Scotland is complete - on to London

I wrote this on the PDA a couple nights ago. We've checked out Edinborough Castle and flown to London and toured the city since writing this, but didn't have a chance til now to post it to the blog. All is going well so far. Here's the write up from the other night....

We just got back from a two day tour of the highlands of Scotland. The highlands were amazing. It was stunning scenery and the air was amazingly clean. Every Scot we've met has been exceedingly friendly. It's worth a trip if you ever have the chance.

Our driver/guide, George Shank was very good. He has the real Scottish brogue, a good sense of humor and lots of patience.

It was a very diverse group on the tour, besides us, we had two ladies from Idaho, two Chinese, one lady from Taiwan, a guy from South Korea, two Germans, two Australians, two Basque Spaniards and another two from Barcelona. Except for the Korean guy wandering away for shots of things like traffic, cattle and fence poles, everyone got along well.

George was an 'aggressive' driver and these were some winding roads. If not for some dramamine, I'd have likely joined the Chinese lady losing her lunch in a ditch. Pam is using a watch to stop motion sickness, but the turns today were even getting to her.

Let's see - scenery was good, people are nice... let's talk about the food. The short version is "good, but different." The long version is probably for another e-mail, but I'll give it the old college try.

Breakfast isn't too different aside from apparently always serving a half a cooked tomato unsliced, bacon that's closer to salty ham and sausage that has leeks in it.

For lunches we've had some interesting sandwiches. My favorite so far are the cheese and onion sandwiches- very tasty. I also have tried what they call a sausage roll, which is a bread shell shaped like a hot pocket, but filled with something like deviled ham. And being me, I ordered haggis at the first place I found it. I was a bit disappointed- it was kind of bland, though George said it usually has a good bite to it.

Strangely enough, three out of three dinners have been in pubs. Bar meals are a good deal and so far been very tasty. I've had the traditional British meals of fish & chips, steak pie and bangers and mash. With each meal I've sampled some very good brews. Barmen keep suggesting weaker lagers, but I've been sampling some fine ales and an occassional stout.

Not only have I sampled a number fine Scottish ales, but at our tour driver's suggestion, we stopped at a little distillery. I personally sampled about 10 different types of scotch. They were just tiny amounts, so it didn’t add up to more than a couple or three shots worth, but it was a good ride back to Edinburgh. I may have dozed off for a bit.