Wednesday, July 31, 2019

Devon and Michaela's adventures in Scotland



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You want to hear about our Scotland trip?  Pull up a seat; this is going to take a while.

Monday, July 15, 2019.

Devon gave me a blessing at the beginning of the trip and one thing that he said that stuck out to me was that I would have “patience and understanding.” I made a mental note that was probably divine code for “Some crazy stuff is going to happen, so prepare for adventure.” I remember just hoping that didn’t mean one of our flights was horribly delayed.
It was a bit tricky figuring out what to wear this morning, considering we would be starting out at 80-90 degrees in Phoenix and go to places with a temperature range of 70 at the highs and 50 at the lowest. I can hear the stewardess now: “Ma’am, why did you bring your winter coat on the plane?”
It better be time for vacation; our fridge is pretty bare and we won’t be buying groceries until we’re back.
2:45am is not the ideal time to start a trip. But when your flight leaves at 6am and the shuttle to the airport wants to pick you up at 3:40am, that is what happens. Happily, the shuttle picked us up at the time appointed.
Now, why there should be tons of crazy people already on the highways at this ungodly hour, I don’t know. (Oh wait, we’re some of them.)
The sparkles on my back pockets set off the airport security alarm, so I earned an enhanced screening and a chemical screening of my hands. Joy.
I had to defend Devon’s seat at the gate from two different men who wanted to sit there. (“Sorry, this is my husband’s spot!”)
The airplane from Phoenix to Newark has back-of-the-seat TVs, and the safety reminder video features the usual demonstrations interspersed with Spider-Man chasing and catching criminals, which was both jarring and amusing at the same time.
There was much excitement in the Stephens family when the inflight snack included the possibility of a stroopwaffle. (Also, autocorrect hates them.) Devon has liked stroopwaffels ever since Sister Chatwin introduced them for a pack meeting snack. Stroooooopwaffellls...Mmmmmm....
Spider-Man napkins accompanied the snack. You can smell the advertising partnership with movie industry from a mile away.
Very bouncy-jouncy landing into Newark, New Jersey. We were bobbing up and down on the approach so much it felt like a roller coaster ride and we hit hard enough that I (and the passengers nearby) braced for impact. It felt like we were going to skid out of control, but we got to a stop safe and sound. Yayyy!
Apparently Newark airport is just across the river from New York City. No wonder the airport tourist shops were selling shirts saying “I [heart] NY.” Sometimes I am slow on the uptake. But when one’s gate looks right out onto a crowd of skyscrapers, eventually the light dawns and realization sets in. Or maybe when we had to pay $27 for a sandwich and a salad we should have known. (Note to self: Pack a big lunch when flying through this place to avoid the highway robbery that passes for restaurant food...)
I’m glad Devon checks the flight monitors to discover gate changes, otherwise we would be headed for Dusseldorf, instead of Edinburgh.
I observe a big trailer named “Flying Food Group” is disgorging food carts onto the plane we are to take. “Flying Food Group” sounds like what you’d get if you were to corporatize food fights. I think I’ll start that as a business. It will be a great team-building exercise for large cap companies and raise employee morale, thus raising profits everywhere. Or how about “Flying Food Solutions” or “Food Fight Incorporated”?
Super-long flight to Stockholm. I napped a little bit, but it doesn’t feel like enough.
I tried the meditation-entertainment, which was supposed to give an hour of meditation. I found the visualization exercises too boring. It wanted me to land on the moon and hop around on it, while looking at the dark infinity of space and stars, when my mind had already wandered off and started adding atmosphere, water, plants, animals, and what have you. Why merely look around the moon when I could terraform and populate it?
From the air, Stockholm appears very green in the summer. Lots of forests and meadows and houses spread out from each other.
Our flight overwhelmed the Swedish airport passport control. We spent 45 minutes standing in line, and a Swedish lady in front of us didn’t know why it was so many people all at once. She said she had flown into Stockholm many times and she’s never seen it this crowded.
I put Devon in charge of our day in Stockholm, and he got us bus tickets to go to the city center.
I found a map at the information counter, but as I was examining it on the bus, I discovered I couldn’t understand any of it (which happens when one is in a foreign country...) so we downloaded maps onto our phones to use offline.
As we drive through the countryside to get to Stockholm, I observe it would be really easy to think we were just driving through northwest Illinois if it weren’t for the Swedish signs and the fact that highway cuts through cliffs show granite instead of sandstone.
Stockholm buildings in the downtown area are about 6 stories high and seem to be mixed use. The bottom story is retail space, and higher stories seem to be residential. This seems efficient to me.
Once there, we hiked via bridge to one of their little islands to explore, then up a little stairway, and we saw this rock that had a little black metal door in the side. It turned out it was marking the location of the Ordinance Datem, which marks the zero level, or average, of the water level as around the year 1900. What’s peculiar is that it is not at the same level as the water around Stockholm. I’d say it’s about 50 feet above.
We hiked to the Nobel Museum that has stuff about the Nobel Prize. One crazy thing we learned was that Hitler had actually been nominated for the peace prize, but only out of irony to make a political statement. However, we also found out Mussolini and Stalin has also been nominated too, and I don’t know if those were ironic or not.
Also near the Nobel museum was the Wooden Horse Museum, which sounded interesting. This turned out to be a shop selling all manner of carved wooden horses of various sizes, painted all kinds of interesting colors and patterns. Supposedly this is a traditional art form (which shows you people have loved knickknacks in all ages of the world. ) If I were to have gotten one, it would have been the size of a dog, to put outside my door at home. I say, go big or go home. (This shows I am not immune to said love of knickknacks, but I tend to be extremely choosey.)
For lunch, we decided to get two orders of meatballs so we could say we’d eaten Swedish meatballs in Sweden. Probably everybody wants to do that, but that doesn’t stop us from wanting to do it too. They were good meatballs. They also came with gray, extra creamy potatoes, loganberries, and bean plants (as in stems and leaves).

I noticed the bus taking us back to the Stockholm airport was playing an ABBA song. I like ABBA. I have deep-seated childhood memories of hearing it. My mom has told me she would play ABBA while driving young women to church youth activities with me in the car when I was two or three. I rediscovered ABBA again when I was a teen and couldn’t understand why I connected so closely with their music until mom told me about my very early exposure to it. Moral of the story—play the good stuff for your kids over and over.
I got a blessed bit of doze on the bus before we got to the airport.
I told Devon I thought I might be dehydrated. He got us 2 bottled waters and we discovered they were carbonated. (There was mild-mannered chagrin in the Stephens family.) Devon said he should have known, since the French like their carbonated mineral water. We may have to carefully inspect any water before buying in non-English-speaking countries.
We also got some Swedish cheese and chocolate. The cheese was pretty strong. It had an almost nutty aftertaste to it, though, which was sort of fun. It reminded me of the Wyfe-of-Bath cheese we got in London back in 2017.
When we got our passports checked on the outgoing Swedish end, the officer wasn’t sure how many were in our party because the middle eastern family behind us had snuck up close instead of staying behind the yellow line where they were supposed to be. He (the officer) got pretty irate at them and refused to work on our stuff until they were back where they should be. I suppose the officers have to make sure no one sneaks past them.
It feels like we’ve been traveling for days. We have 28 hours of flights and layovers. We keep trying to nap whenever we can, and at this point, the thing we both look forward to the most is sleeping prone on a real bed. Ah, bed, how I miss thee with the passion of a thousand suns!
Stockholm’s airport has a lovely feature about their gate benches—they don’t have an armrest between them, so you can actually lie down on them if you want. And I did, and got some sleep, but it didn’t seem nearly long enough.
Finally, we got onto the plane to Edinburgh. For some reason that flight seemed particularly long, but I suppose it was only the fact that we were sleep deprived and a possible time zone change that had us arriving only an hour after the flight began.
After deplaning, we found the place we could get a SIM card for my phone and found the right tram to the city center and Devon found some snack food for us while we rode.
Impressions of Edinburgh: Once again, it is green and rolling- another nice approximation to northwest Illinois. One of the things we noticed pretty quick when we got to Edinburgh was that it was a lot warmer than Stockholm. In Stockholm I had my sweater and it was not quite enough; I had to steal Devon’s raincoat (with his permission of course.) (Only later did I find out that he had been cold too, but had sacrificed his comfort for me. Awwwwwww.)
It was peculiar that half of the stops between the Edinburgh airport and city center were in what looked like the middle of the country, and yet there were some people that got off or got on there!
I’m not quite sure how to pronounce Edinburgh. The way I hear people say it sounds like “Edinburuh,” like there’s an extra syllable at the end that nobody working on the maps knew about. Of course, this could just be one of the vagaries of English language, especially considering we have “through,” “thorough,” “though,” “rough,” and “thought,” none of which actually rhyme with each other. (Seriously, will someone please inject some sanity into the above word list so we can spell them “thru” “thur-o,” “tho,” “ruff,” and “thot,” like they should be?)
It was pretty exciting to see the Edinburgh castle come into view at the top of promontory and know that if things went well, we would tour it the next day.
The Princes Street stop dropped us very close to said promontory. At this point I had figured out how to get my SIM card to work on my phone and mapped out the route to our Airbnb. It took us through down into the park/glade by the castle and around it. It felt kind of weird to drag our suitcases through the parks among all the tourists, but we hadn’t figured out bus passes yet. (As it happened days later, we ran into other travelers dragging their suitcases around, so we weren’t the only ones.)
One of the interesting things that we saw on the way was a few Scottish thistles which grew above our heads in some places. I’d heard about the Scottish thistle, but I didn’t realize it could get so big.  Concerning this thistle: When your country is cursed with some big weeds, you have two choices. You can fight a losing battle trying to eradicate them, or you can declare them the national plant and decorate everything with them. The Scots took the second choice.
I would’ve noticed more things, but it was hard for me to see with just my glasses. (Contacts give me a wider field of view, so it’s easier to see more things.)
As we were walking through the park surrounding the castle, we could hear bagpipes playing in the background somewhere, which was pretty cool. This is how you know that you have gotten to Scotland—bagpipes are playing on grassy knolls. And everyone is wearing kilts. (Not really, but we like to think so.)
Unfortunately, Google maps hadn’t registered that several routes were closed due to construction, so we had a merry jaunt, but ultimately we arrived.
When we got to our Airbnb, we found it was one of those apartments where there is a bank of buttons in the door jamb on the front step and you have to push the right one to get buzzed in. I had a bad moment while trying to figure out which button to push. Only two had readable labels. All others had vague numbers associated with them, which were not the 5 we were looking for. Fortunately, I remembered the text our host, had sent us, and sure enough, it told us to press the one labeled Coventry. Once we identified ourselves to the voice on the other end, we were admitted into the fold and told to walk two floors up.
Our Airbnb is essentially home to a group of bachelors that have a spare room for visitors. Naturally, things are a little bit wonky, and thus we had explained to us the tricks that will make the electricity, the oven, the lights, the curtains, and the exterior door locks work for us and what to do should the metered electricity suddenly run out on us.
But it has a lovely view out on a backyard garden.
Our room was a charming place. It had three large wardrobes that had been placed around the door so as to form a little foyer. Then it had a queen-sized bed placed next to the floor-to-ceiling window, which had a number of large plants in pots growing there. The walls had colorful art and pictures hung here and there, and there was a large origami pendant light hung from the middle of the ceiling. For a decorative medallion around the base of the light, a large cloth portrait of Buddha nailed to the ceiling, with the light cord sprouting out of his stomach, in the most comfortable visual ever. It was an artsy, colorful, interesting room. We got relaxed at once.
It appears that our merry jaunt did some violence to Devon’s suitcase. When we got to the Airbnb, we found that one of his wheels was partially torn off and the plastic shell was ripped open a bit around it. I wonder which type of pavement did this to it? Was it the cobblestones? Was it the concrete? Was it the large flat flagstones? Was it the stairs? I think we’ve only used these suitcases about 3-4 times.
There is a seagull that lives on the roof somewhere, and it makes peculiar noises. Sometimes it sounds like a person cackling loud and long. Other times it sounds respectably seagull-like. Sometimes it sounds like a cross between a penguin and a Canada goose. But it is loud. And I hear it outside at 3am (since that is when I have awakened).
I don’t think it is quite fair that I felt more awake at 4am than I do at 7am. Someone explain that to me! (Editor: one word—time zones.)
I have a hard time flushing the toilet in this apartment. Devon seems to understand the secret method to it. He told me you have to prime it and then push it down and hold it. I tried that, and it blooshed, and then I did it again and it blooshed some more, and I held it down, and it dumped a bunch of water in, but the “stuff” didn’t seem to go anywhere. I had to leave it until Devon woke up, so I lived in worry that one of our flat mates would discover the messy business in the early hours of the day and think we were a bunch of yahoos.
Also, there is nothing quite like the terror of coming to stay in a flat with 3-4 men and finding that the bathroom only has ONE half-used roll of toilet paper and no more in sight. Likewise, you can probably imagine my glee to eventually discover another toilet paper roll on the kitchen table and two more hidden on a shelf near our bed. (However, the peculiar locations of said toilet paper make one think it is a resource that is carefully hoarded in this household.)(Until the last day when they stocked up and suddenly we were rolling in the stuff.)
Just as I was about to plug in my hair appliance, Devon informed me that he had forgotten to bring the electrical adapter for it. My chagrin was great, but short-lived for his sake. At least he told me before I accidentally started some kind of electrical fire.
As we were walking up the stairway to Edinburg castle Devon observed that the wall was ancient as he pointed to a cement stone in it that said A.D 2001.
Edinburgh castle is built on a large promontory that looks down on everything in the city. The castle it has different levels to it that are accessed in a rough upward spiral. Lowest is the gatehouse and Argyl’s tower. Then comes the military buildings (since the castle still houses a military garrison for ceremonial and administrative purposes), then at a higher level are St. Margaret’s chapel (the only medieval building left, and the oldest building in Edinburgh), the half-moon battery and David’s tower, and then at the very tippy top are is Crown Square, which consists of an open square, the sides of which are formed by the Royal Palace, the Great Hall, the Queen Anne Building, and the Scottish National War Monument building. Wikipedia has some interesting facts about this castle: “Research undertaken in 2014 identified 26 sieges in its 1100-year-old history, giving it a claim to having been ‘the most besieged place in Great Britain and one of the most attacked in the world’. That’s pretty extraordinary.
You walk up the spiral on a cobblestone street, that has another little mini-street in the middle made of tiny cobblestones. We were told that the mini-street was made so as to give horses better traction when dragging up cartloads of provisions up the hill on wet or icy days. It is also a reassuringly secure surface for tourists (such as ourselves) to walk up during a drizzly rain.
First we rented some audio-tour devices. Anyplace we went in the castle we could find some plaque with a number on it. If we punched the number into our audio-tour device, we’d be able to hear some kind of explanation of that location and its use, its history, and any lurid stories connected with it. ;-)    Interestingly, just as soon as we rented these devices, Devon saw a tour guide gathering a group and decided it would be fun to listen to what the man had to say. So we followed the guide and got his info and then listened to our tour devices.
 
I think the first building we actually went into was the war memorial building in Crown Square. We weren’t supposed to take pictures in it, so all I have are of the exterior. But there is nothing saying you can’t draw things inside, so that’s what I did. The war memorial building is very cathedral-like on the inside. It has stained glass windows and a high ceiling. There are regimental flags along the walls, along with plaques in gilt letters saying things like, “In remembrance of the brave men and women who gave their lives for God, king, and country.” There were also books of names of those who died, which books visitors could open and read the names of. I think it is appropriate to recognize these kinds of sacrifices in a cathedral-like atmosphere.
There was an interesting arrangement of weapons on the walls that I found intriguing, so I sketched it in my pad of paper. It’s very rough.
Next, we stood in line for about half an hour to see the “Scottish Honors,” which consist of the Scottish crown jewels—the crown, the scepter, and the sword. These were accessed by way of a tight spiral staircase into a dark-paneled safe room with red carpet. Supposedly they are very old and they were lost for a while when the English put down the Jacobite rebellions, and then later found by Sir Walter Scott in an old trunk (!!!!) Fancy finding crown jewels in an old trunk!
(Now, if we had just been patient, we could have just waited until 4pm or so and the line to see the Scottish Honors would have disappeared, and then we could have seen it in about five minutes.)
Next, we saw the tiny darkwood-paneled room in which Mary Queen of Scots delivered her son James the VI (the one who became James I of England). She had him a few months after her secretary had been killed practically in front of her by her husband Lord Darnley, so she felt very unsafe at the time, and according to the tour info, the smallness of the room helped her feel secure. (It’s quite likely she suffered PTSD from her experience.) How small was the room? It couldn’t have been more than eight feet in every direction. Plus a fireplace, and a little diamond-paned window two or three times wider than an arrow slit. But it had an amazing plastered ceiling moldings that were elaborately painted. Which would make sense, since she’d lie in a bed staring at the ceiling.
We also watched the one o’clock gun shot off. This is a daily tradition at Edinburgh castle that was begun as a way to help ships in the harbor set their clocks to the same time. There is also a big black ball on the top of the Nelson Monument on Calton hill that would raise and then fall at one o’clock, but in the fog and mist, often ships could not see that, so firing the gun was to help with that. Another interesting fact is that other places would do this sort of thing (firing the gun) at noon, but the Scots are a thrifty people, so they decided to do it at 1pm instead because they would only need to use one charge of gunpowder instead of twelve, and thereby save a significant amount of money.
The gun itself wasn’t an old-timey cannon. It was a pretty modern-looking artillery piece, so while the tradition is old, the equipment is not so.
So anyway, it was fascinating to see what a crowd of people gathered to watch this shooting of a big gun. (Of course, we were just as curious as everyone else.) Everyone was holding up their phones, straining to take pictures. I had to climb up on one of the other cannons to get a good view, with so many others on their tiptoes. (Apologies to all the people who were behind me and also trying to see.) The soldier marches out, loads the cannon, and at a call of “Fire!” the gun went off. WHOA.   And everyone else around me went, “Whoa!” too when it shot off. I don’t any of us expected it to be so loud.  You know, after something like that I have to laugh at myself because it should have been obvious it was going to be loud, since that was the gun’s purpose. But real life is always so startling, more vivid than theory or expectation.
Next, we went through the war museum. This was a mixed experience because on one hand, there were interesting objects on display, with interesting pictures, and cards explaining all of it with interesting captions, but the lights used in the display were very badly aimed so it was very hard to see about 30% of the displays. Which was a real shame. If I could make any suggestion to Edinburgh Castle people, I’d ask for those lights to be fixed/better aim/replaced/improved/whatever.  The Scots take such pride in their fighting history, it is a tragedy that anyone would have to strain their eyes to learn about it.
Now, there are a few people highlighted in the war museum that I want to point out. Scottish Admiral Adam Duncan seems pretty awesome. He blockaded the Dutch and when all of his fleet mutinied except for one other ship, he stayed on the blockade and sent  flag signals with orders to imaginary ships. This made the French think there was a fleet just over the horizon waiting for him and they didn’t try to sneak past.
Ralph Abercrombey – This enlightened man was in sympathy with the American side during the Revolutionary War, and stayed in Ireland in order to avoid fighting them. From 1797-1798 he was in charge of the military in Ireland, and did his utmost to restore discipline and maintain civil order without using force unless absolutely necessary. However, he wasn’t appreciated by Irish civil authority, so he resigned, and his exit led to all the disaster that he had anticipated and had tried to avoid.
Sir Thomas Graham—This guy was both a very loving husband and a very courageous soldier. There is a story about him riding 90 miles in a day by stages to retrieve some jewelry for his wife to wear for a ball the same day. There is also a story of him attempting to help break the French siege of Cadiz, Spain in along with an army of Spanish troops. As he and his British troops were trying to flank the French, the Spanish troops started to retreat. He made a split-second decision to attack vigorously and succeeded in routing the French forces. It wasn’t enough to break the siege, but it was enough to prevent their whole army from falling after the ignominious Spanish retreat.
There’s a story about a Campbell general who foresaw his own deaths at Ticonderoga. (I didn’t get his name, sorry.) He had a vision of his dead foster brother who told him “Farewell until Ticondaroga” He didn’t know what that name was. When he was actually there, his officers tried to keep the name from him and when he found out, he got irate and said “You have deceived me! I will die today.” And he did.
         Other interesting people to learn about include: Sir David Baird, Admiral William Carnegie, Sir Frederick Maitland, Sir Hugh Rose,  Sir Colin Campbell, Alexander Leslie, and Sir Hector Macdonald.
Apparently the Scots who lost in the Jacobean rebellion joined the highland regiments of the English army to regain status. They got sent to fight in America and a lot of them died in the Revolutionary war.
         Edinburgh castle held both POW prisons and military prisons, which we toured. The conditions of the POW prisons reminded me a bit of the dismal nature of Liberty Jail endured by Joseph Smith in 1838 (dark, cold, depressing, filthy, crowded), with the exception of the hammocks, which were a rather surprising feature.  The military prisons, on the other hand, were individual whitewashed cells in an organized cell block, and compared to the POW prisons, were practically the lap of luxury. (individual toilets, sinks, shelves, beds, bright space, etc.
         We learned that POWs occupied themselves with making prison crafts, and we saw such specimens as jewelry boxes elaborately decorated with pieces of straw. The subtle variations of color created by the individual pieces of straw made them very beautiful. I was not surprised to learn that these crafts had been sold in Edinburgh and that eventually Edinburgh craftsman complained that their own custom was being eroded by the prison crafts.
         The other notable prison craft was carving soup bones to make printer plates for forging banknotes. They would forge the larger details of print, and then draw in the smaller details by pen. Who would have thought that soup bones could be so employed?  Hmmmm, actually, considering what I learned about inmate creativity when ministering to a prison inmate, I shouldn’t have been so surprised.
We finished with Edinburgh castle and headed down the Royal Mile, which has tons of touristy shops along it, most with shops to buy kilts and plaid products.
As we were exploring, I happened to see a sign for Scottish genealogy that promised free research help. I hadn’t planned on spending time on genealogy, but this looked promising, so I went to talk to them. I wasn’t prepared (didn’t have data listed out easy) but I did have access to my Family Tree app, so we used data on that.
The nice lady found an entry on my family name of McKnight that shows variations of it that can be expected in the records. She also told me about the main kinds of documents Scotland has and the range of dates they are available in. That should help with future research. Also she told me about a research organization that people from Scotland (and people with Scottish ancestry) can belong to.
After this, we went for fish and chips at a restaurant. I noticed haggis on the menu, so I ordered haggis along with our fish and chips, since trying it was one of our culinary goals for the trip. The haggis was the size of a chipotle burrito and deep-fried. The inner texture is creamy. Spicy, kind of like a sausage. Very savory. I like it a lot. Robert Burns wasn’t kidding when he called haggis “the king of the puddings,” though I’m not sure what pudding has to do with it, unless he was talking about texture. (Maybe he meant “pudding” in the way that UK usually refers to dessert, but if so, haggis doesn’t seem like a dessert; it seems like a very filling main course.)(Consulting Wikipedia on the subject of “pudding” reveals that the word can also mean a savory, non-sweet dish that is part of the main meal. Which explains a lot.)  But basically, he was saying “Haggis is awesome, and everybody should try it at least once in their lives.” 
Edinburgh buildings can be quite dignified when you study them closely.

Thursday, July 18, 2019

I was reading my scriptures and I ran across a verse in Alma 26:36 that says, “Yea, blessed is the name of my God, who has been mindful of this people, who are a branch of the tree of Israel, and has been lost from its body in a strange land; yay, I say, Blessed be the name of my God, who has been mindful of us, wanderers in a strange land.”
This verse felt special because here we are, traveling in a strange, foreign land, and it reminded me that God is thinking of us too. I’ve seen small tender mercies the Lord has given to show that He is thinking of us. Those things are hard to articulate to other people, because they probably wouldn’t make much sense, but they mean much to me as an individual, and I’ve seen them.
Devon and I had a long discussion of what to do about our vacation schedule. Yesterday we had three other things planned besides Edinburgh castle, and we only got to the castle. We had to figure out where to put those other things, or whether to do them at all. Eventually, we decided to hang them on the margins and fit them in where we could. We also wanted to adjust our schedule to group things together that were in the same area. (Trying to be strategic, you see.)  This is where our prayers that we would cooperate together are tested and answered.
We looked in more Scottish tourist traps for gifts for family. A lot of the stores had much the same stuff in them—kilts, plaid scarfs and shawls, Scottish bonnets, sporrans, kilt pins, and then the usual keychains, pencils, etc.
We walked to Calton Hill, which is one of the sites to see in Edinburgh. It has an observatory on it, little museum, a partly finished replica of the Parthenon as a war memorial (which was never finished), a tall tower called the Nelson Memorial, and is generally a neat place go. It is also very windy up there, but at least it is sunny right now.
 
There are bagpipers busking everywhere. So far today we’ve seen them outside the Edinburgh castle, at two or three places on the Royal mile, and on Calton Hill.
We didn’t really go into any of the things on Calton Hill today; we just sort of wandered around it exploring things, seeing what we could see. Devon really wanted to see the ball drop on the Nelson monument and hear the gun from Edinburgh castle to see what kind of delay the sound had. So we sat around on a strategically located park bench on the side of the hill, waiting the 20 minutes for 1pm to roll around.  When the ball dropped, and the gun went off, it was strangely gratifying to hear the delay was something like 1.5 to 2 seconds. (Physics has been validated in Scotland!)
         The 20 minutes we waited was eased by listening to the bagpiper playing on the hill, accompanied by a guitarist. This cooperation was something out of the ordinary; you usually don’t see two musicians playing together while busking. It felt like they needed someone to dance too, so I went and danced to the music for a while. (I think it’s the performer in me…) I have no idea how it looked, but it was fun, and someone’s small child decided to dance too.
         After that, we walked to the Palace of Holyroodhouse. We didn’t actually plan to go there today; we were just exploring the different paths that led down from off Calton Hill and discovered a pretty one that led us quite close.   So we made an executive decision to go. (And we also found that the Scottish Parliament building is right across the street from the palace too, so if we had wanted to go there, we would have gotten two for one.)
         Okay, so Holyrood Palace. In our discussions of the place, Devon nicknamed it “Hollyhock,” because it feels more comfortable to say. “Holyrood” seems odd because we don’t know what a “rood” is and why it might be considered holy. Until we know this, to say “holy-rude” sounds like an oxymoron.
 
Later:  We have learned that “rood” is the cross. King David (a Scottish king in the medieval period) was hunting and saw a stag with a cross in its antlers and was inspired to build an abbey there. Later kings liked the abbey and attached their palace to it, sort of like Siamese twins, but with buildings instead. The join between the abbey and the palace is very peculiar looking.  
Abbey on the left, Holyrood Palace on the right.
 
The palace has lasted, but the abbey was partially destroyed in the Jacobite Rebellion. (Devon made the observation about the Holyrood Abbey that it is interesting how it can look like something is built to last practically forever and then it doesn’t.)
Supposedly this palace is smaller than all the others and has a “wonderfully intimate feel to it.” Since it is built down in the valley, it was considered much more comfortable than Edinburgh castle up on the hill, which is much more gusty and exposed. (But if danger threatened, then royalty would resort to Edinburgh castle.) 
Holyrood is built around a quadrangle (or square, if you want speak plainly), so someone could theoretically run around on the inside to get exercise in the winter.
 
The dining room’s audio tour said the silver plating helps retain the heat of the food for the guests but I’d heard it was exactly the opposite—that silver service loses heat quickly. Maybe what I’d heard was wrong.  (Later: I did some research and silver has a high heat conductivity, which means it transfers heat quickly. High conductivity is why we use metal pots to boil water because heat transfers quickly from the burner to the food inside, but that also means heat can just as easily be lost. Therefore, silver does not retain food’s heat; it transfers it away quickly and it would be better if the palace served food on porcelain instead of silver. (But palace cooks are not likely to switch because tradition and status.)
The palace has a series of rooms that people would move through called “the processional” and the final destination was the king’s bedroom.  Not sure why that should be the destination of choice. You were special if you were given the favor of getting to see the king get dressed in the morning. (Michaela shakes her head) Yes, I know it was a way for the king to show he was special friends with someone and it also likely a way to show he was healthy (public relations), but it just sounds wrong.
In the Great Gallery are something like 96 portraits. When I saw them, my first thought was that they were all of the same person, since so many of them are posed in the same position. But it turns out they were of the previous kings of Scotland. According to the tour, they were all done by the same artist, who gave them all the Charles II nose in order to emphasize the monarch’s right to the throne. Actually, I think the artist gave them more than the nose; I think he made them all look like Charles II.  It just looks like he wanted 96 pictures of himself collected in a room.
There’s a whole room devoted to Bonnie Prince Charlie. Apparently the Scottish still yearn for freedom from the oppressive tyrants of England. They show no shame over the failure of Bonny Prince Charlie to win the kingdom, but rather pleasure that he got as far as he did.
What the heck is the ceremony of “touching for the kings evil”?  [Consults Google] Well that’s interesting—apparently there was the belief that the king’s touch could cure certain diseases, and Bonny Prince Charlie revived the practice.
The painting of the battle of Culloden where Bonnie Prince Charlie was defeated seems to have been painted from the English perspective. The Scottish warriors are a frizzy-haired, plaid-wearing, mad mob of ruffians, while the English troops look disciplined and calm, except for one English soldier who looks positively terrified.
In the room next to Mary Queen of Scots’ bedroom is the place where her secretary was brutally stabbed more than 50 times and left lying in his gore. There’s a pink stain in the tan oak floor from it. Annnnnd, someone just stepped on it unknowingly. (Eye-roll)
That room has a very old, creaky wood floor. With all the people walking on it right now, it actually sounds like a pond of frogs ribbiting.  I’m sorry; I shouldn’t call it ‘old’; it’s historic.
Also at the palace was an exhibition of different parts of the wedding of Prince Harry and his wife. There are pictures of her dress and his dress uniform and her tiara and veil and various parts of the wedding regalia. We actually blew through that pretty quickly, which surprised Devon. It was a bit more interesting to hear the audio from the wedding dress designer and Prince Harry about why they chose what they chose.
This might sound strange, but the bathrooms at the Queens cafe at Holyroodhouse are actually very beautiful. White wood, fascinating floor tile, large cream trough sinks, and the blow hand dryer was hidden behind the mirror so cleverly. I wanted to take a picture, but I felt that would be uncouth, even if there was no one else in there at the time. Anyway, it seemed like a place designed with a woman’s touch; simple and elegant.
After Holyroodhouse, we eyed the Scottish Parliament building a bit. It’s very strange looking. There are sticks against the windows and… Well, it’s very hard to describe, because it’s contemporary and dramatic and artistic. But it generally elicits one of two reactions from people. Either they hate it, or they think it’s very interesting. When I look at it, it says to me “The Struggle.” It is the struggle to go from past to future with the limited resources of today. That’s my art critic assessment.  (And actually, with art, everything is “the struggle.” You just have to figure out who was struggling against what.)
 
Next to the Parliament building are some gardens and calf-deep pools. They looked quite ornamental, but we saw some children playing in them, getting all wet and such, suggesting they were functional as well. I would have jumped in too, but it was a bit chilly and rainy. But I am jealous for Arizona’s sake. If any place needs nifty fountain-like pools to play in outside government buildings, it’s Arizona. Governor Ducey, please make it so!
Walking back to our Airbnb…
At one point on the Royal Mile (the main touristy street), we saw a teeny little door about three feet high next to the Tollbooth Close.  Seeing it reminded me of a dream I had some years ago of going into small doorways in a place called Sutherland.
Oh, I have to explain what a “close” is. Old Town Edinburgh (the medieval part) has all these little covered passageways/alleys that branch off the Royal Mile and snake through buildings. They are called Closes and Wynds. They are fun to explore, and they all have names. They are about 20% of what makes Old Town Edinburgh such a joy to explore. Wikipedia has a list of 83 of them.
I found canned haggis. I’m going to take a can of it home with me and open it for my family when they come to Arizona for Christmas. Then they can decide if they love haggis too or not, and they won’t have a huge amount to deal with if they hate it.
In our wanderings, we headed to Princes Street gardens, which was the park we previously had dragged our suitcases through to get to our Airbnb.
Princes Street gardens has a big flower clock , and a little wooden house set on a post nearby. When clock strikes the hour and half-hour, a little cuckoo pops out of a little house and “cuckoos” through loudspeakers. Devon missed seeing the bird popping out during the hour strike and wants to stay the half hour to see it.
Upon more closely examining the plants in the flower clock, I discovered that half the plants in it are succulents! Could it be that Scotland is jealous of our Arizona cacti? Nah, they used them because they grow so slow they don’t have to worry about them needing a trim every few days.
It's always classy to have lions barfing your banisters.
Here are some of the other things we saw in Princes Street garden: a giant brass painted elephant, a fountain, lots more thistles (Don’t worry they have a lot of other beautiful flowering plants), a big geodesic dome with little trampolines, a castle-shaped playground, a band stage, and statues commemorating various war heroes.
Giant Scottish Thistle

 
When we got home, I discovered we had walked about 18k steps today, about 8 miles. Yesterday we walked 14k. In connection with this, it is interesting to think that the pioneers usually walked about 11 miles a day. We’re not yet to that level, but we might be by the time our vacation ends.
Friend Flow started up today and I paced myself carefully all day, kept myself hydrated, and so far it has been okay. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

Friday, July 19, 2019

The weather today was nice and sunny in the morning, during which we went to the Royal Botanic Gardens, and then it turned drizzly-rainy, and we did the royal yacht Britannia then. This worked out very well.  Royal Botanic Gardens required a bus ride up north a few miles.
 
The gardens were started at the Holyrood Palace, as a source for making medicinal cures, but they gradually outgrew that space and had to be moved elsewhere. People imported lots of plants from other places to plant in these gardens and in their own too. They had agents scouring the world for new and interesting plants, and it was a point of pride among the nobility to show to one’s neighbors a new plant or serve a new fruit, such as a banana or a pineapple. Then the gardens outgrew that space and were moved to their current location.
Our garden tour guide informs us that the sentence, “Long may your lum reek” can be translated as “Long may your chimney smoke,” a phrase expressing good wishes.  It expresses the hope that someone will prosper enough to have money for coal to heat the house all winter.
They have a number of different kinds of gardens here, but we didn’t have time to visit them all. Still what we saw was lovely.  
 
 Devon particularly was impressed by the beechwood hedge. This hedge has been growing for over a 100 years, and is trimmed yearly by a crew with a cherry-picker. Before cherry-pickers, little boys with big shears had to lay on their stomachs across very tall ladders to do the job.
 
There was an agricultural section that had some things we hadn’t seen before.  Fruit trees grown at 45-degree angles, and apple trees growing and bearing at knee height. Apparently growing a tree at a 45 degree angle inhibits the height of growth so more trees can be grown. And the knee-high apple trees are called “step-over” apple trees. I think I want one.
Step-over apple trees
 
         We also saw a bed of pitcher plants. These are the kinds that trap and digest insects for extra protein. 
         And the alpine garden had little plants in stone planters that looked soo cute!
After the gardens, we walked to another bus stop, and on the way were treated to the sight of two shirtless guys sparring with boxing gloves outside a fitness studio. Public exhibitionism is alive in Scotland, apparently.
Cobblestone streets look quaint, but are crazy to ride over. The bus rattled like it is about to shake apart. I suspect that’s why macadamization spread to all parts.
Next we visited the Royal Yacht Britannia.
The Britannia has a large mall built next to its docking place, no doubt designed to take advantage of all the tourist traffic that comes.
A sign in the yacht’s foyers says that orders to the crew were not shouted, but given by hand signal to keep it tranquil for the queen.
This fancy-looking thing holds the ships compass. Because royalty.
 
They gave us audio-tour devices that look like long black batons. They are probably meant to be awkward-looking in case someone tries to steal them as a souvenir. You could seriously club someone over the head with them. If any scurvy pirates come on board during our tour, I know exactly what to defend myself with.
On the bridge, keeping a sharp lookout for pirates, iceburgs, and rabid seagulls.

Near the bridge, I found a poster showing signal flags and their meanings, some of which have interesting messages associated with them. For one intriguing instance: “I am on fire and have dangerous cargo on board. Keep well clear of me.” (I am not making this up.) The first question that comes to mind upon reading it is, did this happen often? And further, did this happen often on the Britannia?  The imaginative mind fairly goes wild considering the possible scenarios. 1) Did the queen often deliver explosive ordnance via her private royal yacht? Like nitro glycerin? Was she so deeply involved in the war effort? Or… 2) were parties held on board the Britannia wilder than anyone has previously considered?  Or… 3) did one of the royal household have a penchant for explosive chemistry experiments that had to be isolated from on-land royal residences and were best dealt with among a support staff of British Naval officers?     Eh… it is far more likely that it was a traditional navy emergency flag that could be grabbed in the heat of the moment—no apologies for the pun—to warn people if they had to.
There’s also a philosophical-psychological perspective to that signal flag. I wonder, if we really knew what was going on in the lives of people around us it might seem like a large number of them would like to wave that flag around. “I am on fire and have dangerous cargo on board. Keep well clear of me.”
There’s a picture of a tug shooting water as the Britannia passes, and the caption says it is “in salute to the royal yacht Britannia.” I never thought spraying water could be a salute. We must follow this to its logical conclusion.  This means that theoretically a squirt gun fight is the ultimate in mutual respect. (Awesome!) I’m perfectly willing to give that kind of respect to all comers. I’m sure these mutual shows of respect could bring peace and harmony to many war-torn areas of our planet.
We are told the queen would bring five tons of luggage with her on the yacht. Something tells me that was more than clothes, but I don’t know what else that could be. Maybe everyone’s luggage was lumped together and blamed on the queen? I imagine size of retinue and luggage would be a boasting point among royalty at one time.
We are told that the duke (the queen’s husband) had to specifically request that he not have lace on his sheets. Poor man. (Grin)
 In the ward room officer’s quarters, there was a wooden monkey doll that wasn’t supposed to be touched, but it would be mysteriously found in random places. (They were playing a variation of Elf on the Shelf at least 50 years ago.)
There’s an enormous silver salt cellar from Czar Nicolas, shaped like a frigate in full rigged sail. I wonder where the salt is supposed to come out of? If it is the boat deck, then that is a salt cellar like a water sprinkler. We can hope it had more precision by coming out of the mast instead...otherwise you could really get a-salted. (Yes, pun intended.)
We are told that the wardroom officers took turns saying grace at meals in rhyme. (That would make anyone nervous about praying.) Also the youngest one had to entertain the rest with a witty speech of some sort.
I have to wonder how they kept things from rolling around on the table in rough seas. Maybe they scuttled for port in a high wind, though. Can’t have the royal stomach getting seasick.
On the wall in the state dining room there are a number of displays:
  • There is a claymore sword on the wall, presumably for cutting the butter when all the silver got too dirty. (Just kidding. Actually, it was presented by the Norwegian navy and is just for show.) With all the weaponry on the walls the ship could probably have a tolerable bloodbath if some psycho went crazy.
  • And they kept a whale’s rib that Prince Philip picked up on a beach.
  • There’s feather money. Feather money? I didn’t know that was a thing. Some of it was given to the royal family. Tribute perhaps?
The petty officer’s mess was described as a “notoriously friendly place.” I’m a little dubious about that word “notorious.” It sounds like a polite way of saying “rip-roaringly rowdy.” But it might be better than being “infamously friendly.”  (Perhaps this is the reason for the warning signal flag about being on fire and carrying dangerous cargo.)
There’s a picture of a waving Prince Charles and Princess Diana on the wall. It is clear they like Diana better than Charles, since it is quite shocking how Charles’s face is halfway covered up by his waving arm. Either that or no better photos were available. (But I doubt that.)
The Britannia has a fudge shop on board that sort of ambushes you from around the corner from the junior officer’s mess. (Cool!) And free samples! Just the sort of thing you’d expect to be on a royal yacht...
I’ve just come across a sign on the wall that says “Condition Y” on it . It puts me in my own condition of “Why?” Is this where they put curious seamen that are too nosy? Or is it for people in a BYU state of mind?
In the medical sick bay, there is a picture of “An emergency operation on the wardroom wombat.”[DS-C11]  Probably this was memorialized because it sounds ridiculous. I notice in one of the pictures the assistant is wiping the surgeon’s forehead as he is stressed, with eyes crossing.
The engine room. It’s a shiny place of chrome, copper, mirror-sheen black boilers and spotless white paint. It looks like a big fancy coffee maker. General Scwartzkoff reportedly called it a “museum piece” and wanted to know where the real engine was kept. (I’m sure he was being facetious.) I see they have conveniently labeled the engine parts so as to save staff from endless engineering questions.
At the sailing exhibition display, there is a quote from Princess Anne: “Sailing on a sunny day is the nearest thing to heaven anyone will ever get on this earth...”  Au contraire, Princess; it is the temple. But you can be forgiven for thinking that.
A sign at the display mentions the Gulf of Corryvreckan is the world’s third largest whirlpool. Now I’m curious about the others.
Looking at a map of the islands of west Scotland, one is struck by the fact that the only pretty sounding name of the bunch is Skye. But I’m sure the others are very pretty places to make up for their names.
We bussed home through another drizzly early evening.
As we are preparing for the next day’s activities, which require bus fare with exact change, we are faced with the problem of how to get change in 1 coins. People don’t like to give out change here because, as one shopkeeper told me, “We’re always struggling for 1 coins.” And we need exact change to ride the bus. If the buses gave change automatically, this wouldn’t be a problem. Oh, I know where all the ₤1 coins go; the buses have them all!  (Later: I learned the buses accept Applepay, so if I had wanted to set that up on my phone, the change issue would never have come up.)

Saturday, July 20, 2019

It is drizzling when we awake, and it turns to a legitimate rain by the time we are ready to go. It is hard to tell what sort of rain-measures to take. We haven’t been in a rainy place long enough to learn the difference just by looking as to whether an umbrella will be sufficient, a raincoat, or whether a full-on rain suit is called for. Plus, the intensity of the rain can change every 30 minutes or so. So I take all the things.
I must note that nobody minds when you put on rain pants, but stripping them off can be awkward to do in public because you don’t want to freak people out that you’re doing it with nothing on underneath.
Today we are bussing to Craigmillar Castle, which is about 2 miles south of Edinburgh city center. The castle has the dubious distinction of being a place that Mary Queen of Scots was depressed at following the murder of her secretary by Lord Darnley and company.
Incidentally, I notice that every time they talk about Mary, they always append that “Queen of Scots” at the end instead of an identifying number or calling her “Queen of Scotland.” (Later: I found out that when loyalty was key, she would be queen over a people, but not necessary queen over a land.)
Craigmillar castle is a medieval ruin.  But it’s nifty. (And the ticket has a bathroom code on it. Somehow that strikes me as extra fun.) The curtain walls are really close to the tower keep and this gives the whole thing a feeling of compactness.
  

Inner court. Gate to outer court is under the tree.


The castle has three main entrances. First is the outer gate entrance which brings us into a big grassy yard. Second is the gate to the inner wall, which brings us into a smaller yard. (And there are two nice trees that have grown up just inside this door, which gives a welcome bit of greenery to what would otherwise be rather gray and forbidding.) And then there is an inner-inner door that gets you into the tower itself. This seems really small for a castle. The inner tower couldn’t be much more than 2000-3000 square feet.
This castle also has tight spiral staircases! And it is really fun to explore; not audio tours; just a few signs here and there. If you see a doorway, you must go through it to what is beyond. If you see a spiral staircase, of course you must go both up it and down it to see what can be found. 
The doorways are also really short. Devon bonked his head about three times in various places, poor guy.
 
The castle had a drawing room, where the family would ‘withdraw’ after meals. One of the mysteries of philology has just been revealed. And here I had thought people pursued artistic endeavors in the drawing room.
After more exploring, I discover that even wine cellars have arrow skits through which to defend the lord’s liquor.
The castle had a place where we could make our own coat of arms. I made a shield uniting the houses of Stephens and Walker with red-orange pianos and green-blue circuit boards rampant amongst twining streamers of colored ribbons. May these two houses never be divided! (Insert cheers from our numerous retinue)
There is a P-shaped depression in the landscape below the castle, which is the remains of an ornamental pond that was built in the 1500s. I’d been speculating that it was a ritual site frequented by druids on the full moon at which there was dancing, revelry, and human sacrifices, but ornamental ponds are much friendlier. (Grin)
 
         After having seen all there is to see at Craigmillar Castle, we head for a bus back to our next destination. At the bus stop, I saw a familiar plant. Fancy seeing shepherd’s purse here! I picked a sprig and ate it.
So far today it has drizzled three times, rained twice, and been sunny twice. All before 2pm.
While we waited, Devon noticed a nearby barbershop sign that said it serves “GENTS, LADIES, CHILDREN, AND AFRICANS.” I know it means they can deal with the unique needs of the black people’s hair, and apparently not all barbers can, but…that sign just sounds racist. (insert sound of Michaela cringing) The thing is, when you try to think of a better way to phrase it to communicate their skills, it is hard to think of a better alternative that would have the same brevity.
We also saw advertisement signs for an AFC (Alberta Fried Chicken), a BFC (Best Fried Chicken from Bangladesh), a CFC (California Fried Chicken, which is actually Indonesian), and a GFC (global fried chicken).   I have to say, I really want to see QFC and XFC and ZFC.
Still waiting for the bus… Whoops, I almost flagged down an ambulance. They probably wouldn’t take my day-trip ticket anyway. (Grin)
Our next destination was a place called “Camera Obscura.” This is a place of optical illusions—six floors of them—and it has been a tourist destination since the mid-1800s.
The “Camera Obscura” for which the whole attraction is named, is a series of mirrors on the top of the building that collect an image of Edinburgh and project it into a sort of large steel bowl in a dark room on the 6th floor. In the 1800s, this device was the main draw, and it let people spy on who was walking up the street. About 20 people at a time are let into the room to see how this works and play with the interesting effects that can be created with it. It is possible to pretend to pick people up or splat them with a piece of paper. They get lots of splatting.
The sixth floor also has a number of binoculars for people to look at the surrounding city and to continue furtively watching the crowds of people below.
I just saw someone dressed in a full black chicken suit advertising Nanda restaurant. A little later I saw someone dressed like Mario, the video game character. Since the Camera Obscura building is high enough on the hill—almost to the Edinburgh Castle itself—it commands a view of nearly everything around it.
Other interesting parts of the Camera Obscura attraction include:
  • A mirror maze, which was fun. They have you put on gloves so that while you are feeling your way through the maze you don’t get fingerprints everywhere and ruin it for people who come afterward.
  • A vortex tunnel. This consists of a walkway through a rolling, light-embedded tunnel. I poked my head in and right away I could see that if I went through it, I was going to get dizzy and probably throw up on someone afterward. So I refrained. (We all must know our limits, and that is one of mine.)
  • A series of funhouse mirrors that visually contorted the shape of our bodies. (Hmm, kind of like the media environment around us…)
  • A series of elaborate automatons that played music. For instance, three rats singing a nice round of “Three blind mice.”
  • ·      Spying cameras. (This is my best attempt at naming this interactive exhibit.) These were video cameras that film things from a bird’s eye view, and kids can point them in every direction and zoom in to watch people outside on the street. I watched some quite blatantly looking for individuals picking their noses. I heard one kid ask, “Is this legal?”  Apparently it is, when it is part of a public tourist attraction. This turns public surveillance into general entertainment. (But really, don’t we all like to watch people in public places?)   When I played with them, I actually found some cute things. 1) A little kid scampering along with a college-aged male guide at the head of a tour group, asking questions and apparently being kindly answered. 2) A feeble old lady crossing the street and getting helped up the curb by two or three other people.
  • Thermal camera booth. In this exhibit, an infrared camera films people in a small area and projects it on a screen in wild colors that show how much heat is being given off. Devon has a cool temperature and I am colder still. It could also be that my rain gear is holding in a lot of infrared radiation.
  • An exhibit of hologram pictures. These are not your little postcard sized holograms, but large pictures, some of which can be wall-sized. Like the one of the tarantula crawling toward the viewer. (There was actually a sign warning people of that one, in case anyone was afraid of spiders.) At the end was a monster-themed series of holograms—one with a vampire awakening and attacking, one with a werewolf changing and roaring, and one of Frankenstein going so interestingly berserk.
  • A colored shadowmaker. In this exhibit booth, you pose in some odd position in front of a screen, someone pushes a button, and then the screen shows your shadow frozen in that position. (This brings back fun memories of when I was young and a similar display in Rockford Illinois Discovery Center. I think we played on that Shadowmaker for a long time anytime we went there.) Devon and I tried to do a “kiss” shadow, but it merged with a previous one of me faking a strange storkish pose, so it looked like a vengeful ghost was interrupting our romantic interlude.  
  • Escher-style pictures that do wacky things with perspective. These are pretty classic. Water flows uphill, a river flooding a town turns into a bunch of tiles carried over people’s heads, and puffy clouds become fully-rigged ships sailing toward you. Always fun.
  • Transformation camera. There was a camera connected to a software program that was supposed to take a picture of you and then show you what you’d look like as the opposite gender or old or a baby or as a chimpanzee. I tried “old” and I don’t feel like I changed much. I tried “baby,” and I looked impossibly infantile and nowhere near my old baby pictures. I also tried “male” and… ended up looking male, but there was something not quite “me” about the eyes, so I have a quarrel with the results.
  •  
  • A kaleidoscope drawing interactive program. This would allow as many as three people at a time to create their own kaleidoscopic picture to be projected on a screen. They could subdivide the screen in halves, quarters, sixths, eights, and then all one’s squiggles and scribbles across one sub division would nicely be mirrored across the others, creating perfectly symmetrical designs. SO fun. To my artsy, creative mind, that one was particularly engrossing. I could have played with it all day, but other people needed a chance on it too.
  •  Aside: I notice there is a live concert by the Proclaimers going on at the amphitheater attached to the edinburgh castle right now.
  • A swapping heads booth. This is a screen of slitted one-way mirrors that can make it seem like you are swapping heads with a friend. Or you can see if you can merge faces. It was very disconcerting/intriguing to suddenly see my brown eyes in Devon’s face.
  •  Bowl mirror display. [DS-C17] When you have a mirror concaved into a large bowl, apparently it creates some fascinating optical effects. If you reach your hand inward, a ghostly projection of your hand suddenly appears to be reaching out to meet yours. It is surprising and alarming when you first do it, but then it is incredibly fascinating.
  •  
  •  Plasma balls and plasma tubes. You put your hands on them and it looks like lightning is shooting up to zap you. It’s like you are a wizard accessing forbidden powers from the magic orb that has been lost for centuries and now you are about to change the world forever!  (I have good memories playing with those at a Radio Shack store when I was a kid.)
  • Oddly, there was a line of three chairs that make farting noises when you sit down on them. Devon sat down hard on one and made it toot like a horn. It scared everyone away who was standing nearby. Then others came and thought it was interesting and were trying to recreate his spectacular performance, but couldn’t do it. Their disappointment was visible.
All in all, this is a very fun place. Totally worth it to go.
Camera Obscura gift shop: Devon stopped me from getting some candy just because I was hungry. Instead we headed out to find a nice Indian restaurant to try out butter chicken.
It turns out the concert we heard earlier was practice. When we came out of the Camera Obscura, there was a big crowd of people filling the street before the real concert was to begin.
On butter chicken—Karl Baker had told me the butter chicken (Indian food) was amazing in Scotland. I was skeptical, but in the final evaluation, I think he was absolutely right. Hands down, it is awesome. (Devon got something different, and we both agreed it wasn’t as good.) Butter chicken has a mild heat of spices, and swimming down underneath is just a hint of sweetness. Sooo scrumptious. I had to make a very conscious decision to NOT overeat.
We got groceries for Sunday and then after we were finished and walking home, we realized we were still short a pound coin for our bus fare to church, and since stores don’t like to give change unless you buy something, Devon decided that I was “in desperate need of a Crunchie candy bar” and that he would “appease my loud and incessant demands.” He kept repeating this as we were walking back to the grocery store, saying, “Okay, Michaela, we’ll get you your Crunchie bar. I know how much you want one.”  Let the larger record show that I am not the sugar-fiend that he was making me out to be.  ;-)

Sunday, July 21, 2019

The trip to church went without a hitch. Yay!
The church building has some interesting features I haven’t seen anywhere else. One of the foyers had lots of windows like a sun room. I also noticed that one of the classrooms had a couch in it! A big poofy leather-looking one. That is highly unusual. There’s probably a special reason for it that we don’t know about.
(I’m going to write on my pad of paper now, since it is less distracting to others around me than typing on my phone.)
I had a discussion with an older missionary sister, Sister Smith. She told me the missionaries are having transfers, which is why there were about twelve missionaries walking about. Also, the mission home is right next door to the church, which makes it extra convenient.
Sister Smith has family in Scottsdale, and she has visited a few times in February/March, which is of course the best time. She says the number of visitors to the Edinburgh ward is supposedly much greater next month (August) for the Fringe festival.  
During the meeting, a new member received his confirmation, which is wonderful. His name is Brother Richmond.
I think this ward is very welcoming and good at meeting visitors and taking them to their hearts. There was a lovely feeling during the confirmation and during the sacrament.
It is always interesting hearing speakers in different wards, so I’m going to take notes on them.
            The first speaker was a young woman from Eastern Europe. Her accent was thick, but you could still feel her devotion to the gospel. She talked about keeping the commandments. I loved her quotation of D&C 88:77-78: “Teach ye diligently and my grace shall attend you, that you may be instructed more perfectly in theory, in principle, in doctrine, in the law of the gospel, in all things that pertain unto the kingdom of God, that are expedient for you to understand.”  She also quoted D&C 11:13: “I will impart unto you of my Spirit, which shall enlighten your mind, which shall fill your soul with joy.” Her testimony was that coming to church makes her better, and this is the true church of Christ.
The second speaker talked about works and faith. He quoted James 2:14-17 to show how faith doesn’t profit without works. He made an interesting point that if you have high expectations of yourself, but can’t feel the Lord’s love, it will drive you further from Him. He also told the story of a Catholic man who was baptized to get married, but he coasted along doing the minimum. Then in the third year of marriage, his wife told him she wanted a divorce unless he could step up and really live it. He chose to step up. He read the Book of Mormon, and started changing himself. He became more faithful and ended up serving well in some important leadership callings.
After this, we had a clarinet solo of the first verse of “If You Could Hie to Kolob” with interesting variations and which transitioned into “Come, Come, Ye Saints.” For me this song-juxtaposition expressed a sense of the grand view and cosmology of the Plan of Salvation and our place in eternity and how it helps us deal better with the challenges of the day-to-day.
The third speaker began with a story of a difficult period in his life. He’d been hit by a lorry, and he woke up in the hospital. Two priesthood brethren woke him to give him a blessing. He’d broken his back, but he was able to move his feet, so he was optimistic about his prospects for recovery. However, he then had six years in court trying to get compensation from the driver who’d hit him. It was very frustrating for him and so many nights he would go into the garage and scream at the wall. (Which was definitely to be preferred over screaming at people.) After the court case was over, it then took him one year to find out from his lawyers whether he would get any money. During that frustrating time, he wanted a roadmap of what to expect. Roadmaps are a big part of his job, since for his work he’s a consultant who helps companies get a roadmap for change to adjust for the future.
From this, the third speaker asked us, “What is the roadmap for us to return to God?” He told how both the apostle Peter and Jospeh Smith got personal time with Christ to learn this. Peter saw Christ transfigured on the mount, and Joseph Smith saw Christ glorified in the sacred grove. Both Peter and Joseph Smith were told many things. They both were instructed by Elijah. They both were given the Plan of Salvation. 
Then the third speaker focused in on 2 Peter 1:5-8, 10-11  for what Peter says about what the road map is for us to return to God. It’s about adding these different virtues to our lives and making our calling and election sure.  He discussed each of the virtues in 2 Peter 1:5-8 and how they help us. We’re to add faith (trusting God), virtue (avoiding lust, staying faithful), knowledge (know truth and act on it), temperance (no over-indulging), patience (tolerating hard times with grace), godliness (understanding and having reverence for God), brotherly kindness (loving people as we love ourselves), and charity (wanting good for others, forgiving).  Then D&C 4 adds humility and diligence to that list.  The blessings of this is that at some point, Christ will visit us and tell us we are accepted, and that’s what we work toward.
After sacrament meeting, I tried to welcome the new member who’d been so recently baptized and confirmed, but I accidently went for the wrong guy. He was dressed the same, and actually looked very similar.  Interestingly enough, this other guy said he had gotten baptized earlier in the year, so I gave him a late congratulations, and he was very gracious about my earlier mistake. My effort to be welcoming failed, and embarrassed me a bit, but at least I tried.
Sunday school had a good discussion over Acts 10-15. We spent lots of time on the story of Cornelius and the qualities that prepared him to receive revelation and the gospel, as well as Peter’s revelation about taking the gospel to the Gentiles. Some interesting points were brought up. 1) We need to listen for revelation and be prepared to receive it. Sometimes we have to wait for an answer, and looking for an answer for a long time is part of the listening process. 2) Sometimes when we’re looking for answers, we get one and we don’t like it, and then we want to rationalize or think we haven’t received it.  3) Sometimes the Lord asks us to do something before He gives us what we want. The task He gives us may put us in the way to receive the answer we are looking for. 4) Line-upon-line learning from the Lord makes difficult tasks possible. 5) We may think we know a lot, but we still have much to learn. We’re still children in the Lord’s eyes, so humility is important at every age.
         After church I was talking to the third speaker and he told me he’d driven a Harley on a 1000-mile road trip through 15 states in the US and had gone through Phoenix, Miami and St. Louis and Utah. Pretty ambitious.
After church, we went back to our rooms, changed, and went to hike Salisbury Crag.
We hope we can get this done before the rain starts. (Weather info says rain starts at 4pm.) Also near Salisbury Crag is Arthur’s Seat, a high hill on which Parley P Pratt dedicated Scotland for the preaching of the gospel. But we’re not going to hike that one.
         Salisbury is locally pronounced “salsbury.” It’s always interesting to hear local pronunciations of names. It reminds me of Austin, Texas, where a major road named “Guadalupe” is pronounced “Gwadaloop.”
It is 2:44pm and the drizzling has started. It’s a bit overeager to get on with its raining.
But as soon as I put my rain pants on, it stopped drizzling. (I suppose if I keep my rain pants on, the weather will remain fine out of sheer contrariness. [Later: It did.])
This Salisbury Crag is a very steep hill; it goes up at a sharp angle like a ramp to the top. I think cub scouts could do it if they were determined to not wimp-out. (I still think of hikes in terms of whether I would take cub scouts on them.)  
Top edge of Salisbury Crag
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View of Arthur's Seat from Salisbury Crag
Once you get to the top of this thing, you can sit on the rocky crags near the edge cliff and contemplate the city (and the long drop without any guard rails) before you. It’s very blowsy up here. If I had a flying squirrel suit [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRqnTODwvEA] (and knew how to use it without killing myself), this could be a fun thing.
After having come down off Salisbury Crag a different way than we went up…
We were walking through Holyrood Park and noticed a sign that said 
 
 which sounds surprisingly close to “innocent psychopath” (which is a fascinating oxymoron.) What imparts innocence to a cycle path? Inquiring minds want to know!
So, we went down the Innocent Cycle Path to see what we could see. 
 
Beautiful trees covering the way, a quaint house down a road. Nice scenery, though not exactly innocent of human manipulation.  Then we saw a sign that said
Innocent of what? (More curiosity!)  We must press on and see if we can find more innocence! (Ah, if only the world could be as easily innocent as applying a label is.)
Saw raspberries along the path, which is fun. Also thorny. (And not innocent at all. They are decidedly cynical and world-worn raspberry bushes.)
We finally discovered that the Innocent Railway was so called because it was the first instance of railroad in Scotland, and it was drawn by horse, thus making it “innocent” of steam engines because the people who put it in thought the public would think use of steam engines was evil. (This is a case of using marketing to pre-empt prejudice.)  And I suppose that since the railbed was turned into a bike path, the “Innocent” name stuck.
After this, we decided to take a bus to the Meadows Park, since it was near our Airbnb and it is a nice nature place to walk before the zero hour we want to be back to our Airbnb by. Most of the Meadows consists of large open grassy area that has been subdivided by lines of trees. These seems different than many US parks that don’t subdivide their grassy areas at all. 
 
The park has some interesting playground equipment that I’ve never seen before. Must inspect! (I am a connoisseur of playground equipment.)
We were trying to figure out the fastest way through the fence into the playground and there was a wide metal tube that led horizontally through the fence. This looked crawl-able, so I crawled accordingly. But I had a bit of a problem getting out and back on my feet. I think I ended up rolling on my back and hanging off the top while extracting one leg at a time. Meanwhile, Devon discovered a spring-loaded gate and nonchalantly met me on the other side. Smart man.
So what playground equipment do we have here…?
They have a zip line! Holy cow! That’s something I bet the US city lawyers would shiver at including in American parks. But so fun!!!
There’s a piece of steel equipment that uses an Archimedes screw to raise up water (or sand) and then sends it through some channels and down a waterwheel. 
 
There are various teeter-totter bouncy apparatuses and various jungle-gym-monkey-bars-slide combinations with rope webs, climbing walls, and such.
The Meadows also has some public fitness equipment. Devon has to try it. There’s pull-up bars with an assist side and a do-the-real-thing-without-mechanical-assist side. And there is a recumbent stationary bike. 
 
We approve this stuff and think it should be imported into the US.

Monday, July 22, 2019.

Today was our bus tour to Inverness and Loch Ness up north. The tour bus is leaving from a location near the castle, so we had to hie ourselves up there before 8am.
Devon and I couldn’t get seats together on the bus. This was not ideal, but we endured it. I ended up next to a girl who was a transplant from India, who lived in London and was vacationing with her cousins in Edinburgh. Devon ended up next to a lady named Venus who was visiting from the Netherlands or Belgium.
As we are riding toward the city outskirts, the tour guide/driver assures us that if we are a bit shy, we can just tell people we went on a tour and everyone will think we’re a wonderful person. Ha. I see, we have a humorist. I should mention he is kilted out, including sporran, be-ribboned socks, shiny black shoes, and a vest that is more “medieval courtier.”
We are informed that Edinburgh was called “Auld Reekie” because it stank because there was no indoor plumbing and people threw their refuse out the window, yelling “Gardez loo” which is roughly, “Look out below!”
As the bus is driving out of the city center I realize two things that make Scottish houses different from American houses. 1) they have no roof overhang and 2) they hardly ever have a porch overhang. In a place so rainy, that’s rather surprising. You’d think they’d want the guests waiting on their doorsteps to have some cover from the rain.
On this trip, we will have 30 minutes in one town, one hour in another town for lunch, and time in Inverness for boat and castle, or just castle. But we have to decide which before we get there. (No impulsiveness for us on this particular journey.) I’m letting Devon decide, since this jaunt was at his request.
One thing about this tour bus that is really nice is that midway up the aisle it has another stairway that leads down and out that can allow the back half of the bus get out as fast as the front half. It’s brilliant. I think airlines should adopt the same sort of feature. They could plane and deplane people twice as fast.
We have been informed that there are 102 distilleries in Scotland. And apparently whiskey sales are through the roof, particularly to America.     For some reason, throughout the journey the driver kept coming back to the topic of whiskey in his lecture of all things Scotland. Both Devon and I wondered why, but eventually it came out that he had worked for a whiskey distillery at one point in his working life. That explains everything.
There was shale oil mining here in the 1800s. That’s back in vogue in America, but not in Scotland.    
On the hills there are a bunch of nets set up to a height of about 12 feet around the field margins. Not sure what they are for. Catching birds? Keeping bees in?
The driver is playing the introduction to Braveheart movie music. He says he’s taking us on a time machine to explain the story of William Wallace. [Insert long stories here]
We just passed two very large sculptures of horse heads.
 
They are water kelpies, but also to remember the Clydesdale horse, which was much used in these parts. The story of the mythical water kelpies is that they come to the surface as a horse and get someone to ride its back. The person gets stuck, can’t get off, and then the kelpie drags its unfortunate rider down into the water with him to drown them. (Sounds like a great metaphor for addiction to me).
We’re told more about William Wallace.
Our bus driver just showed us where Monty Python filmed a movie. The driver got hired as an extra for a week and charged down a hill and fell, along with others, but that scene he was in never made it into the movie.
         Origin of the expression “armed to the teeth”-- people had to leave their weapons at the river Teith so that they wouldn’t get in fights or get hurt on a Saturday at the market.  Interesting. I never knew that expression had a Scottish beginning. (Later: The internet disagrees with this story, but eh… whatever. [shrug])
Origin of the word “earmarked” — It was the practice to punish those who had cheated at market by nailing their ear to a board fixed to the ground. They were then left there, and they would have get themselves loose themselves, which meant they had to walk off the nail and mangle their ear. (Yuck. Pretty barbaric, if you ask me.)
We stopped in some village for a 30 minute break, and it probably would have been more satisfactory if there hadn’t been six other large tour buses already there. In these kinds of cases, the best one can do is go to the toilet and wander a bit.  Lesson: Anyone who goes on a bus tour would be wise to pack meals for the whole trip so that they aren’t at the mercy of lines, high prices, or lack of time at whatever location the bus stops for lunch.
I must note here that at many of the tourist traps we’d poked our noses into at Edinburgh there were goods for sale with the image of a particularly kind of hairy cow on them. It seemed like an odd thing to sell to people. I didn’t understand the significance of the cow.  But here I learn what it is. 
 
It is a specimen of highland cattle, endemic to Scotland. (I shouldn’t say ‘endemic’ because those cattle are not a disease, but that’s the best word I can come up with right now.) Anyway, we got to see the hairy highland cattle, penned up near the stopping point. Those cows are probably stuffed from being fed countless times by countless children.
Back on the bus.  Several vents on the bus are leaking water on some people. It just drops down from the crack between the ceiling and the window. The driver’s solution is to give big black plastic bags to people to cover their clothes. One lady behind me got irate at the driver for this difficulty, but there wasn’t much he could do. I offered to change places with her, but she didn’t want to do that.
We drive down a winding road in the rain, next to a misty lake, through “McGregor clan country” whatever that means. I have no idea what reputation the McGregor clan had. Should I be impressed? Relieved? Cautious?
Uh-oh. Someone forgot their purse at the previous stop.
Our driver likes to start lots of stories and then pause in the middle and start a new story, leaving us hanging. I’m still waiting to find out what England’s response was to William Wallace becoming Guardian of Scotland.
Now we’re hearing about Rob Roy, who only stole cattle from the lairds who could afford it. (So charitable of him. [snide face]) But it’ll get him in the end, it will.  Oh, and he ran a protection racket too. (“Give me money, and your cattle will be alright.”) He’s a regular gangster, he is. His compadre McDonald went off with a Ł1000 payment and never was seen again. No honor among thieves, y’see.
We are winding through the highlands now and…….I just saw someone had a helicopter in their backyard. (No doubt it is the Traditional Helicopter of the Highlands, of which the bards and poets write and sing with such nostalgic enthusiasm. I wonder if the tourist traps sell any in plaid... Devon has been begging me for a helicopter for years.)
“So, what are the highlands?” I hear you asking. They are high green hills with black lochs (lakes) at the base. The scenery calls up words like “grand” and “sweeping” and “dramatic” and “ever-changing “ and “emerald” and “wild” and “untamed” and suchlike.
 
Just now we’re driving by some conifer tree farm. Part was harvested and part of it is growing little trees. The harvested land just looks devastated. Stumps and branches strewn everywhere in the saddest way.
Coming to the highland Faultline, whatever that is.
Discussion of Munro-baggers (people who try to climb as many Munro-sizes mountains [over 3,000 ft] as possible). They have Munro-bagging clubs. One is called “The Ultimate Challenge.” They keep track of people climbing and rescue them if they aren’t heard of for a day. That sounds smart.
Discussion of Glencoe massacre. Jacobites didn’t like the ascension of King William to England’s throne, so there were a number of uprisings. Here’s where Bonnie Prince Charlie comes out of the woodwork.
Story about someone running out of gas while boating on a loch and pouring whiskey into their tank to start it back up, which gets them back to land again. (If you ask me, that’s what whiskey should be used for—engine fuel.)
There are high green hills that have little streams running down them in near straight lines. No meandering; they go from the top to the bottom quite directly.
The driver likes to play music from time to time to punctuate his commentary or history lecture. So far we’ve heard a Beatles song when we went through a town they performed at, he played the Monty Python Flying Circus theme when telling about their movie. He played a folk tune that mocked General Cook’s defeat at some battle. General Cook “lead his troops across the border” but who supposedly only led from behind. And then when the defeat of the Scottish forces came up, we heard little to nothing about that. (It must hurt to talk about.) 1746 was Glencoe and they are still mourning that defeat. Now the driver is playing more Braveheart music. (I only know that’s what it is from hearing it on Pandora.) Oh, he’s playing it because we’re driving through some especially tall and dramatic hills. If it wasn’t so rainy and misty we might could see them better...
The driver just played “Skyfall” while we drive over the Skyfall bridge. It sounds very James Bond-ish. (Later I find out that it was indeed a song for a James Bond movie.)
It has been my practice to say “Scenery check!” any time fabulous scenery can be seen. In this area, I’d be saying it around every corner, and likely disturb my fellow tourists.
We are now in “McDonald territory.” Many hamburger restaurants here. No, just kidding.  Actually, I mean it’s the McDonald clan territory.   Now we get the story of how the McDonald clan gave the Campbell clan hospitality for a week and then the Campbells slaughtered the McDonalds, on order of the government. Such blatant infractions on the rules of hospitality are serious matters. As they should be. And to this day some stores have signs saying, “No Campbells welcome here.”  Cease yeer bludthirrrrsty ways, ye murtherers!
Another rendition of “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” (slight naughty language warning), which has some nihilistic comforting statements at the end, like, “You’ve come from nothing and you go back to nothing! What have you go to lose! Nothing!”   (The Plan of Salvation has a lot more to offer. Eternal life sounds a lot better than “nothing.”)
We stopped in a town for lunch and had fish and chips and cheesy chips. I was a little concerned about the girl who forgot her purse and gave her my fig bars for a bit of food to make sure she didn’t go completely hungry.
It is now raining inside the bus in other places too. And the grid over the aisle is starting to drip too. Annnnnd, another person has just gotten irate with the driver over the leaks. But really, what can he do that won’t disrupt the trip that we’ve all paid for?
On the road again. The windshield wipers are whacking the side and the boy across the aisle from me asks his dad, “Why are the windshield wipers being so aggressive?”  This makes me giggle silently.
The lady behind me (the one who previously got irate) asked me where I was from, and I told her the US. She told me where she was from, buses have two drivers, especially for long trips like this. She felt it was unsafe for one driver to go twelve hours at a stretch. I agreed, but there wasn’t much we could do. I told her we could pray for the driver (which I did).
We’re going through a thick forest on a winding road. It is raining a bit, but not very hard. Still hard to see through the mist though. I think I would enjoy this even more if I were the one driving. Still, the scenery is nice, what we can see of it.
According to the driver, Scotland’s forests were depleted down to 10% after the war, so they started the forestry program to plant more. They are also concerned about tree diseases. (I can see this concern, considering that back on the day when we visited the Royal Botanic Gardens, their entrance had a squishy soap mat everyone had to step on to wash of the bottoms of our shoes so that we didn’t bring plant diseases in with us.)
And now we’re listening to Scottish folk-rock with lots of bagpipes. It feels like there should be a dance party in the aisles while we drive, but that would be against the seatbelt laws.
We just went by some locks that were built in the 1700s to create canals by which to move sheep from one side of the country to the other. They are rather impressive looking.
Continuing the saga of William Wallace invading England. Long story made short, he didn’t succeed; he was captured, and executed. (And there was much mourning throughout Scotland.)
And now on to Robert the Bruce. He wanted freedom, his buddy didn’t and was going to tattle on him, so he killed the guy. (Yeah, that’ll make you an outlaw pretty quick. So why not fight for Scottish independence while you’re at it?)  R-the-B got forgiveness from the church for it, and got himself crowned King of Scotland, albeit in exile. On his deathbed he told a friend he had always wanted to go on a Crusade, but never got to, so after his death, his heart was taken out of his heart and taken on a Crusade in a metal casket. And in some battle, his friend urged people forward by waving said casket and shouting, “Forward, Braveheart!” Or so says our bus driver. And so, according to him, it is not William Wallace who is Braveheart, but Robert the Bruce. (Later: It’s so fun to read what Wikipedia says about Robert the Bruce versus the bus driver….)
The weather has cleared up a bit.
We have arrived at Urquhart Castle (pronounced "Urk-hart") , on the banks of Loch Ness, and we are watching a movie about the castle. After an adventurous story of how the castle switched hands from clan to clan, we saw how it was destroyed, the screen went up, and then the curtains in back opened to reveal the castle ruins. It was quite dramatic. The whole audience said, “OooOOOooohhh,” in the most impressed way. It was kind of gratifying, even as I was saying “OooOOOooh” along with them.
 
On the castle grounds there is an old trebuchet sitting by, but the signs say there is no record of trebuchets being used against that castle. (Then why is it here?!)
My impression is that Urquhart wasn’t a very secure castle, built in the low land like it is. The fact that it changed hands a lot is another indication of this fact. Now, it they’d built up the hill, it might have defied its besiegers more.
After a short run over the castle, we lined up with about 4 or 5 other buses worth of people to go on a boat on Loch Ness. There are comfortable seating accommodations inside, which is nice, considering the weather is still grey and drizzly.
 
        
 
 I noticed the lady next to me having troubles with her broken nail. Broken nails are obnoxious on long tours; they catch on everything. I offered her the use of my nail clippers.
Loch Ness is a very long lake and very deep. On one bank are lower hills and on the other side is are steeper cliffs with pine trees on them. We churn through the water, our spray thrown up into the air. People drift in and out of the cabin, sometimes going up top.
We disembarked at the hotel at which we are to meet to get back on the bus. Oh, look, There’s a skull of Nessy in the lobby ! Must take picture. 
When you live around Loch Ness and have a few extra nuts and bolts laying around and some extra time, this is what results.
Devon bought a post card of Bonnie Prince Charlie for Andrew (his coworker) who wanted some sort of “Free Scotland!” souvenir.
The bus driver has popped open the hatch that is almost over my head, presumably for extra air. If we get much rain through it, I may end up wearing my rain suit inside the bus. We’ll see.
Our bus driver just said, “If you’re not here, put your hand up.” I and one other equal cheeky person raised our hands.
I saw one passenger deal with the leaky windows by rigging the bus curtains into a sort of funnel away from their seat. Another person has just tied their curtains in a knot.
There was someone that the bus driver was supposed to let off at Inverness, but when we got there, she was nowhere to be found. Very strange. The driver speculated the Loch Ness monster got her.
Weather has turned sunny on the way back. Maybe we’ll get a wee bit more scenery.
In the music playing right now, the singers are singing, “What is right and what is wrong; I don’t know, I don’t know.” Surely they do know; they’ve just forgotten. Or maybe they wrote that song while in a moral dilemma.  Good thing the song “Amazing Grace” follows. That’s a good antidote. Something in the air just seems to sing along with it.
Our bus driver has changed to playing bagpipe music.
We just drove by a place that had buildings that were burned down by the Jacobites. 
 
It sounds like there was essentially civil war for a time. We are informed that the Scottish periodically hold re-enactments of Jacobite battles, much like Americans have re-enactments of Civil War and Revolutionary War battles. I wonder what battles other countries re-enact?
We’re going through some country with heather on the hills. The heather patches are gray right now, but the driver tells us in August it turns purple. A bit further on, I see some purple heather and it’s gorgeous. And that is why people have named their daughters “Heather.” Driving through these hills you really get a sense of why they are so beloved and why people love to hike around. Just looking at them, I get the urge to climb them too.
The tricky thing about taking pictures in a bus is that the scenery passes so fast that the view gets covered by trees right about when I get my phone ready to take a picture. If we were on a little day trip, I’d probably want to stop here and there and take some time with my framing, but it’s not possible on a bus.
We stopped in Pitlochrey for food. We spent too much time for something good and had to stop at a chippy shop before all the time ran away from us. We got a haggis and chips and Devon’s seatmate generously shared her fish and chips with us while our food cooked, and we shared our haggis with her, so she could see how it tasted. This particular haggis tastes different. It wasn’t as creamy or spicy, but it did have different textures of meat in it. I still like it. (I also think I burned my tongue on it.)
The driver told a story about working for the whiskey industry and they had a drive to bring in boys off the street, promise them tea, and give them whiskey instead. I think I am rather shocked by that. That is blatantly trying to get children to develop a taste for alcohol.
We’ve been listening to this Scottish music for some time, and suddenly the driver plays the theme from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, which is just plain funny, first, because it has musically transported us out of Scotland into the American west, and second, because Devon and I have running jokes about this song, revolving around his unique way of singing it. [Devon turns around in his chair at the front of the bus, and he sees me laughing.]
Okay, now I’ve head everything. I’ve just heard the song “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” rendered by bagpipes.
The next song is just as peculiar—it is someone singing about their “Pretty Fraulein,” but it is in the style of a walking country-style ballad, with a slight music hall flavor. I’m scratching my head over who this song is meant to appeal to. Said Fraulein isn’t going to feel flattered unless she can speak English, but then why call her a “Fraulein” and not “German Girl”? Or why call her “Fraulein” and then sing the rest of it in English? It doesn’t go far enough in reaching out to her language and culture. And fellow English-speakers will wonder why the singer is telling them he had to go out of the country to find love.  
Oh, heck, I’m clearly overthinking it.
The Queen’s Ferry Crossing bridge is really big and amazing. But we’re not going over it. We’re going over the one that is next to it. Why, I don’t know.
There are actually three bridges here, going over the Forth (river). When they go forth to build a fourth bridge over the river Forth, there will be much confusion. (“I’m taking the Forth Bridge.” “Which one?” “The fourth!”  “I know that’s the river; which bridge?  “The fourth! Not the third; the fourth!” “Oh.”)
And, we’re back at the Airbnb.
We just had an amiable ecological and political discussion with our host. He is studying ecology in hopes of helping improve Scotland’s degraded environment, especially its forests. Then we discussed our respective country’s heads of state and the polarization of the media.

Tuesday, July 23, 2019.

Today we first packed up, in preparation for leaving for our 7pm flight.
The weather is actually sunny and warm today after a whole week of drizzle and rain and wind. But if it changes in 10 minutes, I still have my rain jacket and rain pants umbrella, ‘cause I am PREPARED.
Today was the day we fit in some of the activities that were pushed out of the schedule by a full day at Edinburgh castle.
First we went to the Scott Monument. This is a very gothic-looking structure built to honor Sir Walter Scott. It has 200 steps to climb to the top of four levels, but visitors now only get to go to the third level.
         As we wait for our turn there, we are sitting on a park bench next to other people sitting on benches. Devon says the nice thing about all the people sitting on the benches is that all the bird poop will be worn away by the time we sit on them. This is different from Arizona, where all the birds poo on the benches and then you don’t want to sit on them.
It’s about 90 steps up the first level of the monument. It reminded me a lot of climbing the carillon steps at BYU.  
 
 All the tour buses crawling around look like caterpillars, with their side mirrors hanging off the side like eyes on stalks.
We found out that the guy who designed the monument submitted a prior design for it, but it wasn’t accepted because he was merely a self-taught architect. So he submitted his second design under a false name, and that was accepted. I actually think it is good the first wasn’t accepted because that design didn’t have nearly as harmonious proportions as the second one.
The Scott Monument is colored black from all the soot that was in the air in the 1800s. They tried to clean the black off in the last decade or so, and found that made the stone more susceptible to erosion, so they stopped.
The spiral stair narrows the higher you go.  It’s a beautiful view, looking down and around. We can hear bagpipes playing the folk song we’d recognize as “If You Could Hie to Kolob.” Devon and I look at each other and grin.
After coming down out of the Scott Monument, we wander some.
We happened to walk past the Writer's Museum and there were these interesting quotes in the sidewalk for quite a ways around it. I took pictures of my favorites. 
 
 
         Next, we went to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.
         I declare the exterior doors to the National Portrait Gallery a “usability fail.” It had handles on the outside, but you are not meant to pull them; you must push them to get in. But handles make you think you should pull them.  What they need instead is some push-plates.
         I wasn’t too crazy about many of the contemporary portraits; so many of them looked cartoony or like the work of a failed art student.  However, there were a few that were very striking. One was the portrait of three oncologists (doctors curing cancer). They were portrayed as ghostly white figures on a black background. The portrait explanation said the artist intended to show them as “guardian angels of the cell."
 
         Another striking portrait was of Adam Thompson, who started Caledonian airways. He was shown in the foreground with this massive factory airport hanger in the background , swarming with active workers building pieces of aircraft.
         Now, the exhibition of heroes and heroines was more interesting to me. This is when the explanatory plaques, with their short biographies, become just as important as the actual pictures.
I liked the explanatory plaque for Sir James Hope Grant’s portrait. It said his personal maxim was “Act according to your conscience and defy the consequences.”  It sounds like a restatement of some of the lyrics of our beloved hymn “Do What Is Right,” which say, “Do what is right; let the consequence follow.”
Mary Somerville studied math when it was thought inappropriate and dangerous for women. But early widowhood gave her the independence to pursue her studies and a second marriage gave her support.
Margaret Oliphant wrote a bunch of novels. (Must try to find)
Elizabeth Hamilton wrote the novel “Letters of a Hindi Rajah,” which sounds interesting.
It is fascinating that the few women who were “beauties” looked oddly plain. Maybe they were expected to be beautiful without cosmetic help.
         Okay, we’re thoroughly done with the portrait gallery. Heading back to our rooms. Sort of.
Oh! We found a cheese shop! They were willing to shave a few slices for us to try. We bought some smoked cheese. That tastes pretty good.
I didn’t get a kilt while we were here, but I’m okay with that. Maybe some other time. Also, couldn’t find my clan tartan anywhere.
I tried to find a kebab restaurant for Devon, but it was closed. I should have checked the opening time before I led us this distance. So we got a big crepe from a French food truck to share instead. It had cheese and ham. It was like a quesadilla, but softer.
Back at the Airbnb place. We got all packed up, dropped off our keys, and caught a bus to the airport that didn’t require us to trek thither and yon and finish ripping wheels off our suitcases.
Outside the city center, the buildings are less crunched together. I know there are people who love a compact neighborhood with high density housing, but I think people all want a bit of space for themselves if they can get it. Plus, it is easier to reconfigure and remodel in lower density areas without tripping over somebody else’s toes.
At the airport. We couldn’t do an automated check-in for Scandinavian air, but we were told to go to Desk 19. Devon decided to verify the desk, and it turned out to be Desk 16. We’re glad we checked; we would have been waiting and clueless otherwise. What does this teach? Trust, but verify.
As we go through the concourse of stores on the way to the gate we notice a store here called “Superdrug.” I don’t know what to think about that name. Sounds dangerous. Is it approved for release? ;-)
We found a nice quiet place next to the “Disruption Desk.” There are no disruptions right now, but if sudden violence breaks out, we will have a front row seat for the airport’s response. Or maybe it handles disrupted flights.
Airport security measures in Edinburgh’s airport are much easier to go through than in America. 1) My back pocket sparkles did not set off the scanner. 2) I didn’t have to take off my shoes. 3) A single security bin could hold all my stuff.   I noticed they pull out families with small children separate from the main line to scan them. (This is brilliantly accommodating and should be a relief to local families. It should be adopted everywhere.)
A flight has just been delayed for “an awful medical reason on board the aircraft.” That sounds pretty intense. Someone must have had a heart attack or something.
The benches at our gate look like they were made at IKEA. They are made of many wooden planks nailed to steel frames.
If I were to make assessments of Swedish people based on what I’ve seen them do at the airport before flying home, I’d have to say they like to pass the time by playing cards and knitting.  (Of course, this is a blatant generalization, considering I’ve only seen two separate parties knitting and two separate parties playing cards.)
The trip to Stockholm went well. We have another twelve-hour layover in Stockholm, and this time it is overnight from 10pm to 10am. We discovered a place called Rest and Fly attached to the airport that lets you rent ten-hour stretches in a small room with beds or rent by the hour. They require you to make and unmake your bed. I suppose that means they only have to worry about doing laundry, sorting it, folding it, and distributing it to the rooms. The furniture is also very IKEA.
Bathrooms are communal-but-separated men’s and women’s, and thankfully Devon discovered where there are private shower stalls.
Both Devon and I went to sleep with bagpipes music going through our heads.

Wednesday, July 24, 2019.

Best showers ever! It always feels like a roll of the dice using a strange shower, but this place doesn’t mess around. They thought of everything. The shower head puts out a huge amount of lovely, warm water so you can get wet quickly and rinse soap off quickly, and the lovely heat raises your core temperature quickly so you don’t feel reluctant to get out. And then even though there is no separate shower pan from the dressing area, they provide a squeegee to move the water toward the drain so you don’t have water to dodge while putting clothes on.
There’s a shop in the Stockholm airport that has reindeer hides for sale. I looked at them, and Devon said I’d probably have a hard time getting them through customs. He may be right, but we hardly have anything to declare anyway. It’s about time we made some trouble. (Okay, maybe not.)
We hear a horrible grinding noise at another gate, and Devon leans over to me and says, “I didn’t know they had a dentist office in here.” Haaa. (It was just some workmen.)
At the end of the flight to O’Hare, I can tell some of my seat mates are impatient. They are using the cup holders as fidget-spinners.
It took about 26 minutes to get through customs and immigration at O’Hare. First there was the snakey line to delay us so that we wouldn’t get to our luggage before it came out of the plane. That line was long, but it moved fast. Then there was the line to declare any customs stuff and have it printed on a slip with our picture. Then there was the line to the customs officer who was to look at our printed form. Then there was the line to the immigration officer to look at our passports and stamp them. It kind of felt like a lot, but because the lines moved fast, it wasn’t too tiresome.
And then our flight from O’Hare to Phoenix got delayed 1.5 hours. (Patiencccccce…)
On the flight to Phoenix I sat next to a girl who loves to draw anime and who is working on making an anime comic book. It was fun to watch her draw so expertly on her ipad.
Annnnd, we’re home. Brother and Sister Farr gave us a ride home in the nicest way. It’s sooooo nice to be back in our comfortable beds again!

If you’ve gotten this far through the vacation log, congratulations!