"If it's Sunny, You Aren't in Scotland!"

 Ah yes, this lovely sentiment was expressed to us from more than one person we met in Scotland. How new and refreshing: it's cold and rainy. I really should't complain as it's just about the coolest opportunity we could ever imagine but at this point in the trip, we really just wanted to be dry and warm...we learned that a Scottish summer is typically one week in April and after that it's mostly rainy and dreary. I'm pretty sure we were actually there during their summer. We did have one day that the sun shone (even then, it did rain at some point during the day. In fact, any day in Britain that has had sun has also had rain. It has literally rained every single day.)

Anyway, I'm done complaining about the weather (today). Scotland was great. We drove from Lancaster, England (oh, by the way we stayed in Lancaster, drove through Carlisle and ate at a pub on Lime Kiln Road. Our forefathers clearly weren't very creative when they chose names for towns and roads in the New World) to Glasgow, Scotland. Glasgow is a hip and trendy city. We found what they termed a craft market. It was like a bunch of art vendors set up, selling different paintings, photos, jewelry, soap....It was a nice dry activity for us. And not for the first time am I a bit bummed that we're travelling with carry-ons. There's no room for souvenirs :/

Weekend Craft Show at Merchant Square, Glasgow

Can you see the alligator that's part of the floor? I don't really know what it's about and neither did the artist closest to the gator. But apparently people come to Merchant Square just to see this little guy. I just happened to notice him as we were walking by. This was probably the first time I've ever been accused of being very observant.

After browsing the market, we started walking more downtown and discovered a pop-up restaurant. Neither of us have ever been to one of those, so while the food wasn't an authentic taste of Scotland, we jumped at the chance to experience a pop-up restaurant. We went inside what looked to be a funhouse or a building that would house a carousel. The guy inside tried to explain who the chef was. Apparently he's a famous chef in Scotland who has his own TV show. We had to explain that we weren't from Scotland because he was looking at us like we we'd been living under a rock to not know who he was. Our bad.

Secret dining?! Don't mind if we do!

The inside of the pop-up restaurant. It was so neat. Mismatched everything, live music and really delicious food.

Our famous chef, Tony Singh and his delightfully adventurous menu. 

So after that, I really wanted to go to this odd little show called the Sharmanka Kinetic Theater. Sharmanka is Russian for barrel organ and the show consisted of kinetic sculptures that move to music. The artist, Eduard Berdusky was living in Soviet-era St. Petersburg when he began creating these wooden sculptures in his 20's. He was living a small room in a communal apartment and would do menial jobs to make enough money to avoid the Communist control around him. He started connecting motors to his sculptures and voilá, we have the kinemats. The sculptures in the theater in Scotland aren't the ones he first created. Most of them were commissioned in 1989 to curate this show specifically. It's basically a room with 30 or more different sculptures. You walk from sculpture to sculpture as it lights up and the actions are set to different instrumental musical pieces. It's a very macabre and mysterious show. I don't really know how to explain it. Kind of haunting and grotesque but amazingly detailed and imaginative. I really enjoyed it. I only have one picture because after that one, I discovered there was a no photographing policy. Boo.

This is a terrible representation of the kinetic theater. This thing is huge and has so many moving parts that work together and also separately. It's pretty magical.

That pretty much capped off our Glasgowian adventure. We stopped at a vintage shop and Josh tried on a bajillion different leather coats. There are a lot of vintage clothing shops in Glasgow. It's trendy to be retro.

It suits him, doesn't it? But like I said, carry-ons...

And on to Edinburgh we went. We carved out two days for Edinburgh although I think I could've spent lots more time there. We started off at the Elephant House, which you may or may not know is the "Birthplace of Harry Potter". JK Rowling wrote a lot of the first book(s) here at this cafe.

squee!

The Elephant House

This is front and center, right when you walk in the door. Gave me a good laugh.

I went to the bathroom to wash my hands before we ate and was utterly stopped in my tracks. It was here that I discovered my kin--this is where all of the other crazy people who love Harry Potter come. And it was here that my unintentional Potter Pilgrimage began (yes, yes, I know I am completely ridiculous and I give you leave to stop reading because yes, it is super dorky.) Every square inch of available space was covered in signatures, sayings, thoughts, quotes, messages to JKR...

There's a Deathly Hallows sign on the door lock

People even signed the ceiling. And I still don't get how they did it. I mean, even if I stood on the back of the toilet, I don't think I'd reach. 

My personal favorite: "This way to the ministry". Although coming in a close second was, "I'd get sleazy for Weasley".

This is the view from the window in the Elephant House. I'm pretty sure that JKR must have sat right here, looking out of this window when she described Hogwarts in the books. This is actually Edinburgh Castle, but it might as well be Hogwarts. It's literally coming out of the rocks.

This building is near the Elephant House and Josh said it looks like Grimmauld Place. I concur.

The fog is so utterly dense in places of Edinburgh that buildings completely disappear. We decided that it wasn't too difficult to imagine Dementors when faced with all of this fog.

There was a real Tom Riddle. So naturally I wanted to go see his gravestone. I was not the only person in the churchyard looking for it by the way. Even though it was pouring and muddy and awful out. (I'm probably just telling you that so that you understand I'm not the only insane one out there).

My hubby is a trooper. He went with me to find the gravestone of Tom Riddle. Just look at the muck all over. (Side note: this was three weeks ago and his wheels are still coated with a layer of ick).

The capstone to my Pilgrimage: I met Hedwig!!! (Actually her name is Hazel and obviously she's not Hedwig because she's not a snowy owl, but I'm pretending). There was a guy on the street with an owl and I stopped to watch and he asked if I wanted to hold her. Naturally. He took my phone and took a zillion pictures of us with the owl. He kept coming up with different "poses". Also, like 20 people stopped to watch and take pictures of me with the owl. I so love to be the center of attention.

One of his "poses". Kiss Hazel, he says....he clearly doesn't know I'm a germophobe so I pretended. That seemed to make him happy (not sure about Hazel though...). 

 And thus ends my Potter Pilgrimage. At least until London where the Warner Brother Studios Harry Potter tour awaits and then you'll have to endure 492 pictures of the sets and costumes used in the movies. Just kidding. Sort of. I'm totally going on the tour but I'll try to keep the gushing to a minimum. 

I was on the phone with my accountant that day and he informed me that if he were in Scotland he'd go see all of the golf courses and taste all the Scotch he could. And I realized that I definitely couldn't leave Scotland without trying one of those things. (Not the golf). So we went on the Scottish Whiskey Experience. It is totally Chocolate World, except for Whiskey instead of chocolate. You ride in a whiskey barrel and learn how it's made. You even go through the "heating" part and it pretends to heat you up. And you get whiskey at the end. It's great. And I kind of like Scotch. It's kind of delightful. It's warm and smooth and makes my ears go hot (they were so impressed with my eloquence there that they've approached me about writing the descriptions for their brochure). There are four areas of Scotland where Scotch comes from and they all taste very different based on where they come from: Highlands, Lowlands, Islay or Speyside. During the tour, they gave us a scratch and sniff card that had each of the areas on it. You scratch it and smell it (duh) to get the scent of flavoring that comes from the different areas. Islay is really smoky because they use peat fires to make the mash. Speyside smells like banana (I don't remember why) but most of Scotland's whiskey comes from Speyside. The Highlands smell like vanilla and the Lowlands smell like grass. Each of those scents come through as flavors in the final products. 

The Whiskey Experience

The World's Largest collection of Scotch. I have never seen so much alcohol in one place. Interestingly, even though the bottles have never been opened, there are partial bottles and even an almost-empty one because the whiskey begins to evaporate over time. The bit that evaporates is called the "Angel's Share".

We're totally connoisseurs of Scotch now. 

Scotland's national beverage (pronounced like Iron Brew). It has something like 32 different flavorings in it so they say it tastes different every time you have it depending on what you've eaten or drank that day. I only had it once and that time it tasted like pink bubble gum. I'll stick to water.

Day two of Edinburgh we went to Edinburgh Castle. My very first castle! Super exciting. It's huge and sprawling and not quite what I expected. I was envisioning one large building with turrets and towers (and probably a knight or two). But it's this sprawling landscape of a keep with many buildings built on a really steep hill out of rock. We talked to a lady who worked there for a bit and she recommended to start at the top and work your way down so you don't have to walk back up the hill. Makes perfect sense. So we started at the Crown Jewels. I was definitely expecting a room overflowing with treasure chests of gold, rubies, sapphires...but it was a crown and sword and a rock. The rock is the Stone of Destiny which they use to crown royalty. When Queen Elizabeth dies, they will move this 300 pound stone down to England  to crown her successor (and then cart it back). It has a rather funny history, the Stone does. If I have the story right, the English defeated the Scotttish at one point in history and they basically stole the Stone because they knew it was important to the Scottish culture and monarchy. So they started crowing their own royalty with it. Lots of years go by and it's in Westminster Abbey. It's Christmas Eve in I think 1950 and while the Christmas service is going on in another room, a group of Scottish students decide to steal it and return it to its rightful place. They drop it and break the damn thing in two (it's since been repaired). But do they get in trouble?? No. Because it was a huge embarrassment for the police. It's kind of hilarious. The man at stationed by the Stone told us a movie was made about it. 

The front of the castle. Or 1/67th of it anyway.

The view from the Castle. I like this meshing of old, new and ancient in the city of Edinburgh.

Two of the windows in the chapel at the castle. I just thought it was so interesting what was deemed important to portray. On the left is a picture of Jesus in the boat with Peter. On the right is a man in battle. Equally important in that time. Such an interesting dichotomy.

One of the many stained glass windows in the Great Hall. This one is my favorite because even though you probably can't tell, in the bottom of the windows are words. They are names of important people. On the other side of the room is a window with the King James' and his son's names. There are names on all the windows. This window has "Bell the Cat". Crazy cat people have been around since medieval times!

Really big cannon that they used to use (note the kid with his head in it. I may or may not have done the same thing 12 seconds before that). And those are the cannonballs that Josh has his hand on.

Clearly animals were an important part of the culture even hundreds of years ago. This is a cemetery for the dogs of soldiers.

Just trying to express the magnitude of the castle. It's so big. My brother and I would have had a heyday in our youth here. We used to have these wooden swords we made and I can just picture us running all over the castle dueling and being little hellions. I'm sure my parents are super glad they didn't take us on vacation to Scotland when we were young.

The Castle outing ended with Afternoon Tea at the castle. I've had Afternoon Tea twice while in Britain and I've decided it's definitely the best thing ever. It's just snack time for adults. I don't know why we don't have this in the U.S. We really need to get on that. You get a pot of tea and a tray of 3 or 4 tiny sandwiches with the crusts cut off and then 3 or 4 tiny pastries. And the sugar for the tea is actual cubes, as in, 'one lump or two?' So great.  After that we walked to a monument that we saw from the top of the Castle. We really wanted to see it up close so we (Josh) found it.

It's actually a memorial to Sir Walter Scott. It's super neat looking. You can pay to go to the top but we got there after it closed.

The monument with a bagpiper! 

It wouldn't be a trip to Scotland if you didn't get to hear the bagpipes, right?! This guy was really talented. We stood watching for awhile, the crowd thinned and it was just us left. He stopped and asked us if we had any requests. We were fresh out of ideas of bagpiping songs so he asked where we were from. We told him and he said he had just the tune for us. He regales us with a very cheeky Yankee Doodle Dandy. Then this teenage boy comes running up and asks him if he's the guy that had been playing Star Wars earlier. Why yes, he was! He breaks into the Main Theme of Star Wars!

We ended our Scottish adventures with a late dinner in which Josh tried an authentic Scottish dish, Haggis which is a pudding made from sheep's pluck (I'll let you look that up later in case you're getting ready eat) and other ingredients stuffed into sheep stomach and cooked. Yeah. I didn't try that one. I did try Tablet, some sort of Scottish candy that I'm pretty sure is just sweetened condensed milk and sugar. My teeth still hurt. 

We were walking down the street in Edinburgh and saw this sticker on a phone booth. How crazy is that?! It's a Starrk Moon Kayak sticker! Which is a kayak place in PA! What are the odds?

And now we're back in London. It was a seven hour drive back to London from Edinburgh so we split it into two days because I just didn't want to drive that long. And we can never synchronize our bladders for bathroom stops so it would've taken us 12 hours anyway. We returned Arden to her home base and I think I might miss her a little bit. I finally got used to driving on the other side of the road. I'm pretty sure it's going to be weird to drive on the normal side again...