Recently Paul and I had the opportunity to travel to England and Scotland. Scotland has been a dream of mine for many years, and it did not disappoint! Such a beautiful country. Amazingly we were there when the Queen died so we witnessed a couple of historical events! One of those was the firing of the Howitzers at Edinburgh Castle that we just happened to be walking towards when they started firing! Another event that occurred a few hours after, was as we were walking on the sidewalk next to the road used to transport the Queen via hearse from Balmoral to Edinburg Castle! We had a front row view! We didn’t attend the procession the following day where she was taken from Edinburgh to HolyRood House since we were on a driving excursion. We were told later that the crowds for this procession were insane and were at least 15 people deep!
During our time in Scotland, we took two driving excursions, one was a 12 hour tour through the Highlands, Glencoe and Loch Ness. While on this tour we saw our very first ‘Hairy Coo’s’ were serenaded by a gentleman in full Scottish attire, playing the bagpipes as our bus pulled in to a parking lot, visited a castle, sailed on a Catamaran and dipped our fingers into Loch Ness in an attempt to attract the infamous ‘Nessie’. Our second driving excursion took us to locations where the series ‘Outlander’ were filmed. Locations like Doune Castle near Stirling, Blackness Castle near Linlithgow, Falkland, and Culross in Fife. Unfortunately we didn’t get to visit LallyBroch since there was filming going on there. Another day was spent just wondering around Edinburgh, enjoying shopping at the Royal Mile, going up to Calton Hill, which is actually an extinct volcano and one of Edinburgh’s main hills, and taking in all of the historic buildings and the Scottish culture.
So I have a new dream now, that is to someday return to Scotland and spend a week or two staying in The Highlands and enjoying the islands around Scotland. Maybe I’ll even get up the courage to eat Haggis … or … maybe not.
