Scotland

On Saturday, April 4, I travelled with Dawn to her fair country of Scotland. I was only to spend a few days but in that time, I had an amazing and wonderful time. We started out our trip by arriving in the Glasgow airport that is only about 15 minutes from Dawn's parents house. Both parents were there to meet us and take us home. I think the majority of my trip to Scotland is going to revolve around all the food I ate actually. Once we arrived to Dawn's house, we had what is called a "fry-up". In said fry-up, I got to try black pudding (which is more like a sausage type food all sliced up and not actually pudding). Black pudding is made from blood and it tasted nothing like blood so don't get too concerned. I also had square sausages (beef based), tattie scones (potato scones which were mostly like naan bread) and fruit pudding. Fruit pudding is also like a sausage type food but with fruit and not nearly as sweet as I had feared. I loved the fry-up.

After breakfast, we headed over to Glasgow to see the sights and sounds of the big city. I got to take a real Scottish train and everything. Glasgow city is about an hour train ride from Coylton (where Dawn lives). I arrived into lovely Scottish weather so walking around the city was a bit difficult since it was raining and cruddy out. We went to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. It was even free to get into. :) We had a great time seeing all the random pieces in the museum. I even saw a haggis!! See below.
After Glasgow, we went back home to a traditional haggis dinner at Dawn's parents' house. Haggis with neeps and tatties (turnips and potatoes). And I must say, haggis is DELICIOUS!! Dawn's mom even made vegetarian haggis for me in case I didn't like real haggis. Vegetarian haggis was good but it tasted a lot like lentils and carrot fillers. I got to try Irn Bru which is Scottish soda. It tasted like a mix of cream soda and a little bit of orange soda mixed in. It was good but a little disappointing. I thought it was going to be more exciting. I don't know why I thought soda should be exciting, though.

Here's everyone at the haggis dinner:
On Sunday, Dawn and I drove up to Stirling where she goes to college. It's about an hour and a half drive and the weather, though windy, was really sunny and beautiful. We arrived at David's (Dawn's boyfriends) apartment, grabbed him and went to the Wallace Monument. That was really cool since I didn't actually know that existed and that is was viewable from Stirling University even. We hiked up to the top of this nice, steep hill to see the monument which was pretty impressive. Here's a pic of the monument and the guy that was doing a little presentation on William Wallace's life.

The guy was really cool and very entertaining. We learned a lot about William Wallace (and surprise, surprise...Braveheart was not totally accurate). After the monument, we went over to Stirling Castle and saw a small portion of it. Mary, Queen of Scots, grew up in Stirling Castle. Unfortunately, due to renovation work, much of the castle was closed off. They were adding furnishing and tapstries to all of the castle rooms so we really only saw the great hall and the kitchens but it was fun to see the castle anyway. Right outside the castle gates, there's a huge statue of King Robert the Bruce and you can see the Wallace Monument from the castle.

We went out to dinner after sightseeing. We had a traditional dinner of roast beef, mashed potatoes and mixed veggies. The soup was cock-a-leekie. Which was actually chicken and leek soup but I loved the name of the soup. I even had The Tartan Special beer. It was good.

The next day we headed over to Loch Lomond, walked around, enjoyed the almost beautiful day (kind of overcast) and did a little shopping in the boardwalk area of the Loch area. Before driving home to Dawn's house, we stopped over at the Paisley Center (which is a theatre complex) to visit David's mom and get a little tour of the theatre. I was in heaven. It was a small blackbox theatre with a couple hundred seats. The coolest thing was seeing the booth and seeing that they use the exact same light board that I used in countless theatres. I was so excited to see that. I took geeky pictures, of course, of everything. Then, it was back to Dawn's house for dinner out with the family where I enjoyed Scottish salmon and sticky toffee pudding for dessert. After dinner, I wanted to get a few items from the store before leaving (random food items). We went to Tesco, which was like the Scottish version of Walmart, and had a great time taking pictures of EVERYTHING. One of my favorite items to see was this:
Or maybe this one:
(This is a small personal trampoline but I loved the name!!)

We ended the trip by watching Braveheart. Yep, that's right. We watched Braveheart in Scotland. Don't you think that's the best? :) Scotland was tons of fun and I have a ridiculous amount of pictures to prove it.

Here's a link to all the pictures if you are interested:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jkimpfbeck/Scotland#