Our first Thanksgiving here we went to London. The second Thanksgiving we made it to Ireland. So the obvious choice for our last Thanksgiving in Europe was to hit
Thanksgiving on the Sunday before
....SCOTLAND!
Our family tartan- I love it! But I couldn't find anything made in this color scheme
Oh yah, baby!
We only had 5 days, but we tried to make the most of it.
We actually flew into Manchester and ran up into the Lake district for our first overnighter. We had a cute little home on Lake Windemere which would have been perfect if it wasn't for the fact that we couldn't figure out how to turn the heat on and froze our patooties off all night and then took cold showers in the morning. Luckily we figured out the hot water situation, but even with all the wall heaters on full blast 24/7 it never heated up where you could wear just regular clothes inside. I wore my outside winter running clothes most of the time. Also, the parking was crazy hairy!
Luckily we survived and didn't ditch the rental car in the staircase well. It was touch and go, especially driving on the wrong side. Don't you Brits understand that you are supposed to drive on the other side so the shotgun person can actually use a shot gun if necessary? Your obvious lack of understanding of the two commandments "Thou shalt not trust thy neighbor" and "Walk quietly and carry a big stick" is probably why you never converted to Americanism!
Anyway....
We made it to see Dove Cottage (home of Wordsworth)
The World of Beatrix Potter- which was a little on the babyish side for our kids, but since her gallery wasn't open, it was the next best thing.
Look! We found Peter's jacket
Castelrigg stone circle- our substitute for Stonehenge, because it was free!
We met a lovely Brit there who had scattered her mother's ashes around the area. Her mother believed it was a magical place- magical in the sense that it made you think about history and your ancestors in a lovely scenic setting.
The Pencil Museum up in Keswick - which we went in to get pencils with our names on them and not to actually see the museum. It was supposedly the first sight of pencil making.
and The Beautiful countryside.
Then we wended our way up to Edinburgh.
We saw the castle
walked the royal mile
Checked out Deacon Brodie's tavern from Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde
Tried to spit into the middle of the Heart of Midlothian to bring us good luck- only one or two of us made it
And walked all the way down to the Palace of Holyroodhouse.
We also found a nice little Christmas market- no delicious fish chowder like in Ireland, however.
The next day we skipped up to St. Andrew's to see
The college where Prince William and Catherine Duchess of York went to school.
Yep that is actually the name of this street- weirdly the sign goes missing quite often
and
The Famous Green's,
but first we stopped to see Sterling castle, because "He who holds Sterling Castle, Holds Scotland!"
Yes, I know Sterling is not on the way. Our vacations tend to have a mind of their own. We meant to see Sterling on the way up to Edinburgh but it didn't happen and then on the way back to Manchester we meant to see Hadrian's wall and then check out Manchester's famous Christmas market, but it was windy and rainy and yucky, so we ended up doing neither of those things and just wasted our whole last day in Scotland/England, by eating yucky food at a yucky restaurant twice! Sometimes you just need to relax and do nothing but eat yucky food to call it a vacation, I guess!
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