Highland games, some castles, and Edinburgh

The last two days have been QUITE busy and super fun! It's really impossible to capture into words and pictures the whole experience I'm having here but I can try to give you a small taste I hope.

Sunday morning we went to Crieff, Scotland which is apparently where Ewan McGregor is from, to see the Highland Games. Pictures and video are in my Picasa but there was dancing, pipe bands, some heavyweight stuff (hammer and log throwing), running and jumping contests and lots of carnival style food and shopping. It was super cool hearing all the bagpipes and seeing lots of kilts. :) After that Clif wanted to tour The Famous Grouse distillery which is the oldest one in Scotland. It was actually kind of interesting to see the process but I still think the stuff smells gross. :P Then we drove a bit through the Highlands and saw some beautiful scenery, a couple of castles and a very old church. All of these things are also in my Picasa. :)

Today I got on a bus to Edinburgh all by myself and made it there, yay me! I think the only mode of transportation I won't have used by the time this trip is over is maybe a boat. If I could figure out how to fit that in somewhere... :D In the Edinburgh bus station I was looking for a map of the city and found a flier for a free tour of Edinburgh. It sounded interesting and the last one of the day started in just under twenty minutes so I pulled out my handy iPhone and located the Starbucks it was to start in front of and headed out. It turned out to be very cool and so worth it!! He gave us so much history and really cool stories about the different buildings and things. The parts I found the most fun and random I included here.

1) Charles II's statue. So apparently he really wanted the people home in Scotland to like him and one of the ways he decided this could be helped was to have a statue of him put up. He had it made so that he wore roman clothing and was on a horse. The problem with this was that two different people made the statue of him and the statue of the horse. He had asked for his statue to be big and apparently nobody told the guy making the horse so it looks like a donkey in size, comparatively speaking. Then there was a day every year where they had a ceremony and put a crown on the head of the statue but the crown poked holes into the head of the statue and when it rained it filled up with water and made the whole thing lean. So then they had to drill a hole in the bottom of the horse to make the water drain out. I bet you can guess where some smart-aleck decided to put the hole. Anyhow the whole thing seemed to backfire on him. :)

2) Our tour guide showed us the window of a cafe and said that in that in front of that window a poor single mother wrote a book and took some of her inspiration from buildings she could see including a school for orphans. Today the woman is richer than the queen (she is J. K. Rowling). I'll just admit right now I had no idea she lived in Edinburgh at any point in time. :P But I didn't know a LOT of things.

3) Greyfriar's Bobby. A policeman in the 1800s owned him and when he died Bobby came every day to his grave in Greyfriar's Kirkyard and sat by it for 14 years until he died. They buried him just outside the cemetery (he wasn't allowed to be buried IN it) and there is a headstone for him that people leave all kinds of little doggy things at. Close by is a statue of him and a bar named after him. :) Of all the famous people buried in Greyfriar's his is said to be the most visited.

4) The Stone of Destiny. So the Scots had a special stone used in coronation of new kings and at some point the English took it to London. The Scots really wanted their stone back and it was kind of a sore point for a long time. In the 1950s there was an attempt to steal it and return it, and they did a really good job and almost got away with it before being found out and turned in. Then in the 1990s the stone was indeed returned to Scotland to be kept there until needed for a coronation.

5) I had a Dr. Pepper Zero today! I didn't even know they EXISTED. Do we have those in the States?? It wasn't a perfect DP or anything but yay me for having one!! It's been so long...

So that was today and yesterday, tons of fun and lots of things learned about Scotland! Some things I knew a little about and other things I had not a clue but all of it was super interesting. I hope to look up the free tour group in London and Paris both and highly recommend them to anyone else who should go to any of the cities they have tours in. :) So far the rest of my week is a big question mark and I have no idea what I'll be doing but I'm sure having fun making things up as I go!! :)

Falkland Palace and St. Andrew's

Today after sleeping in (ohhh how wonderfully I slept!) Sheila and I hopped in the car and went to see the Falkland Palace. She had never been so I thought it was fun we would experience something new together. :) It was a beautiful palace with really nice gardens (pictures inside are not allowed but outside photos and the gardens are up in my Europe album on Picasa and Facebook). We spent a long time there looking inside at the rooms which they have furnished and there were people in each room to answer questions.

After that we headed out to St. Andrew's to see the castle and cathedral ruins. That was super interesting especially the castle. Apparently once someone tried to attack the castle by mining underground into it and someone inside knew about it so they dug a counter mine to catch them (and succeeded). You can actually go down inside the mines, it was pretty cool!! Next to the cathedral is St. Rule's tower and you can go all the way to the top of that. It was QUITE a climb round and round the stairs spiraled all the way up. When we got up the view was absolutely amazing though, and the wind is crazy up there. :)

Then we walked down a couple of streets and went to the golf course. St. Andrews is the oldest golf course in the world (and I had no idea before I came here haha). We also went down to the west sands and it was so beautiful. I love the clear blue water and the sky was pretty amazingly blue too.

Tomorrow we are going to see some Highlands games!! How COOL is THAT? I'm really excited, it sounds like fun and Sheila says they've never been and have always wanted to go so it'll be a new experience for all of us. :) And hopefully on Monday we'll go to Edinburgh and see some sites there. After that I have NO idea what I'll be doing or which country I'll be in but I guess we shall see yes?? :D This is one adventure, let me tell ya...

trains, trains, and more trains

So I was in a total of six different train stations in the last 24 hours! How cool is that. I think my favorites were Gare du Nord in Paris and St Pancras in London because there were lots of interesting stores and cafes. By the end of the day though I was definitely feeling like Tom Hanks from The Terminal. There's just only so much you can do in those places and they don't all have free wifi AND a plug available. It seemed to be pretty much only one or the other. I did get about halfway through reading Mrs. Polifax on the China Station and I watched Fellowship of the Ring and about an hour of The Twin Towers. That helped keep things interesting. I also popped into the British Library which was between St Pancras and Euston stations (I walked from one to the other). They had wifi AND plugs but I didn't have the right converter with me and by the time I went to get it and come back the library was closed.

I ate a ham quiche for lunch, a jalapeno chicken wrap for a snack-ish and then for late dinner I had my first pasty. I don't know what was in it but potatoes for sure but it wasn't what I ordered because I asked for bacon and cheese and there was definitely no bacon. It was pretty yummy though whatever it was!

While I was online Luke popped up for a chat and quoted "London" by Brandon Heath to me. I guess I'd never heard that song before and had him send it to me. I then proceeded to make a playlist of homesick songs and had my iPod going all evening repeating those songs. It was fun in a melodramatic way to wander aimlessly around the train station singing that song and "Home" by Michael Bublé. :)

So finally after a long day I got on a sleeper train to ride to Scotland. The original plan was not to do this until Saturday and to only have to go from Cumbria but an unexpected hospital visit for my London friend meant I needed to go straight to Scotland. It's a long trip from London to Cupar! I spent the first 45 minutes watching LOTR on my laptop and charging my phone until my laptop battery died and then got all comfy and went to sleep. I dozed off and on waking whenever we came to a train station because I wasn't sure what time it was or when we'd make it to Leuchers which is where I needed to get off and catch a train to go BACK to Cupar (we would pass through to get to Leuchers).

Finally we got there and I hopped up and grabbed my stuff and plopped onto the platform. Only two other people got off at that stop with me. The first thing I noticed was the wind was VERY cold when it blew so I pulled my sweater out to layer on top of my hoodie. Then I looked at the board trying to figure out when the train would come through. Apparently whoever was supposed to be opening that station was late because the doors were all locked so I had to wait out in the cold wind. I was so very glad to see the train stop to pick us up!! Then the sixth and final train station in my trip, and Sheila picked me up and brought me to her adorable cottage where I took a shower and changed clothes and felt human again!! I hate sleeping on planes or trains. :P She also had an amazing little breakfast ready when I got out.

After that we set off to see what we could see! I put up pictures again in Picasa but I've seen two castles, a windmill, and had fish and chips already. :) I love even just driving through the countryside, it's so beautiful!! It's pretty much everything I imagined and more. :) God is so awesome, I can't believe He gave me this opportunity!