Mary Anne asked me "what is that poem on the balcony?" I reminded her it was Romeo and Juliet and we started quoting, "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?" I looked down from my window to the street below where walkers would pass by the Loch Ness, and I saw a man in a striped shirt with white hair about Mary Anne's age walking facing in our direction. He was looking up at Mary Anne on the balcony and he was laughing. I think he thought she was talking to him. We broke out laughing and he waved and kept on walking. I hope she made his day.
We walked into the city again over the bridge to find this bookstore we had seen the day before. We did some shopping as we walked and looked at some churches we passed.
We found the bookstore and popped in. Darcy's friend is a huge Harry Potter fan and had wanted her to purchase the books from the UK as the covers are different from the US books. The bookstore, Leaky's Second Hand Shop, was in what once had been a Gaelic church. It looked like something out of Harry Potter with over 100,000 books. It was quite the place and we spent probably an hour going through it.
At one point I received a text from my SIL Beth. Mary Anne had asked me to text her a question and Beth was responding. She told me she was enjoying my pictures on FB and I told her I was posting more on Instagram if she wanted to take a look at those. Beth is not a big social media fan, although I suspect she is more interested then we think, and so she responded with "Instagram who?" I texted back that her mother had Instagram for heaven's sake, and then I told her that her mother was worse than my girls and was always on her phone. I sent that text and started down the winding staircase to the first floor. When I got to the bottom and rounded the stairs I found this:
Yep. I rest my case..
Darcy found her books and we set off once more. We walked up and down the streets exploring shops and taking pictures. We had some great exchanges in a tourist shop with the proprietor. We eventually boarded a double decker tour bus that allowed us to hop on and hop off at different stops.
The guide played an audio tape that gave us historical facts about each stop and played bagpipe music in between. We got off the bus at Pringles Woolen Mill, a working mill with a shop and an exhibit. The bus driver told us he would be back around in an hour so off we went. First we walked through the exhibit where we learned how all about making wool items.
We had learned some of this when we toured Muckross House in Ireland as they too have a shop in the basement. There we watched an actual worker spinning wool. Here we just wandered through reading the exhibit signs. It was interesting and informative, but then suddenly it opened up into this giant shop. That was overwhelming. It was about five stores all connected and suddenly everyone scattered. Shopping in both countries proved to be very much like shopping in Florida. All tourist stuff. The items were all the same from store to store. The prices were the same. The sales were the same. Still we managed to kill an hour, and of course Grandma managed to make some purchases.
Madison, Grandma, and I all met up and headed for the bus pick up. None of us had seen Tom or Darcy, but as we started up this dark staircases to the exit I saw an employee open a door below and as she passed through I saw Tom. He was sitting in the cafe sipping a cappuccino and reading the book he bought from Leaky's. Darcy was with him sipping her own drink and eating a pastry. We shouted at them to gather their belongings and we all caught the bus.
Back on the bus we sat back to enjoy the ride, but it started misting outside and we had to move inside. Of course, as we had the whole trip, the misting didn't last long and some of us went back outside. We drove past Whine Park, Bellfield Park, and the Leisure Center complete with an indoor pool. We drove all around the city studying the beautiful architectural buildings. We saw several churches, the post office, a war memorial, a cemetery, the hospital, and a Victorian market.
We drove past our hotel and realized that one of the stops was down the street from our hotel so we rode the bus again. We went up the hill and looked at the castle, but no one wanted to get off and walk through it. The girls and Tom got off in downtown to go to the same restaurant they had been to the day before to eat some churros. Grandma and I rode the bus back to explore St. Andrew's Cathedral, down the street from our hotel.
The church was built between 1866 and 1869 and has twin towers, granite pillars, stained glass, sculptures, and an icon given to the church by the Tsar of Russia. It was very beautiful as were all of the churches we toured in the countries. It is amazing to see the intricate detail in each one especially considering the tools they had back then.
Grandma and I walked back to the hotel and went to our rooms to relax. I got some ice, a luxury in these countries, but this hotel offered it and a diet coke from the bar and sat in front of my windows and enjoyed the view.
That night Tom wanted to eat at a place he had found while we were walking the city. He got the car and we drove across the bridge to find it. It was on the opposite side of the street so he stopped and we unloaded quickly. The streets are busy and some areas don't allow loading and unloading. Stopping to do so might get a lot of honks from cars behind you, but we were good and crossed the street. Madison and Darcy went into the restaurant to secure us a table, but they came back out and said they were told they were full.
Madison was very annoyed at the reception she had received. There had been no one eating in the restaurant and she felt they turned her away because of her age. I suggested we send in Grandma, the poshest one of us, but Madison didn't want to give them our business. So there we were standing on the street restaurant-less and wondering where Tom had gotten to. We texted him and suddenly there he was driving back around. He stopped in front of us and rolled down the window on the passenger side (remember in Scotland the steering wheel is on the right side so the passenger door is on the left). Grandma leaned down into the window and told him the scoop. We discussed options and I mentioned a place I had seen not far from our hotel. Tom told us to hop in quickly and so the girls and I jumped into the back seat. As I was climbing in I noticed Grandma had left the passenger side window and was running around the front of the car toward the driver's side. Tom watched in horror as she ran past the front of the car.
Tom: "What is she doing? Grandma! What are you doing?"
Girls: "Grandma, wrong side! Grandma!"
But Grandma wasn't hearing any of that and she runs out into the busy road to climb into what she thought was the passenger side. This was something she had done in the beginning of the trip in Ireland, but hadn't done in awhile. The fact that she had just minutes before been talking at Tom through the empty passenger side window had me laughing uncontrollably. Grandma gets to the driver's side window and the look on her face when she saw Tom seating there had me crying. She realizes her mistake and then she starts laughing, waves at the cars behind us, and runs around the car again to climb into the passenger seat.
Grandma: "I can't believe I just did that. I was just talking through this window. Oh, that is so funny."
And it was. We all laughed and laughed back across the bridge. We parked the car again at the hotel and set off on foot to the pub I had seen earlier. It turned out to be an Irish pub which we thought funny and we did enjoy some decent food there. Food is not something these countries are known for and we certainly agreed about that. While we occasionally lucked into some great meals most of the food was plain, boring, and tasteless.
After dinner we strolled through the city some more, but everything was closed. All of the merchants close shop around 5:00 pm. The only thing open are grocery shops and pubs. We had a hard time with that as it is certainly different then what we are used to, but we also thought it neat that employees got to be home at a decent time. Employees are also paid differently here. Servers, cab drivers, and people that normally rely on tips in the United States are paid at a higher wage and tipping is not expected. We didn't learn this until halfway through Ireland. We kept trying to tip our wait staff and wondered why they thought it so odd or funny. I had Madison contact her UK friends who told us no tipping unless something was exceptional and then only 1 or 2 pounds or euros. It made perfect sense and is something the US really needs to adopt.
Back at the hotel we made our plans for the next day and headed off to our separate rooms.
No comments:
Post a Comment