Scotland was spectacular. Scottish people just seem to be a little more hardy, prouder, and stronger than the rest of us. Maybe it’s the climate. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen Braveheart a few times and am just experiencing confirmation bias. But I’m pretty sure it’s the climate.
Above is the main house of our lodgings for four days. We actually had a lovely little apartment with a small kitchenette the owners stocked with fresh eggs from their chickens, which we enjoyed making omelets with. We also rented movies and watched them from the cottage in the evenings, it was all very cosy and nice! My mom had stayed in this place nearly a year before, and recommended it highly– and she did not lead us astray. More impressively, when we explained our unusual situation (Americans living in Cyprus), the owners remembered her immediately.
We had the best rental car ever– it was an automatic Mercedes A-series, compact but still very roomy. It *might* have been diesel, but I don’t remember because we didn’t have to fill it up a single time after four days of pretty heavy driving. It was awesome, I don’t know why they don’t have it in America. If you look closely at the photo you can see Severin smiling in the passenger seat!
I snapped the car shot after frantically pulling over so I could get a picture of this creature, the highland cow:
Thistle is the national flower of Scotland, and is beautiful in the way Scotland is– stark and a little rugged.
I may have said it before, but whenever we’ve traveled in Europe, I’ve always been a little struck by how present both World Wars are. Growing up in the United States, World War II is a ubiquitous part of our popular culture (movies, television series, “Greatest Generation,” etc.), but those are intangible ways of remembering the wars. Pretty much every town in Scotland we visited had a memorial to the people they lost during one or both of the wars, no matter how small the town was. And for the size of the towns, it was always surprising how many names were engraved on those stones. This World War I memorial was in Aberlour, a town with less than 1,000 people:
This fella was waiting for his master at the door of a deli in Aberlour. He was waiting so patiently and staring so intently. We bought sandwiches, more cookies (because Scottish shortbread), and I bought this awesome oven mitt that is for both hands but is one long piece. I’ve never seen them in the U.S., but everyone on Great British Baking Show was using them, and this one had jumping ponies on it, so it had to be mine. (Severin says, “As long as our entire house doesn’t become overrun with pony stuff.” Maybe someday we’ll have a house big enough where Severin can have a man-cave and I can have a pony-cave for all of my horse-y homewares!)
When you live overseas you miss out on some cultural phenomena. I had seen a few passing references to Pokemon on Facebook and had to look up what “Pokemon Go” was all about, because it hadn’t arrived in Cyprus (and frankly, never really did– though if it had we probably wouldn’t have known, since we have government-issued phones which we can’t install apps on!) Anyway, it had arrived in Scotland and this local church in Aberlour was actually encouraging people to come in and hunt Pokemon in it.
More from Aberlour:
I think this was called “The Queen’s View”:
