Thoughts on Scotland

We're in Dublin however before I forget, I wanted to post some overall thoughts about Scotland. Odd as it may sound, I think I was expecting to fall in love with Scotland to the point where I'd be telling Chris that one day, I would want to live there. I don't know why, but since I got a taste of Edinburgh years ago when travelling with Morag, I've always thought of it as a place I could see myself one day. Alas, this is not the case. I loved Scotland, however I can't really picture myself living there (and no, I'm not out actively scouting new places to live!!).

1. We found it difficult to find a healthy meal in Scotland...
I love a good steak and ale pie with chips as much as the next person, but when eating out, healthier options are fairly limited. I take full accountability for my choices - for example a burger with beetroot, fried egg, bacon, cheese, onion and pineapple -- I coudn't resist such an odd combo. While we had some seriously tasty meals, my favorites were prepared by Chris (Pamela's boyfriend) at home -- a great curry, and a tasty pasta. Chris and I also had an awesome meal on our last night in Edinburgh at an Italian restaurant called Bar Roma, however it felt like cheating.

2. There are sheep everywhere!
I thought this was very cool! We took a gondola up a mountain at the Ben Nevis Range and there were even sheep up there. For some reason, even after the 100th field of sheep they still seem novel!

3. Pub life in Scotland...
People in Scotland seem to know how to relax and let loose with a pint in hand. Pubs close early and people start drinking pretty early too. Everyone we met was very friendly and people are helpful in the street.

4. Scots love their history...
We watched Brave Heart in preparation for our Highlands road trip (any other likeness of William Wallace did NOT portray a man with HUGE hair, by the way)... Scotland is FULL of amazing history, castles, battlefields, ruins, etc. It was great to get out of the city and see the countryside. It is easy to see why people there are so proud of their roots.

5. Beer belly
I would have one if I lived in Scotland. I think it would be unavoidable. This also applies to Dublin...

6. Scotland is gorgeous
In the city, and in the countryside... beauty abounds. What a gorgeous country.

That's all for now!

More later.

P

Scotland - Dundee, Western Highlands, Edinburgh

Here is a quick summary of our Scottish adventures so far. We arrived in Dundee last Wednesday. Thursday morning we headed back into Edinburgh, about an hour by train South of Dundee to see some of the sites. Thursday night we got drunk in a pub here and I made a mission back to the airport to pick up our bags that had finally arrived from Amsterdam. KLM was a great plane ride, but they managed to lose our bags on a simple connection. Shit happens I spose. Anyhow, last train back to Dundee was at 11pm, so Pamela, Paula and I headed to the Haymarket Train Station and caught the train along with quite a crowd of very drunk Thursday night Scots.

Friday morning nice and early we packed up a rental car, the 3 of us, Pamela's boyfriend Chris and Marty of the Queen Charlottes, who is in Scotland for a few weeks on his way to the Czech Replubic for a few months. The rental car was some sort of small GM 4 door hatch-back vehicle with a 'rumble seat' for the 5th person. European cars are very cool!

2 hours into the trip, on our way to Oban, which some of you will know as the home of the Oban Distillery, I got to drive for my 1st time on the left side of the road. 70 mile / hour speed limits on a road that is about the width of 1 North American lane. Exciting I can say the least. Great road conditions and excellent signage and very well engineered vehicles made it a blast. I did some good driving over the weekend and hope to do some more..

So, we made it to Oban on Friday evening, did the distillery tour, had a wee dram and headed to the pub for "a few" rounds. Great Pub, the Oban Inn. I will say now, that Oban is an amazingly scenic place. The weather was sunny and warm, t-shirt weather even! Got drunk again this night.... Stayed at the Oban Backpackers Hostel.

Saturday got off to a slow start, then we drove south along some more incredibly exciting roads to the Kilmartin Valley, where there are many many finds of monuments and whatnot from 3000 BC! Thats old. Then off to Fort William, about 2 hours North along the Western Highlands Coast. Quiet night, checked out the local town and had some steak pie of course.

Sunday, we headed to Ben Nevis, the highest Mountain in the UK. We took the Gondola up and did some walks around the peak to the North of Nevis. Spectacular views!

Time for the trip home, through what might have been some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen. Glencoe is unbelieveable. Go there!

Back to Dundee in the late evening, well deserved sleep and up early this morning to say goodbye to my sister and take the train back to Edinburgh where I sit right now. Today we did some more touring around and saw the Edinburgh Castle and lots more.

Tomorrow afternoon we are off to Dublin by plane. Bye to Scotland.

One thing I will say, is that they are seriously set up for tourists here. It is quite expensive, but worth it to see, as many of us have our roots somewhere in this part of the world....

Bye for now.

Computers for the Common Travelin Man

Hello again.

One thing has become increasingly obvious since we left North America just over a week ago - computers for the non-computer-professional can be very fustrating. I am typing away at a Windows 98 SE workstation at easyInternetCafe.com in Edinburgh and it has crashed on me twice since since I sat down one hour ago. We have had a hard time dealing with the blog and with photos. 2-3MB pictures are not very easy to deal with on slow computers or upload on slow connections. Haha, as I type this, Paula just lost her post to a Win98 Blue Screen. Even Bluehost, who hosts our website, is having problems with our control panel.

So, today we came to the realization that this trip will largely be non-techological. I have made 2 blog posts, but already I have about 20 pages in my 'black book' filled up with stuff. I am going to hack up and simplify the blog and Flickr is out the door in favour of good ol Gallery. We need to sort this before we get out of Europe, because we have a feeling things are not going to get better.....

So, for now, our photos are up here on Flickr, but hopefully they will soon be moved. We will likely be posting fewer photos than we had originally planned, but perhaps that will mean higher quality photo content...

It's been a bit of a depressing realization, but at the end of the day, one of the original goals of this trip was to leave technology and easy living behind, at least temporarily, so this is not a bad thing.

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Made it to Dundee…. bags, not so sure…

Just wanted to let you know that we have arrived in Dundee. Unfortunately, our backpacks have not arrived in Dundee. We are with Chris' sister and her boyfriend Chris in their apartment in Dundee. We are crossing our fingers that our bags show up tomorrow sometime... After all the care and packing... ugh. Anyhow, sitting here in Pamela's pj's and hoping we won't have to buy too much before our bags arrive. Heading to Edinburgh tomorrow and going on a Highlands roadtrip from Friday to Monday. It will makes things all the better if we actually have a real change of clothes!! KLM is currently looking for our bags... three others from TO didn't get their bags on arrival in London (which is also where we realized our bags were not on the connection from Amsterdam). We certainly haven't had a lot of luck with flying, have we?! Oh well... guess if it was going to happen we are in the ideal place for it to happen. 14 days til we go to Morocco, so we have time before things become too stressful!! :)

No worries, all is well... just a tad annoying.

Out East

Thought it was time for a little update. After Ottawa we headed to Saint John , NB to visit Chris' family for 4 days. We stayed with Chris' mom, Norma, who was very happy to have her son home. Our time in Saint John was spent visiting with his family, including his two grandmothers. Chris' beard was not a hit with his Gramie, and she introduced him as "Whiskers" to everyone we came across in the home that she lives in. Funny enough, the beard was gone about four days later! No doubt it will surface again in the trip, but it was nice to see Chris' full face again! From NB we went to visit my parents in Newfoundland. In the first of our flight delays, we ended up in St. John's about 7 hours late (a plane with mechanical difficulties in Saint John). We spent three days with my parents... lots of good fish dinners and cards. Chris and dad went ice fishing (sadly, no catches) while mom and I had tea with the gals at the 50+ club. Nice to visit with the family, as well as spend some time up on the highland for a walk. Our last night was spent with Chris' Aunt and Uncle in St. John's, who invited us along with my folks for a nice dinner. Arriving 5:30 a.m. at the airport for a flight to Halifax then on to Toronto, we discovered that due to weather, all flights in and out of Halifax were cancelled. We were rerouted to Montreal, arriving at 7:40 a.m., and were rescheduled for a flight to TO at 3:00 p.m. (actually flying out at 4:30 p.m.). Originally set to arrive in TO at 10:35, we ended up in the city at about 6 p.m. Morag had a get together for us that night, along with a very cool cake (photo is downloaded) and good friends. Visited with Barb, Neil and my sweet nieces on Sunday, then had a great dinner with Jo and Damian on Sunday night at Henry VIII, Damian's pub. We spent Monday getting some things done, met with the Simons for a nice lunch and met up with Morag, Nicole and Brian for dinner. All in all, a good visit out East!

Ottawa March 4-9

We've been on the road for a week so far. It has been a very COLD week in eastern Canada. In Ottawa the temperature was -41 with wind-chill. We quickly found our long johns would become our favourite items in our heavy backpacks. We were successful in getting three visas...better than we had even hoped for. Our first stop was the Jordan Embassy. We learned there that Embassies accept only money orders. After a very cold walk, we were back at the Embassy, and three hours later we had the first cool page in our passports. Syria was the next day... Without incident we had the second of our visas.

On Tuesday we headed to Montreal by train after leaving the Syrian Embassy. Our hotel for the night was quite fancy -- XIXe Siecle, an old boutique hotel in old Montreal. Still freezing but happy, we set out to find dinner. After doing some laundry in the sink (we had been in a hotel for four nights prior to leaving Vancouver), we headed to bed. We spent Wednesday walking around the city -- the temperature was -20ish, so we are heroes.

Wednesday was our first night in the Ottawa Jail hostel. The hostel used to be a fully functioning jail from 1867 to 1972 when it was closed due to inhumane conditions. Our room for the next two nights would be a jail cell with a bunk bed-- actually three cells with the walls knocked out between them. Th original cells were 3.5' X 6.5 '... Not very big! A very interesting place that I'll describe in more detail in a moment.

On Thursday we visited the Tanzanian Embassy (without much hope that they would be able to do a visa for us as our travel date is pretty far out and visas last only 3 months). Happily they were able to accommodate us and post date the visa, making this one less official document we'll have to worry about once we are out of Canada. After the Embassy, we visited the Canadian War Museum and the Museum of Civilization. At the the War Museum, there was an incredible exhibit about Canada's involvement in Afghanistan. Really amazing to see, and I think difficult for anyone to leave with dry eyes.

On Thursday evening we took a tour of the Jail that we were staying at. EEK! The prison is apparently haunted by the ghost of one poor guy, James Patrick Whelan, accused of murdering a Father of Confederation. On the eight floor of the prison (a floor unused by the Hostel) we saw the cells (including death row) where these people were kept. After one too many stories (among them, stories of hostellers visited by Whelan's ghost), and a visit to the gallows (the only operational gallows in Canada apparently), the tour ended. I don't do so well with ghost stories and made Chris sleep in the bottom bunk with me - me and Chris on a single bunk. My mind racing with visions of ghosts and criminal goblins as well as the very real fear that our bed would come crashing down, I don't think I slept for more than an hour.

From Ottawa we made our way to St. John to visit with Chris' family, arriving Friday evening. So far we have done some visiting, but we will write more about that later... This entry is getting way too long!

Ottawa, Day1

We arrived in Ottawa an hour late this morning after the midnight flight from Vancouver. It's only about -4 degrees, but the wind is blowing about 1 million miles per hour directly from the North Pole. We obtained our Jordanian travel visa without incident. Tomorrow we get the Syrian visa and then we are heading off to Montreal for a night. We both need a bit of sleep, perhaps more later on when I wake up......

{Home|Job}less

I'm sitting in an Internet Cafe typing this up. How demoralizing for someone who considered himself Lord of the Computer World at one point....

All we have now is the packs on our backs. Busy doing taxes, packing up our stuff into storage, and all the crap that we need to do before we get this show on the road....

We leave Vancouver this Sunday, March 4th at 23:50 PST. 1st stop is Ottawa to get some travel Visas.....