Scotland Part 1

Monday:

This day was mostly characterized by my playing with chalk with Ayden Mae. She's 4. We had a grand time. We made fireworks, us, houses, frogs, crocodiles, a river, but mainly a lot of fireworks. Good times.

Later in the day, we all went on a walk along the river and by the sea, ending up at a beach. I absolutely cannot get away from beaches, it appears. Not only do we go to the beach a fair amount in Florida, but we are totally getting getting a tour of beaches in Europe. Fine by me.

Ayden wanted ice cream, so we all ended up getting ice cream (with raspberry sauce and a little chocolate stick too duh). Laura and Seren Skye (she's 6) met us there, before we walked home.

Stopped by a grocery store on the way home. Found it interesting that they use adjectives so much in the food labels. Do we do that? I don't think we do it quite like that. Also, they have "healthy checkouts" which means there isn't candy and all that kind of junk at the checkout. There's dried fruit, nuts, extra gum... cool idea, don't think it would fly in the US. Wouldn't that be great, though?      

Food again that night was really good, and that was about it for the day!

Tuesday:

First castle day!
We started off with Dirleton. Seemed like a pretty classic castle to me. The building for doves/pigeons is called a doocote. Fun to say.

Then we headed to a beach to eat picnic lunch. It was beach that had sand, then rocky (tidepool?) area, then the ocean water. On the edge of the sand, there was a really shallow pool. When the tide comes up, it fills the pool. Then, when it goes out, the kids can play in the pool. Apparently there's a lot of these in Scotland. That's awesome.

After our lunch, we went to our second castle. Tantallon. This one is right on the edge of a cliff on the ocean, and it's gorgeous. One of my favorite castles we've done, because the views are amazing. It's a partial ruin, so you can go in a lot of it, but it's definitely not whole. Either way, worth the visit.

Wednesday:

Now we were leaving Edinburgh for a few days of couchsurfing. Insch was the name of the village, and it was (on the map), up from Edinburgh. North, but not going over the the western side. Whatever. Look it up on Google maps if you're really curious, because it's too complicated to describe without a picture of a map.

So, of course, on the way to Insch we have to visit a castle. Now this castle is unique in our list because it is on an island in a lake. Lochleven Castle. Loch = Lake, btw. If ya didn't know.

The "ferry" ride was about 10 minutes. Only 12 people could be in the boat at a time.

When we got there, you could tell there wasn't much to the castle. It's 1 bigger tower, 1 smaller tower, and a wall around them. But, it was where Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned, miscarried twins, and then escaped from. Which is pretty impressive. It was small, but I liked it a lot.
Some of us were walking around outside the walls when all of of a sudden, about 15 feet behind me, my mom and siblings started running, so I started running and we all surprised my dad for heading straight to him at full speed.

We took the ferry back, and headed to Insch. The 3 of us played cards in the back. After 8 rounds of crazy 8s, the scores were:

Me: 14
Bella: 127
Alex: 106

Remember, in Crazy 8s, you want to get rid of your cards and have the lowest score. I don't profess to have any card skills at all, but somehow, I was smashing here. And then. After a 9th round. We ended up with these incredible score totals:

Me: 17
Bella: 127
Alex: 284

You read that right. Alex lost the round with 178 points. It was pretty funny.

Finally reached Insch. Met the family. Lyn, the mother, Seyi & Tobi, the kids, and Ope, their father, was on skype because he was away for the week. Also, more food. Yay!

Thursday:

The kids had school, so Bella walked them to school with Lyn while we finished breakfast. Then, Lyn started us on a walking tour of the village. Not a city. Not a town. This is a village. There is a main street (or rather, high street) and some stores, but there is no gas station anymore. There was a 'petrol station' owned by a family, but they got too old, and then son moved away, so now there isn't a petrol station anymore.

Anyways, we walked right out of the village and started climbing Dunnideer hill to the fortress ruins up town. For most of the hill, the path was just straight up. And it didn't seem like a terribly steep climb, but my gosh, it was exhausting. It felt like it went on forever, even though it looked like it would end soon. The second half of the climb was spotted with rabbit holes and a little more curvy of a path.

After we finally reached the top, we were pretty tired. Well, us Floridians were. (I love flat land!) We climbed around a bit, took some pictures, and headed down.

Back in town we picked up the kids for lunch. One of the staff members was freaking out a little because we were walking through the school and wanted us to sign in, but we were like "we're leaving right now. We're American. We have kids. We're not gonna do anything." I really don't think we were there long enough to become a fire hazard.

After lunch, the kids went back to school and we left for Banff.

In Banff, we arrived at Steve's parents house. We had tea (actual tea, not dinner yet), and then we drove a few minutes to Duff house.

Duff house was closed for the evening, so we played on their awesome playground. I was on the zip line when a little boy came up to me. I ended up helping this boy and his sister on the zip line for a little while, but my gosh, the accents. I asked what his name was.. what. English is English is not English. I don't completely know what either of them said.     
                        
So after some serious playground time, we took a few pictures in front of Duff house, then headed back.

We had a really amazing and filling meal with the Malones. I could barely eat the dessert. Alex and Bella didn't know what a Christmas Cracker was so Arlene tried to find one for us. She couldn't find any, but she did find some high school pictures of my dad and Steve. Those were pretty funny.

We played a lot of cards in the car. Alex got really mad about Crazy 8s on the way back because he wanted to play right from dealer and we played left from dealer (because that's just what you do). Bella and I were laughing when we tried to talk sense into him. It's too bad it wasn't recorded, because it was a really entertaining argument.

Friday:

Ultra castle day. We tried to leave pretty early in the day, much to Tobi and Seyi's disappointment.

First castle was Huntly. One of the guys who ruled there was called the "cock of the north" because he displayed his wealth too much or something like that. Mary Queen of Scots was told to deal with him. Also, Mary defeated the 4th Earl, and his embalmed corpse was taken to Edinburgh, tried and found guilty of treason. Yup. Huntly had the best pit prison of all the castles we visited because they had these super creepy mannequins displayed down in the prison. It was great.

Second castle was Balvenie. It was having some major work done on it and wasn't all that exciting in general. But, the guy who stamped our pass today us that the Glenfiddich distillery was right nearby, and tours were free. Oh yeah! Let's do it! We drove over and walked in.

Let me tell ya, even though none of us drink alcohol, this was awesome. I didn't even know what Glenfiddich was. It's whisky, by the way. Fun fact, whisky = from Scotland, whiskey = from anywhere else.

We were able to go on a tour with a guide who was Brazilian of all things. We told him about being Costa Rican, of course. He was great to talk to. Usually he guides the 3.5 hour tours, so he said doing our hour tour was a lot less stressful. And it was super interesting! They have to malt the barley, turn it into this sugar water stuff, ferment, and then it goes into the distillation process. I had a flashback to chemistry class when we told us about esters (one of the few things I found interesting in that class).

Then we went into the Warehouse. Best part of the tour. They have their own cooperage and the guys making the barrels- this is their career. Like 6 of them had been there for 40-50 years. Most guys can do a barrel in around 12 minutes, but they had one guy who could do it in 7. Incredible. They get about 90% of their barrels secondhand because *check this* the whisky gets its flavor mainly from the barrel! So, the wine/rum/scotch/whatever that was previously in the barrel is in the wood, and it goes into the whiskey. You can tell how much flavor is left in the wood by the "spirit line." Also, since the wood is so porous, a lot of whisky evaporates. They call this the "Angel's share." So, older whisky is more expensive because the longer it goes, the smaller the amount left becomes. Older whisky also has more complex flavors because it's gone through more wood.

It was pretty incredible. I was impressed. I had no idea so much tradition, culture, hard work, recycling, and loss went into the creation of whisky. And they're really environmentally friendly and recycle practically everything, so that was cool. Once the wood is used up of flavor, they sell it. The river water they use only for cooling, then it goes back to the river. They've bought all the land surrounding the springs so the water won't be polluted. Yeah. Wow.

The last bit of the tour was the tasting. Haha. First, he got Alex and Bella juice. Proof that while Alex is taller, he can't pass for 18. The drinking age is 18, so I was legally allowed to try the whisky. Why not. He had us try a 12, 15, and an 18. It was interesting to smell & taste the different flavors. I mostly just liked to smell it. I really don't like alcohol. I took tiny sips of each, as he told us to.

This is not tequila, he told us, you do not take a shot. It was neat to see the oils in the whisky, and he showed us how to mix it with water to open up the flavors, but I didn't do that. I felt bad for not drinking very much of it (especially the 18!), but I really don't like the taste of alcohol. It was fascinating to learn about, fun to smell, and funny to try, so I'm glad we did it. I can now say that I've tried Glenfiddich whisky. But I have no interest in drinking alcohol in my life. Which is totally fine by me. Makes my life as a Baha'i easier, to not be tempted. I'd go on another tour for the learning experience, though. Dunno if you can beat this experience, however. Also, our tour guide does couchsurfing, so who knows, maybe we'll see him again someday!

Our last castle for the day was Stirling. It's one of the top ones to visit in Scotland, at least, from what we've heard.

Since we'd gone to 2 castles and a distillery already that day, we only had a little over an hour for the Stirling before it closed.

Stirling is a little more  kid friendly, interactive, and put-together. There was one room that had a lot of costumes for kids. The 3 of us donned our outfits and gave royal looks for the cameras. The Royal bed chambers were furnished and had staff in period costumes around answering questions. We heard about purple dye and got an awesome explanation of why there are unicorns in the crest and everywhere. Basically, the unicorn is jesus. Too hard to explain it all without the tapestries.

We left as they were closing up the castle and after a long day, got back to Musslebrough, where we had a 4th of July barbecue. We'd brought stickers and toothpick flags and other American themed things from the dollar store, so the girls decorated the plates and cupcakes and we had a good time.