Ard-na-said Edinburgh

We are visiting the UK and Norway at the end of May and first part of June in 2010. I have never been to Europe and am very excited about it.

Our daughter has been attending Kingston University this past year so we are going to see her, travel and pack her up to come home. We have family in Stavanger so we don't need hotels and ...

312 miles - set off at some un-Godly hour to drive from Chesterfield to Fife, Scotland to watch football! Trish likes the journeys but thinks the idea is crazy. Anyway, we are here now! Prior to the match we walked around the town - NOT Scotland's biggest attraction. Anyway, 2:30pm and I arrive at the ground ready for the match. One stand is fairly ...

... is screaming for mercy. Found some very nice cookies though, yum!

Time for some wandering! We didn't hit the Royal Mile unfortunately, but we did get a good wander up and down Princes Street. Waiting around in Pizza Hut for some food, just having a general laugh.. who needs to be touristy when you get the full-on local effect?

And the best part was.. SNOW! Very random and very light, but it was there :)

Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom kilgiraffe

... bike at the same time. Trailing faaar behind Brian, I was a pathetic hobbling and shuffling sight. Luckily, there was room for us to squeeze on the train and we didn't have to wait for the next one although there wasn't much room for the drink cart to pass by and we did need to stand the entire trip.

Arrival in Edinburgh greeted us with great frustration. As a quick stop, there was a flurry of chucking bags out the door as well as wheeling and crashing ...

Im leaving tonight. 12.45. We are travelling down to Manchester and check in is at 7.00 am with the take off at 10.00am. Im freaking out that my evil teeth are going to get worse never mind the plane. Scary biscuits but I have now put myself into utter false apathy about the whole thing. Wonder what they ...

... bus which seemed to go past everything we wanted to see. Interesting commentary as we toured some of the old parts of Glasgow. Got off the bus near Macinitosh's famous Glasgow School of Art building which is still in use today as an Art school. Great tour of the building (one of my alltime favourites) - great to be able to see ...

... Grandparents place where we were treated like queens for the weekend. They took care of us and showed us some great sites nearby. Our time with our Scottish Grandparents was spent eating lots!! lots of Margarets home cooking, chocolate, family walks, relaxing in their fantastic gardens, laughs and Alec even entertained us with his impressive bagpipe skills!!! hahaha Thanks Again for everything!! We're still working on our crosswords!!!

... and me to the scotch exhibit. It was a pretty cool thing actually, I learned alot about scotch from it. It was all cheesy interactive stuff though, so I thought taht was a bit lame, but it's allright. We tried Famous Grouse at the start of the tour, which Im not a big fan of. Afterwards we tried 4 different scotches from the different regions: Auchentoshan 3 Wood from the lowlands which was allright, Glenmorangie Madeira from the Highlands which was a bit sweeter, Glenlivet ...

... who looked like medeia's twin (for those of you that know medeia) sone fish and chips and then we hit the road for parts up north. Drove for a few house until we recahed holy island, a place who's only road floods during high tide. Having failed to find a place to camp we decided to picnic on the beach. A small panic as the stove almost killed us all and we decided to have a cold dinner which was still very good. Drove back to our first campsite ...

... strip down to her underwear and simulate sex acts. Also, the humor was just a little too British for my tastes. But, you could tell that the actress was very talented. That fact was the only thing that saved the play for me.

After the play, we headed back to Ratho Hall. We were going to change clothes and head back into Edinburgh for a night of dancing. Not that I dance, mind you. I suffer from a great lack of rhythm in my feet. However, I don't mind ...