Day 7 - Scotland - Aberdeen

We were up early and on the road bleary eyed and sleepy. Our hosts got up with us and offered us food and coffee. Mary Anne had a banana and Darcy had yogurt "The best yogurt ever!"  The rest of us declined anything and off we went. Our hosts went back to bed. It took a little over an hour to reach the airport and by then we were more awake. 

We had no trouble returning the car. Our entire drive through Ireland only added 150 miles to the car. It seemed farther! Getting through security took the longest. They have people who man the line when putting belongings in the bin and they ask millions of questions, taking out items and checking bags. 

The flight was only forty five minutes to Scotland. I slept most of the way, waking in time to snap pictures. 

It took longer to get our bags and the new (and bigger) rental car then it did to fly. We were all packed in the car when Darcy and I discovered we couldn't exit the back doors. Tom clicked the locks. Nothing. Darcy climbed into the front seat and looked around, clicking locks and pushing buttons. Nothing. We got out the manual. Nothing. Tom tried opening I the back door and messing with the latch on the side. Nothing. We flagged down a car rental attendant, but he couldn't figure it out either. He went and got another guy who hopped into the car, turned it on, popped the locks and viola! We were on our way. 

We asked our first car rental attendant for a place it eat. He was young and suggested McDonald's. Uh, no thanks buddy. He gave us complicated directions to what turned out to be a mall. So we ate lunch in the food court. Note: No asking young Scots for meal suggestions. 

Once again on the road we headed to Aberdeen. Mary Anne (who were now were calling Grandma) and the girls promptly went to sleep. Tom would have started snoring too behind the wheel, so I stayed awake to keep him awake and the rest of us alive. I kept finding interesting places to tour such as St. Andrews and a couple of castles in the tour book, but he motored past intent on getting to our destination. Sigh. 

By the time we reached the Carmelite Hotel I was grouchy. I was hungry and tired and annoyed that we hadn't stopped to do some touring. I felt very cranky, and so I locked myself in the bathroom of our room and texted my SIL. That helped. Food helped too. We walked to a Cafe where we sat outside and had dinner. Then we decided to go back to our hotel to have dessert and coffee. 

The Carmelite hotel reminded me of New York City. It was in the merchant quarter on a historic bustling, vibrant street. The stone cobbled streets we had to go over to reach this hotel were narrow, and one had concrete planters where the car had to navigate around them. Oh, yes, and hopefully a car wasn't coming up the same time you were going down because two cars did not fit at the same time. 

When we entered the hotel we found ourselves in the middle of the restaurant. On either side of us were tables with big, circular booths covered in striped gray and purple velvet. The room itself was dark when we arrived, and it felt very strip club-ish to me. Straight ahead was the door to the kitchen and a cash register where we had checked into the hotel. 

When we first came arrived it was high tea and the place was packed with people drinking tea and alcohol and snacking on tiers of delicious looking cakes and pastries. All of the tables came with a game of Jenga and many were playing it shrieking loudly when their tower would topple. The place was not any less crowded or quieter after our dinner. 

We stood quite some time before someone acknowledged our presence, and when we explained why we needed a table we were given the bedroom. It was a table in the shape of a canopy bed with lots of pillows and disco ball and music decor. Mary Anne was not going to sit there, but I talked her into it and she crawled in "for the kids".  We wanted dessert and coffee, but the atmospheric was more nightclub and liquor. While we sat and waited for someone to take our order a gentleman and his wife approached me from my right. He was a dapper fellow with a corduroy jacket and a scruff of a beard. He leaned over me and spoke to Mary Anne who immediately let out a shriek. 

The man, John, and his wife, Dorothy, were the couple we had come to Aberdeen to see. John was a friend of my SIL Beth. They had met over thirty years ago while both were traveling and had kept in touch. Mary Anne had let him know we were coming to Scotland and before we had left for the restaurant she had left a message on his phone. He hadn't gotten that, but had received her email on our hotel and dates and he and his wife were going to be in the city for a birthday celebration that happened to be across the street from the hotel. Win win. They crawled into the bed with us and we flagged down a waitress and went with liquor. I had an Irish Bailey's coffee so that I could get two for one. 

John and Dorothy were great entertainers. Beth suggested we ask about the legend of the Haggis and he regaled us with this tale: The Haggis is a wild creature with two long legs in the front and two short legs in the back. This difference in leg length allows the Haggis to run quickly around the Scottish mountains and therefore he is quite hard to catch. Except if you are a Scot. Because a Scot knows that a Haggis is only able to run in one direction and so if he hunts the Haggis he must do so by running around the opposite side of the mountain. He told us that wild Haggis is very delicious and that this was the season for it and we should certainly try it.

We drank and conversed for a couple of hours and then we bid the Scottish couple good-bye. It was the perfect ending to our first day in the country and we all headed off to bed happily.