Hi everybody, it´s us again! Sorry we haven´t gotten back to you in a while. So, last time we wrote we were still in Glasgow. The next day we took a day trip to Edinburgh and the Fringe Festival was on. It was crazy there, but kinda cool since we saw a few good shows in the street. We walked up to the castle and walked from there to the palace along the Royal Mile (by the way, what the heck is the difference between a castle and a palace??). Along the walk there were (in addition to all the street perfomers there for the Festival) these things called "closes". For those of you that don´t know, which would´ve included us up till now, a close is a little alley way connecting the main street to a court yard where the doors to the houses were.
After the palace, we hiked up this really cool hill. If we´d had a guide book with us, we could even tell you the name of the hill. But we didn´t, so there. (actually, maybe it was something like Hollyrood....seriously).
On the train ride back to Glasgow, there were three Irish 20-somethings drinking beer. The kids got a lovely education in drunken behaviour on trains, including foul language, spilling beer, watching your friend sit in the spilled beer, spraying beer at your friend, talking about sex.....you get the picture.
Later that night, Rob arrived, having had a train ride that was similar to the one just described, including
some of the best examples of fine Scottish parenting, such as how to use profanity with your child, how to
bonk your child in the head when annoyed with your child, and finally how to give your child a gameboy to make up for bad parenting behaviour. The reunion as a family was great. We had only one small problem. That is, we were in a room for a maximum of four. So we had to sneak Rob in, had to sneak him to breakfast, and had to sneak him out again.
After sneaking around in Glasgow, we "hired" a car and drove up to the highlands. The drive required a crash course (no pun intended) in British driving, including learning how to drive on the lefthand side of the road, driving with the gear shift on the left, dodging oncoming traffic on insanely narrow highways that sometimes became single lanes, learning to deal with your wife screaming "You´re too close to the edge of the road," all while balancing a cup of coffee, and trying to enjoy the spectacular scenery. Add to that the occasional signs showing upcoming falling rocks, dear crossing, sheep crossing, and elderly persons crossing (seriously!). When Rob finally did drive off the road, he said, "Oh my," and Diane looked smug.
We can laugh about this now, because we´re all alive.
We stayed at a lovely bed and breakfast where they served us vegetarian Haggis, which tastes a lot like vegetarian Cholent. Delicious.
On the first day in Inverness, in the highlands, we went on a hike above Loch Ness. We met a skinny retired schoolteacher who told us about an amazing 1800 foot hike for the next day. This dude was walking at about double our speed, but we somehow kept up. His suggested hike, the next day, was totally awesome. And freakishly we ran into him later that day in town, and told him so.
We finished off our visit to the highlands by gorging ourselves on high tea at a little cafe by the river. High tea there is supper followed by about 5 cakes/scones each and some tea.
That´s it for now, we´ll tell you about the plane ride to Spain next time.
Love, RANAD