Scotland

From London we took the train (i loved it again, even with no revolutionary band) to Edinburgh, about a 4 hour ride. Thanks for my ipod sweetie! Here was the only sticky part of our entire 15 day adventure. At the station we were supposed to pick up our rental car. We were going to stay one nite in Edinburgh then head north to find William Wallace & Nessie. Well, the Alamo at the train station did not have our car. So we taxied to the Alamo in town, they also did not have our car. The staff offered to have a car brought to us in about 20 minutes, minus a GPS as none were available. Then it starts raining, hard. No car twice, no GPS, pouring rain, left side of the road driving & CRAZY round abouts??? We cancelled our car reservation. Instead we spent two days exploring the charity shops of Edinburgh. The first nite we stayed the 5 star Thistle Edinburgh (thanks to the Jury's Inn for giving our room away). After a week of crappy hotels ( i'm not complaining , only saying) it was like we were at the Waldorf. We got free all you can eat internet, yummy room service, & had a serious dance party. Check out the video some time.
We did a bus tour of the city but I can't really remember the names of anything I saw. Maybe my brain was mush by this point. Wait.... two things did stick. Edinburgh is built on & surrounded by 7 extinct volcanoes, that blew my mind!!! Also, this is the Sir Walter Scott Monument.. It was tough to get good pictures because the new town (off of Northbridge) sits low, so the sun was just not cooperating If I am not making want to go to Scotland please think again!!!!! I haven't told you about the great fudge shop we found where according to the staff tipping the fudge makers is very important. Or the Tibetan shop run by a girl who proudly displayed a picture of herself with the Dali Lama among the Free Tibet T-shirts. Or the awesome consignment shop where a cute jacket I was admiring ended up being a $1200 dollar Vivienne Westwood suit (man I have good taste!). Don't forget the delicious Haggis, Neeps, & Tatties (minus the tooth)! We left Edinburgh by train & headed to Glasgow. Even though we weren't able to pay homage to William Wallace we kept his spirit alive thru a steady stream of Braveheart quotes (you can imagine!). We chose a BnB close to the airport due to our early flight to Dublin the next morning. Unfortunately, close to the airport meant far away from everything except this guy. He was cool. We did laundry (thank goodness), ate fudge (more), took a walk into town searching for a pub only to find they were all closed (it was Sunday again). Strangely the only restaurant open in the entire Bridge of Weir was Amaretto, a yummy, fancy Italian restaurant. I was once again left missing my Damon.
Thinking about Scotland leaves me feeling warm & cozy ( kind of like Thanksgiving day) and realizing I have so much more exploring to do. " I can crush you, like a worm."