Edinburgh

Day two in Edinburgh started with breakfast at our castle hotel. Chris tried haggas and blood pudding. He thought the haggas was fine but couldn't eat more than a bite of blood pudding. After the whole week of watching Chris try everything (and like almost all of it) Doug said 'Chris' taste buds aren't ones you can trust.'

After breakfast we headed into Edinburgh to tour the castle. We walked around the base of the large stone mountain until we found the pathway up. The boys thought about storming the castle and climbing straight up the rock but it would not have been succesful with how long it took them just positioning for this picture.


(castle ruins near the bottom of Castle Rock)



A picture of all of us before we enter the castle... if it looks like we are giggling it's because of how Doug is leaning to take our picture. Luckily I was taking pictures of him while he was taking pictures of us. Priceless...

The castle was amazing... it's one of the things I was most excited to see on this trip. I loved the weathered stone walls and archways. I loved seeing the layout of the fortress and imagining how people lived here. I didn't realize I was so fascinated about history until I saw it up close and personal. They say that people lived atop Castle Rock as early as the 9th century BC although most of the structures were built in the 16th century... all except St. Margaret's Chapel, the small square church built in the early 12th century... the oldest surviving building in Edinburgh. The Chapel was closed while we were there because of a wedding. It was fun to see all the people dressed for it. We stopped to listen to the perfectly dressed bagpiper for awhile before moving on. Usually I don't care much for the bagpipes... but in Scotland I was delighted to hear them.

(a picture inside the Edinburgh castle and fortress)

(outside one of the buildings in the castle)




(views of downtown Edinburgh from the top of the Edinburgh Castle)

The Edinburgh castle is guarded by sheer cliff on three sides. The last side is a gradual slope called the Royal Mile... a lot of Tourist shops, boutiques, and of course another Cathedral.

(typical Scottish teenagers)

My favorite shop was called Ness and had the cutest girly tartans. I bought purses for my girls and one for me. I love it! (If you click here it will take you to the website so you can see my purse... it's the front one on the row of purses on the rotating pictures up top. I got the same plaid for my girls.)

After we had walked around for awhile we headed down an alleyway through several flights of stairs to get to the rest of the city and headed towards Princess Street Gardens for a better look at the Scott Monument. I had seen it the day before from a distance and was hoping to discover it up close. It looked black and gothic and I wondered what it was. It was built to honor Scottish author Sir. Walter Scott in 1844. The boys and I climbed the 300 curly stairs to the top lookout and enjoyed the view of Edinburgh, the castle, the train station, the far away hills... I just love a good view. It was starting to rain a little and was gloomy looking but still spectacular.

From the top of the Walter Scott Monument...





After checking out the Monument we made our way a couple blocks to the restaurant where we had reservations.... a nice fancy Scottish restaurant with beautiful table settings and a soothing atmosphere. We sat at our table and opened the menu.... and just stared at it... anything.... is there anything on this menu we could possibly stomach? It had a few options but most of us were not in the mood to pay 20 pounds (40 dollars) a plate to TRY something and hope for the best. We talked about leaving but weren't sure what to do. Then Doug said..."Is it harder to swallow our pride or Duck?" We agreed it was harder to swallow duck and politely excused ourselves from the restaurant. We had already seen a Hard Rock Cafe and immediately started back towards it. Ahhh, that's better. Big juicy burgers, loud loud music and the only restaurant with refillable drinks in all of Edinburgh. Much more our style. We yelled to each other over the music, laughed about 80's music videos and drank our weight in soda. We even threw back a few desserts in record time as we hurried to make our Ghost Tour at 8:30. With full bladders and stomachs we raced back through the streets and over to the cement stairs leading back up to the Royal Mile. The first few of us chased a mouse up the stairs. But that 'us' would not include me. I waited at the bottom of the stairs for the mouse to be completely out of sight before I even started. Yuck!

We made it to the start of the Ghost Tour a minute before it started. We heard the history of Scotland and the Castle of Edinburgh from a young Scottish fellow with the best accent ever. Then he took us through the graveyard and stopped at several tombstones to tell more stories. He said the graveyard used to be a valley but now is a hill... and that we were standing on more dead bodies piled on top of each other than any other graveyard. That's of course why it is so haunted... lots and lots of spirits. At the very end they had us all step inside a dark cell-like graveyard with an iron gate. All 30 of us piled in as he finished with his scariest and most haunting stories. He told us if our temperature dropped 10 degrees then to just step out of the way of the poltergists columns'... and when we were all on edge, someone in a dark cape jumped in front of the door and yelled at us. Of course we all screamed even though we were expecting just that. I even thought there might be someone on the tour that was in on it so I kept scoping everyone out for anyone looking suspicious. It was not the spooky ghost tour some were hoping for but it was fun nonetheless. Creepy deep cemetaries at night -- still spooky. Another great day.

PS: I'm impressed if you read all this. I know you must think this is the vacation that never ends... but I only have one more day to do and I want to get it all written down in detail while I still remember it!

Scotland

The next morning came way too early. At 3:30am we were waking up and getting ready to meet everyone downstairs by 4:00. We pulled our suitcases two blocks to the bus stop and waited in the darkness till the bus came. We rode the bus to the airport in silence. Our 3-4 hour sleep wasn’t enough for anyone. We checked in on our last Ryanair flight of the week. This time they were a little more strict with the 15 kilograms weight limit and we had to unzip bags and take things out to add to our tired looking GAP carry ons. We got on the airplane and flew to Edinburgh, Scotland. I slept a little, which helped, since I was still feeling sick from the previous night. When we landed in Edinburgh there was a shuttle that took us straight to our hotel.

This time our hotel was not downtown, it was in the country... and I loved it.

We drove through green hills, windy roads and tons of trees. We saw sheep and other animals, cottages and barns… and then there we were… at our hotel… which was a castle! It was beautiful. All of our hotels were amazing. (Thank you Brian.) We stayed at the Marriot Dalmahoy Hotel and Country Club...an old castle they turned into a hotel. Click here for more pictures of it. It's location was amazing... all by itself in the country, surrounded by a beautiful golf course. I wish our weather was better just to show off this castle's beauty but it was grey and overcast almost the whole time we were there. Actually kind of fitting for Scotland.

(back of the castle with statue of the golf course architect)
(view from the front of the hotel)

We got there at 10:00am and our rooms were ready and waiting. We quickly scribbled down each others room number and separated. The girls headed straight for bed. I was asleep within minutes and slept three hours without even moving.

St. Andrews
Chris was too excited to sleep. He and the boys left in one of the rental cars for St. Andrews... St. Andrews Links in the town of St Andrews, Fife, Scotland, is regarded as the "home of golf". It is the oldest course in the world, where the game has been played since the 15th century. Today there are six public golf courses; Chris and the boys played the New Course, (still called the New Course even though it is the second oldest - built in the 1800's).

Chris said it almost felt like Christmas morning driving into the beautiful town. In his own words... "Playing the entire round felt surreal but I loved every single minute. The course was classic links golf with long rough that was almost impossible to hit out of, lots of other rough that made it impossible to find your errant ball, and occasionally rough in the middle of the fairway. The fairways weren't flat, but hilly, and the grass wasn't luscious green like US courses but was thin and a faded green. The sand traps were so deep, some taller than I. It was very nerve wracking the first attempt out of the sand. One of my shots ended up right against the 6 foot high back edge of the sand making a sideways shot back into the fairway the only possible play. The greens were challenging in design but rolled very true. The entire experience was amazing. I did well for the course. I can't wait till next time."

Edinburgh
After our much needed nap, the girls took off downtown to check out Edinburgh. We ate at a pub called Ryan's and then walked through the streets checking out fun shops and tartan stores. The buildings were large, the streets were wide... not near the same quaint feel as some of the other cities we'd visited. I loved the monuments and statues everywhere, the views of distant cathedrals, the open green parks full of trees, and of course the massive rock mountain jetting up in the middle of the city... home of the Edinburgh castle. We walked through a graveyard on our way out of the city. Mossy, weathered and somewhat abandoned... tall headstones sticking up in random order, and others forgotten and sitting askew alongside a dark stone wall.

We made it back to the hotel after driving around the city a few times (totally got lost) and headed to the cozy lounge for drinks and scones with 'clotted' cream and jelly. Yum. We sat and talked until the boys showed up exhausted but elated, and showed us all of their new st. Andrews golf hats, towels, ball markers etc. It was a nice day... one of Chris' favorites!

The Dingle Peninsula

(These two pictures were taken from the plane flying into Cork, Ireland. Just look at all those shades of green.)

Rick Steves, travel writer extraordinaire - and whose books we brought along on our trip - said that if you have 1-4 days to spend in Ireland, see Dublin. If you have 5 days in Ireland, see Dublin and the Dingle Peninsula. Well, Rick doesn't know how we like to go at full speed to pack everything in. So even though we only had two days in Ireland, we did Dublin and the Dingle Peninsula. Are we crazy?

Our second day in Ireland was a long field trip. We bused to the airport and flew 30 minutes (no luggage this time) from Dublin to Cork, a town on the southern coast of Ireland. From there we rented two cars and drove an hour to where the guys were golfing. Actually I should say Doug and Chris drove and this is significant because it marked Chris' first time driving on the left side of the road, which he did perfectly and loved... even the shifting with his left hand. (Most cars in the UK are standard.) When we arrived at the golf course the girls and guys parted.

(Note: No where did Rick Steves say to golf instead of seeing the amazing Dingle Peninsula but alas... boys will be boys... especially our boys.)

The girls ran into the little grocery store, grabbed some drinks, fruit and the makings for sandwiches and headed to the car for a little road trip. Missy drove. She lives in England and is used to the left side... and she's good. Even still it took the rest of us a little while to calm down as she sped around corners with big trucks coming to the right of us. The roads were so narrow. When we had to pass another vehicle, one rear view window brushed along the bushes and one nearly missed the other car. It was pretty exciting... only a couple gasps from us and a few expletives from Missy.

The countryside was amazing. Lines of trees, grey stone fences, sheep wandering on the lush grass, little wooden homes and barns speckled across green hills. Quite picturesque.

After an hour of driving through the countryside we were at the start of the Dingle Peninsula. With our Rick Steves book in hand we zeroed out our speedometer at the first stop and then read in detail about every building, old fort, and church as we came to it. Add to that a little geography lesson, some neat facts and a lot of history... the ultimate field trip.

(the Atlantic Ocean with The Kerry Peninsula in the background)

We stopped at this old fort and walked down to see it better. The peninsula is covered with old monuments, stone pillars, and circular remains of Stone Age ring forts. In 500 BC they were Celtic chieftain’s headquarters. (The ring forts have survived all these years because of superstitious beliefs that they were ‘fairy forts.’ )



The views were really breathtaking. The crashing waves, the craggy cliffs, the lush green grass, the ominous sky. It was a bit misty and gray but such is the weather here on this distant tip of Ireland. Locals say, "there is no bad weather... only inappropriate clothing."

On the picture above if you look closely you can see the road we drove on right past the houses and over the bend. The same for the entire 40 mile loop... rocky cliffs and ocean on one side and fields of sheep on the other. --The peninsula is home to more than 500,000 sheep.



Almost the whole loop was done in fast forward. We stopped, took pictures and hopped back in only to turn the corner and see more of the same. These pictures just don't do it justice... the view was 360 degrees. I wish we could have sat on the grass and soaked it all in.... but we had a plane to catch. We drove back through the windy road to pick up the boys at 5:00. They too had been rushing, and had to run their last four holes with clubs on their back so they would finish on time. Now that I wish I had a picture of. They loved the golf. It was a beautiful course nestled in green hills... they even explored some of the ruins after errant shots.


After a quick gas stop we were back on the road to the airport only to be stuck in stop and go traffic. Crap. Chris and Doug talked back and forth over the walkie talkies about missing our flight... half joking/half serious. Luckily the traffic lightened up and we sped back to Cork just in time. Doug and Chris checked in first, took the rental cars back, and made it the gate just before boarding. I think we cut it as close as you could. What a day.


Back in Dublin we took the bus back to the city. It was 11:00 but the group was hungry so they headed to TGIFridays for a late dinner. Chris dropped me off at the hotel so I could get a head start on some sleep... (the 16 hour travel day left me feeling a little carsick.)