Day 3: Scotland vacation 2007

Even though we were staying in Penicuik, we didn’t spend much time exploring it because we were focused on Edinburgh. But on the morning of day 3, we missed the bus we had been planning to catch—n.b. the times on the bus schedule are “guides”, which came as a bit of a shock since we are used to the clockwork German bus system—so we walked a little farther into Penicuik until the next bus was scheduled to come.



On the way into Edinburgh, we made a little detour to get to Roslin, the home of Rosslyn Chapel. It was small but amazing. Unfortunately, our pictures didn’t come out too well, but here’s one of the better ones.



When we finally got to Edinburgh, we made our way through the Old Town a bit, where we spotted our first “This Belongs to Lionel Richie” sticker on the ground. We saw several more, including on the back of someone’s sweater, before we left Edinburgh.



We went to the National Museum to hear some music at lunch time: Sarah Naylor on the fiddle and Douglas Millar on the keyboard. They played traditional reels from Scotland and other English-speaking countries. A reel is a dance, and it struck me as kind of odd for people to be sitting fairly still to listen, as if it were a classical concert. A few songs in, a man with a cane standing on the edge of the seating starting tapping his cane to the beat, quite loudly. It didn’t seem out of place. After that, I noticed more people keeping beat with their thumbs and their toes. None of us were willing to commit a head or a whole foot to the rhythm of the music.

We walked around in the museum a little after that. John wanted to see the Lewis chess set, which he did, but his photos came out horribly blurry. Hannah spotted what she thought was a giant purple bouncy castle at the end of the street, but it turned out to be a giant inflatable cow on its back, complete with udders; it was at one of the Festival events near the university, and not at all for jumping on. After that we went to Greyfriars.



We weren’t able to go into the church because there was a concert, but we walked around the churchyard (aka kirkyard), which is really the draw to the church. It wasn’t crowded while we were there because it had been raining; we found it lovely and peaceful.



Then we headed for the Royal Mile and the freaks (a relative term for someone from Austin) at the Fringe Festival.



We watched a contortionist who squeezed himself through a tennis racket and had a pretty good comedy routine going, if a little risqué. I call it a learning moment: now Hannah knows about Jews and circumcision.

We saw a house that allegedly belonged to the family of John Knox, the Scottish religious reformer,



and peeked into alleyways called “closes”.



I remembered to wear my pedometer that day, and we walked about 3.5 miles before catching the bus back out to Penicuik for the night.

Day 2: Scotland vacation 2007

This was our first full day in Scotland. We left Ayr after breakfast, which was our first try at the traditional Scottish breakfast like this one, and took a train to Glasgow. I have to say, the train was very convenient. If you get on at a small stop without a ticket counter, you just get on the train and wait for a conductor to come around, and you can pay on board. At Glasgow we got on a train for Edinburgh; we shared a seat with a woman from Iowa who was showing around her visiting family. Funny how we ran into so many Americans on the first part of our trip.

When we got to Edinburgh, we wanted to store our luggage and look around before heading to our bed and breakfast, but they wanted 5 bucks a bag(!!) at the “left luggage” office in the train station. (It took a little convincing to prove to John that “left luggage” doesn’t mean “lost luggage.” That crazy British English!) There was a mall at the end of the station, so we went into the food court, where we could each get what we wanted. Hannah had her standard McD Happy Meal, but John gave fish n chips a try.



Then we fought our way up and down the sidewalk outside the Waverly Station, looking for the Visitor Centre. The Edinburgh Festival was in full swing, and a tent had been set up outside the Visitor Centre to sell tickets to the Festival events, so it wasn’t quite so easy to see, even though it was located right on the roof of the mall where we’d eaten. We found out which bus we needed to get to the B&B, and headed out to unload our luggage.

(Ours was the top room in this picture.)


The buses are also pretty easy in Edinburgh. You have to have exact change, but it is quite cheap compared to here (2.50 pounds to ride all day, or 1 pound for a one-way trip). Unfortunately, Edinburgh was already pretty booked up when John was looking for accommodations 3 months in advance (!), so our B&B was in nearby Penicuik. I think it was only about 10 miles away, but by bus that could be as long as 50 minutes when the traffic was heavy. Fortunately, we got to Edinburgh early-ish, so even after going out to Penicuik and back, we had some time to walk around Edinburgh that afternoon.

We started out in Princes Street and walked through the gardens.



John had done his homework and could tell us most of what we were seeing, like the monument to Sir Walter Scott



and the floral clock celebrating the Scottish boy scouts’ anniversary



and the castle.



Along the way, we passed some Fringe Festival performances at the museums midway through the gardens. We missed our turn to the New Town and had to make a bit of a detour, but as I said probably every single day of our trip, it’s not our family vacation if we’re not lost. We finally found George Street, which was a bit posh for my taste, but at least we found a bookstore. In our family, books are souvenirs. Unfortunately, they are very heavy souvenirs.

After this ode to the British phone booth and letter box,



we looped around to the other side of the museum, where we were able to see their advertisement for their Andy Warhol exhibit. I would kind of like this on a poster.



After that, we were too footsore and tired to do much else, so we ate some Chinese buffet and went back to our room to rest up for another day of trooping around Edinburgh.

Day 1: Scotland vacation 2007

Day 1 was actually quite short. The drive to the airport actually took longer than the flight itself (Frankfurt-Hahn airport is a bit of a misnomer, since it is as close to Frankfurt as Austin is to San Antonio). We ended up eating some crappy pizza from a stand in front of the airport because the weenie cart was unmanned; John had been to this airport once before and didn’t remember there being any places to eat inside, but there was a small cafe inside security, so that could have been an option if we had known about it.

Anyhoo, we flew on a small, cheap airline, so our boarding passes didn’t even have our names printed on them; they wrote them in by hand at the check-in desk. There also wasn’t any assigned seating, so Hannah ran out ahead of us onto the tarmac and managed to find us a row of seats before the plane filled up. We sat behind an American family from our town, and Hannah spent part of the trip chatting up the little girl, who was close to her age, in the seat in front of her.

I was made a bit nervous by the emergency instructions glued to the back of the seat—was the airline trying to tell us something? Constant vigilance! John pointed out that since it is an economy airline, gluing them down would be cheaper than replacing loose ones that go missing out of the seat pocket.

John spent part of the trip speculating on the proper pronunciations of our future destinations, Edinburgh and Penicuik: Pen-Quick? Pen-Kook? Wigglesworth?

Our flight arrived at 8:40 pm (and since Scotland is only an hour behind us, no jet lag!), and we were in our room at the Beechwood Guest House in Ayr by 9:35. See?



After a good night’s sleep, we were able to get up early, eat a hot breakfast, and get on the road to Edinburgh via Glasgow.

Speyer 2007

Last weekend, we had some nice, sunny weather (for a change), so we took Hannah to Speyer to go to the Sea Life aquarium. It’s a nice little indoor aquarium, nothing like Sea World (which I would love to visit with this guy), but interesting and educational all the same. Unfortunately, flash photography was not allowed, so almost none of our photos came out. Here are Hannah and John checking out some fish.



As soon as we were done, before we even made it to the front doors, Hannah started whining and carrying on. She was tired. She wanted to go home. She didn’t want to walk around in Speyer. And so on, and so forth. I asked her if she was going to act like that in Scotland (our next destination), and she said yes. At least she is honest.

The last time we were in Speyer, we didn’t have a car or a digital camera, so the experience was a little different this time. We didn’t stray too far from the main attraction, the cathedral, mostly because it was so hot and our child was so unaccommodating, but we got plenty of nice photos of the few things we saw.

The cathedral and the Stadthaus:


The history museum for the Pfalz, where we saw a Playmobil exhibit the last time we were in Speyer, but this time they have something on Attila the Hun:


And finally, we got ourselves lost on the way home—a different route from when we were lost on the way there—so instead of crossing the Rhine via bridge, we went via ferry:


We'll be in Scotland August 14-22, so check back after that for an update.

Part three: Darmstadt

Normally, the most interesting part of a German town is the center, so that is where we headed first. Unfortunately, most of downtown Darmstadt is a big shopping complex, but there are still some historical buildings there. Many were damaged during WWII, but most have been renovated or rebuilt, depending on the level of damage.

I wish we had known about this site before we went. Instead of just wandering aimlessly around, we would have had some idea of how to get where we wanted to go. Oh well.

I didn’t actually recognize anything from when we lived there when I was a kid. We lived in a neighborhood out on the edge of town, and even that didn’t look like I remembered it. My mom said that they used to take my sister into town with them while I was at kindergarten, so maybe I didn’t even see that much of Darmstadt proper when I was young.

Anyhoo, on our recent tour, we saw the Residenzschloss:



And the Rathaus:



And the Hessisches Landesmuseum:



So we had our fair share of nice buildings to admire. And there was ice cream, so we could keep Hannah in line with a timely bribe.



Unfortunately, we missed the famous Hundertwasser building, the Waldspirale, and the Mathildenhöhe, because they weren’t right in the city center. If we have to drive anywhere, we have a fight, so it is better to park and go on foot.

Then we were off to Burg Frankenstein and the Felsenmeer (see below). See links to the right for the full photo set.