Tours, and Cruises, and Castles - OH MY!

 Today we were able to drive around Glasgow in a tour bus.  We saw Georgian Square (I have some pics that I'll have to "dump" on to Facebook later), Learned about the River Clyde (Clyde means "strong"). The river divides the city into the East End, West End, North End and South End, much like we, in Colorado we use the Mountains as directions.  Our tour guide, Marge, showed us where certain famous people/inventors lived - and always ended those tid-bits with "because the Scots invented everything" 😂 She's a riot!  We learned that University of Glasgow is 500+ years old.  Highland Cathedral is known as the Gaelic Church (one of the few churches that were preserved in the many revolutions that have happened) - they speak only Gaelic in their sermons.  Its so beautiful, this picture doesn't do it justice (also, its rather difficult to get a good picture while in a tour bus that's on the move)!

Another bit of information we learned is that Dumbarton Castle used to be guarded with geese.  Anyone that's been chased or attacked by a goose KNOWS how effective they can be as guard animals.  We had a good chuckle over that one.

Next, we made our way to Loch Lomond and went on a cruise from one side to the other.  This cruise boat is deceptive in the size when you first look at it.  Once you're inside, it's quite spacious and nice! 

We learned of fault lines that run right through the middle of the Loch (Scotland used to be part of North America), that there is a herd of wallabies on one of the islands (some pets that were brought in by the
island's owners reproduced and created a whole herd), that another island contains Scotland's only established nudist colony (thankfully the weather was such that no one was out haha), and that the wildlife likes to swim between the islands!  We also managed to get a picture of an Osprey nest where one was standing on the edge keeping watch over the eggs inside.

After the cruise, we went to a whiskey distillery and toured that.  They didn't allow cameras in most of that one, but we were able to grab a few pics in certain areas.  Did you know it takes 50 liters of water to make just 1 liter of whiskey?  I didn't know this until today!  They have their own water source on site at this location, they've turned the waterfall into a beautiful and serene pond area. We learned that they used to call the evaporation of the whiskey as it ages the "angel's share".  They called it this for a couple reasons 1) they didn't know about science back then and 2) Scots don't like wasting their whiskey, so they just share it 😂 Another bit of info we learned was that it takes 6 YEARS to create a wooden cask from the time it is felled to the time it can store liquor (that's quite the process).  The type of wood will change the flavor over the years as well.  The picture with the bottles on the wall (terrible lighting, I know, they didn't allow flash photography in that room) represents what the coloring looks like each year (there are 29 bottles in each display). 

Next stop was Sterling Castle. We spent 2 hours exploring and loving every minute absorbing history, and could have easily spent another couple hours at minimum! The legend of the Unicorn came from here in Scotland - Sterling Castle to be exact! They have tapestries telling the stories of the hunts they would go on for the great and beautiful creature.  Queen Anne's gardens were stunning and peaceful to be in. This castle was so interactive and child friendly. They had a game of Chutes and Ladders as one of the displays where you could "lay siege to the castle" haha I'm sad we didn't get to go wander through the graveyard (I know, I'm weird, but I enjoy looking through the headstones and wondering at the people that are resting there and what their lives must have been like). 

Another odd thing we noticed here at the castle was that there was an inner courtyard that...possibly held a lion!  WHAT?! 

If there were fires in the castles, they made these long iron hooks that they could pull the beams down in order to try and save the rest of the castle.

Tomorrow brings our 20 year anniversary (YAY!!) as well as more tours of fun places and sites!  Onward!

Tut-Tut, It Looks Like Rain

 Day 2 was fun , crazy, and interesting all wrapped into one. We got up and noticed that it had been raining quite a lot, from the looks of everything, so we caught an Uber the 2 miles to the church building.  It was a bit brisk and  very damp and we just plain didn't want to walk in that quite yet.  We attended a lovely church service, where we were welcomed with pure joy and warm smiles, fist bumps, and hand shakes. The talks that were given we filled with words of love and service - this was echoed everywhere we went. For example, in the Botanical gardens we visited afterward, we saw this plaque that showed how dedicated Scotland is to unity with everyone around the world, and there has also been many places raising funds to help with relief efforts in Ukraine - it brought tears of gratitude to my eyes a couple of times.  

As I mentioned before, we made our way to the Glasgow Botanical Gardens and spent the rest of our morning and early afternoon meandering our way around the beautiful gardens, river walks, and many greenhouses.  They have a stunning rose garden - oh how I wish I could capture the smell of that place!  Fresh rain scent mixed with the beautiful fragrance of the many colorful roses was absolute heaven!

There was even this weird crochet-covered-bench in the gardens, too LOL 

It started to rain on us while we were there, and we weren't fully equipped (no umbrellas and I was the only one with a thin rain jacket...oops), so we started back to the hotel (still a little more than 1.5 miles away).  We stopped at a quaint diner (think antique and vintage meets eccentric modern decor).  The food was wonderful, but we were a little taken aback when we ordered lemonade and they brought out some odd ginger-sprite concoction with a lemons slice in it. 😂 We'll know to ask if they have fresh squeezed varieties in the future haha.  The rain started to let up, so we started off toward the hotel again, only to have the heavens completely open up on us.  We took refuge in a small petrol-station-grocery-store for a few minutes to warm up and grabbed a drink while we were there.  We've discovered that it is rather difficult to find plain bottled water here - they sure do love their sparkling mineral water here (we're learning to read they labels better haha). We finally made it back to the hotel and changed out of our wet clothes and rested for an hour before deciding to venture out again.  This time, we went to a street that could be considered an outdoor mall - shops lining the entire street, bustling crowds and bicyclists making their way up and down the place and so many sites to be seen!  We even found the Tardis - sadly the "police" sign was broken and torn out of it because of the riots that have happened over the last couple of years.

We wandered through some shops and then came back to the hotel to meet our tour guide for the week and have dinner, which was delicious, by the way!  Then we ventured back out to see more sights, only...

...with all the pigeons and sea gulls flying around, its bound to happen.  Today just wasn't my day for good luck LOL Thankfully, the staff at our hotel is totally understanding and offered extra hand towels to clean it up (its happened to them too haha).

But, I've LOVED seeing the architecture around here!  The many cathedrals, older town-homes, and the many varieties of other buildings are absolutely stunning!

Tomorrow's adventures are bound to be amazing - can't wait to share them with you!

Dreams Do Come True!

The count-down for our trip has run out, the time is here! Scotland, here we come! And we're off!! Sort of. We got loaded up and said "see ya next week" to the kiddos (that was hard on some of them...and me), and off we went. We had to stop by the office to drop off Chris's truck on the way to the airport. There was an accident that backed up traffic way back. After a detour, we managed to make it to the shop and dropped off the truck. And we're off again! Kind of. We ran into another back up on the interstate. At this rate, I feared we may not make it to our gate in time to catch the first leg our flight! YIKES! What a way to start a vacation - you know you all want to vacay with us, right?! haha

Thankfully, our first flight was delayed a little and thus we made it through security in plenty of time, so all was well on that front (and prayers were definitely answered for us)! The unfortunate part of that delay was that it left us with only 30 mins to catch our international connection flight. But, we made it with a few mins to spare. We've never been on an international flight before, so that was a fun new experience! Bonus - it was overnight, so we were able to cat-nap.

                                            **Downtown London with the river Thames**
London Heathrow was another adventure - slightly confusing at first but pretty darn efficient once you get the hang of things! We got through the secondary security for our connecting flight to Glasgow, and that left us with 5 hours to explore all the shops, have lunch, and touch base with our family back home. One of the cute shops was the Harry Potter store - omigosh, so cute and fun!!

Our final flight ended up being delayed as well, but it was otherwise uneventful. We were ever so grateful, after getting through customs and getting our luggage, to see our chauffer waiting for us to drive us to the first lodging in this exciting and wonderful vacation. I don't know about Chris, but I'm so so so thankful that I didn't have to get used to driving on the "wrong side" of the road, especially in my sleep deprived state  LOL We got checked in to our hotel and went to use the elevator, only to discover it wasn't working at that moment. sigh Up the 4 flights of stairs with luggage in tow we went. Thankfully we packed light, at least we've got that going for us!

Can't wait to see what day 2 brings our way! Stay tuned...

Update On Grandma

 I've had a few people ask me for an update on my 100 year old grandma - you'll recall I mentioned she had Covid (it was inadvertently brought to her birthday bash and passed around). Well, she breezed through that like she has all other things in life and came out the other side just fine!  In fact, she celebrated her 100th b-day further (and celebrated surviving the dreaded pandemic virus) by taking a hot air balloon ride!  She never ceases to amaze, this wonderful woman, she's still crossing things off her bucket list! Ha! Enjoy a few snippets from that glorious day ♥️