted the help of my flatmate to assist me in carrying my luggage down 4 flights of stairs in the morning. My friend Kate will pick me up from the airport in San Francisco.

I've really enjoyed the last two months, which is exactly how long I've been unemployed. Coming and going as I please, watching all the movies in the theatre, golfing, planning this trip I'm about to go on. I've spent a lot of time with friends and that's been the best part.

The next two months (hopefully longer) will be more of the same. A quick recap:

• San Francisco / Bay Area for 9 days
• Friends
• Seattle for 4 days
• Friends
• Pike's Market, etc
• Florida with the folks for 25 days
• Met's vs Red Sox spring training game
• Harry Potter World
• Scotland
• Glasgow
• Loch Ness
• Paris
• Too much to list...I'm looking forward to these blog posts =)
• Italy (not yet booked)
• Copenhagen (not yet booked)
• And then whatever my heart desires

I vow to update this blog at least once in each location, ideally a little something everyday (at least when I'm in Europe). I will also try to include more pictures than I have included thus far (current photo count: zero).