Megan and Chris

Here’s one last post to recap the rest of our trip. We’re home now, after a nine-hour plane ride [which was delayed three hours], and then the three-hour trip back from Calgary on top of that. We were pretty happy to be home when we got here. I was asleep by 9:30 [having gotten up at about 5:30 am London time, which is 10:30 the night before here in Edmonton], and up at 6:00 am this morning. Sometimes jet lag does give one the advantage of feeling productive in the morning.

Anyhow, we arrived in London last Wednesday afternoon. We found our hotel, and discovered that to use their wireless internet, we’d have to pay the equivalent of $50 for the three days we were there. Obviously we decided not to, and then we filled our days and didn’t manage to get to a café or anywhere else with internet, which is why you haven’t gotten an update since then!

On Wednesday evening, we met up with mom’s cousins Johnathan and Julie and their respective partners for dinner. We all ate way too much and had a marvelous time. Thursday morning we met Johnathan again, and he gave us a lightening-quick tour of a few of the must-see places in London, including Buckingham Palace, St. James’ Park, Big Ben and Westminster Abbey. After he left us and went back to work, we returned to a few of those places to see them more fully. We made it back to Buckingham Palace for the changing of the guard, but we couldn’t see much from the back of the crowd and, well, we got bored fast. So we headed out to a little market we had seen with Johnathan and had lunch there, and then to Westminster Abbey. We spent several hours there and probably could have spent more, except that they kind of kicked us out ‘cause it was closing. It’s so fantastically huge, and every square inch is painted or carved or inlaid with gold [or all three] or otherwise covered in art. And then there are all the tombstones and memorial stones to look at, despite having no idea who most of the people mentioned were.

We went for dinner with Johnathan and his son Steve at a great little place where – novel of novels – we could get our own drinks with as much ice as we wanted. Having walked around a lot for most of our trip, we often asked for ‘ice water’ with our meals. Apparently to the Scottish and British, this meant we wanted approximately two cubes of ice in our tepid water. So it truly was a novelty to be able to fill our glasses with ice. And the food was pretty excellent too.

Thursday night we went to see Wicked – ‘the untold story of the witches of Oz’ at the Apollo Victoria theatre. I don’t even have words to describe how incredibly spectacular this show is. Having never been to a show of this caliber, I was thoroughly blown away. The stage set-up, the props, voices, music, dancing, story… all of it was amazing. We had really good seats too, right at the front of the balcony. If anyone else is ever in London, I highly recommend spending the money to see such a show. It is very much worth it.

Friday we got tickets for the hop-on/hop-off tourist bus [double-decker, of course] that goes around to all of the important sites in London. We got a good commentary on a lot of it [some buses had live commentary and others had pre-recorded audio], and learned fun tidbits like the fact that the lobby of Australia House [the High Commissioner for Australia in London] was used as Gringotts Bank in the Harry Potter movies. We got off first at Madame Tussaud’s wax museum, which was very cool but occasionally more than a little creepy. The first room is set up as a Hollywood party, and all the figures are just scattered around the room [among the hordes of live tourists], so you never quite know if the person you almost ran into is live or wax. I liked that you can take pictures with the wax figures.

Our other main stop was the Tower of London. It’s a massive place, a bit hard to get around without a guide, and to be honest, I was a little sick of castles by then. But we did see the Crown jewels and the torture exhibit, which was the reason I wanted to go in the first place. Mission accomplished.

We took a boat ride along the Thames [which is really gross to look at because it’s a tidal river, but apparently is very clean] back to the Westminster Abbey area, had supper and then went on a fantastic pub walk. Our guide was American, but had been doing these tours for something like 25 years and was a ridiculous fountain of useless [but interesting] information about the history of London.

And thus ended our last day in London. By the time we left Edinburgh, I was pretty ready to come home, but I’m really glad we went to London. It was definitely worth it, and we did and saw a lot of things that were really different than anything else we’d done or seen on the rest of the trip.

I just put up the rest of the photos [well, a selection of them] from Stirling right up to London. You can find them HERE.

So that’s that. We’re home, for a few days at least. Hope you all enjoyed our updates, and didn’t mind the ridiculous length of a few of these posts.

Love, Us!

We are on the train to London now. It’s kind of ironic, how hard we had to look for internet in some of the places we’ve been, and now I have it on the train, of all places.

We spent the last two days in Edinburgh. I’m pretty sure it rained more there in the last 36 hours than it has for all the rest of our trip, put together. Ah well. We didn’t melt. We generally liked Edinburgh better than Glasgow – there seems to be more to do, the people are mostly friendlier, and [with the exception of last night] the buses were much more useful and user-friendly.

We took the train from Glasgow to Edinburgh on Monday morning, arriving in Edinburgh around 10:30. We took a taxi to our hotel and dropped off our bags, and then set out to explore the town. The Fringe Festival is on, so we took in some of the outdoor street performances and wandered around the Royal Mile [downtown]. We went to Deacon Brodie’s Tavern for lunch, which is of interest because Deacon Brodie was the real-life inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. According to the painting on the side of the tavern, “by day, William Brodie was pious, wealthy and a much respected citizen and in 1781was elected Deacon Councillor of the city. But at night he was a gambler, a thief, dissipated and licentious. The annals record ‘his cunning and audacity were unsurpassed’. Brodie was hanged from the city’s new gallows on Oct 1st 1788. Ironically he had designed the gallows that were eventually to seal his fate.” Your fun fact for the day.

We also went to ‘The Real Mary King’s Close’ on Monday afternoon. This is a tour of what life was like for people living in the tiny alleyways [closes] in Edinburgh in the 1700s. To put it succinctly, the conditions were quite unsanitary. There are now other buildings on top of this particular close, so it was kind of like an ‘underground city’. The tour was pretty interesting, but I don’t think our guide was quite as exciting as Turnells’, who recommended the tour to us.

In the evening we took in a Fringe play called ‘Harry’, [very] loosely based on Hamlet an put on by high school students. It was, all told, a pretty good play but occasionally left me with my head spinning [as a good Fringe play perhaps should].

Tuesday we had a relaxed morning, had breakfast relatively late [9:00] and eventually headed out to Ocean Terminal to see the Royal Yacht Britannia. The Britannia was put on display after it was retired from royal yacht duty in 1997, but it’s kept as it was so we commoners can have a look at how the Royal Family vacationed. Their version of ‘country house comfort’ and informality is more formal than anywhere I’ll ever live, certainly. Also, I’m not sure how the Royals have ever reproduced since they all seem to sleep in single beds in separate rooms. But I suppose it’s really none of my business.

We did a bit of shopping after the Britannia and bought some truly excellent chocolate. Later in the evening, after supper, we headed towards Edinburgh Castle for the Military Tattoo, a display of bands, drill teams and dancers from around the world. Despite the pouring rain through almost the entire performance, we were thoroughly impressed. The whole display was topped off by the entire cast coming out at the end, and all of the bands playing together, and then a lone piper from the top ramparts of the castle. We certainly recommend this one; even if it does rain on you, it’s worth it [just wear all the waterproof clothing you own, because there’s no room in the seats to pull out your umbrella!]. We did have a bit of a lengthy adventure trying to get a bus back to our hotel, but we made it in the end.

So now we’re two hours into our 4 and a half hour journey to London [we just passed Newcastle], and it’s lunchtime! Hope everything is going well at home!

Saturday was Worlds’ Day, the original reason for our whole trip. We, of course, hoped to be able to see a lot of Alberta Caledonia [Andrew’s band] throughout the day; unfortunately, they didn’t qualify for the finals so they only got to play once. We were disappointed for them, but mom and I certainly enjoyed the opportunity to see so many other world-class bands. We were also very excited, at the end of the day, to see Simon Fraser University win the overall Grade 1 championships but also best drumming. The world’s best Irish and Scottish pipe bands were relegated to 2nd and 3rd – hurray for the Canadians! The weather was fantastic – much better than what we’d heard about last year’s worlds’, where it poured all day long. It only rained once this year, for the duration of one band’s performance during the qualifiers. We had great seats in the Grade 1 arena, and were able to stay there to see the march-past and prize-giving, so we got to see most of the other bands that had been there throughout the day. There were 221 bands in total, across several grades and levels. They didn’t all come to the march-past, but certainly a lot of them did; it took almost an hour and a half for them to march on to the field!

Sunday Mom and I went to the Isle of Arran, in the Firth of Clyde about two hours’ trip [one hour of train and another of ferry] from Glasgow. We were graced with even better weather than we’d had on Saturday – it was sunny and actually quite warm for most of the day. It’s the first day in the ten that we’ve been here, that we’ve had no rain at all. Not a drop. Arran is quite beautiful and seemed very quiet [although that may have been partly due to the fact that it’s Sunday]. The island obviously has a lot to gain from tourism, but it’s managed to hold on to its serenity, quaintness, charm, whatever you want to call it, and didn’t have an overly ‘touristy’ feel to it, like some of the other places we’ve been. We went to Mass in the tiny church [and sang in Gaelic!], and then walked around a bit of the island and tried all the lovely food they make there [chocolate, ice cream, cheese…], looked in some of the shops and walked through some forest. It would certainly require a change of lifestyle to live on an island, but if it was as pretty as Arran, I think I could handle it.

We got back to Glasgow and decided we should have some supper before returning to our bed & breakfast. All we really wanted was something light like soup – but it’s hard to find somewhere to get a meal like that! We’re actually looking forward to making our own meals in our own house! And we have realized that, unlike “back home”, you cannot go to a coffee shop in the evening; all that is open are fancy restaurants and pubs. (Note: we did get eventually get a bowl of soup in a pub!) We also ran into Andrew and one of the girls from the band crossing a street downtown.

We’re in Edinburgh now and it’s Monday afternoon. We’re paying for internet for the first time [actually, second, I think] which means I don’t have a lot of time to write about today. Next time!

It feels like forever since I last posted anything here. Really, it’s only been two or three days but they have been eventful days.

We spent Wednesday in Stirling. We had a bit of a love-hate relationship with Stirling. It was a beautiful town, and we saw lots of interesting sights there. However, finding our B&B was an adventure of another sort.

It didn’t take long at all to get to Stirling from Perth. As has been our custom in every new [large] town, we headed straight for the tourist information office, where we can usually get a basic map of the town and whatever other information we need. We made a wrong turn or two, but I don’t think we’ve faultltessly navigated any of the towns we’ve been to yet, so a few extra roundabouts are usually to be expected. After getting our map, we walked up a steep hill to the Old Town Jail and went on a tour there. It was quite well-done – the guide dressed up and acted as various characters in the history of the jail, so it was much better than just a lecture-type tour. After his tour, we could go up to another exhibit about a day in the life of a modern Scottish prisoner. I certainly wouldn’t want to be a Scottish prisoner, if for no other reason than that I would be incredibly bored all the time.

Anyway, after the jail tour we found a pub with internet, had lunch and posted photos. Then we planned to check in to our bed & breakfast, drop off our bags and head back to Stirling Castle for the afternoon. Well. Someone once said something about the best laid plans… yeah, those were ours. With nearly every other B&B we’d pre-booked, we’d gotten a tidy little printout with relatively helpful written directions. For Stirling, we had the printout but it had no directions. All we had was a useless wee Internet map with no street names on it – so essentially, just a jumble of grey lines with a star in the middle. Very helpful. To add to that, this particular B&B was far enough out of the town center that it wasn’t on the map we’d gotten from the tourist info. So, on Attempt #1, we drove around town and all the way out to the rural outskirts [Bannockburn, for those of you following along at home]. Then we gave up, and decided that since the castle closed at 6:00 and it was now 2:30, we might as well just park downtown again, go to the castle, and find the B&B later. So this we did.

The castle was pretty spectacular, and we’re quite glad that we got a guided tour to start us off. Otherwise we’d probably still be wandering the place, and probably missing the most interesting bits anyway. The castle’s been though quite a lot, including being completely razed to the ground by the order of Robert the Bruce [because he didn’t like the fact that Scotland’s castles kept being used against the Scots] and rebuilt by his grandson [or at least, he started]. It changed hands a lot, and went through quite a few King Jameses, before the Scottish monarchy moved to London in the early 1600’s [ish]. Stirling Castle was known as ‘the key to Scotland’ – it was said that whoever held Stirling, held Scotland [because Stirling was on the important route from the Lowlands to the Highlands]. Thus, it was the object of a whole lot of bloody battles, of which the Scots actually only won two [think Braveheart, except Mel Gibson was played by William Wallace].

So after the castle we had to try and find our B&B again. We tried once, gave up again and went back to the tourist information for help. On Attempt #3, we finally found it. We later figured out it took us about an hour to find something that was about 2 km from downtown. When we went in and told our hostess that we’d had such trouble finding the place, her first reply was ‘Well, you must have had directions!’. When she figured out for herself that we, indeed, did not have directions, her next words were ‘Well, when you do have directions, I’m easy to find for I’m just off the main road’. Neither of these comments made us feel particularly much better, but that was pretty much all she said to us for the rest of our stay. We kind of got the feeling she didn’t like us much. Oh well.

We spent the evening in Stirling enjoying a Ghost Walk – a walking tour that was more of a mobile play. Our guide, dressed quite ghost-like himself, led us around some of the back streets of Stirling [or at least they seemed like back streets to us] and told us all kinds of very entertaining stories about the supposed ghosts of Stirling. Even without the ghost stories, the man himself was funny enough to be worth the price of admisson.

We left for Glasgow on Thursday morning after breakfast, but stopped halfway to see the Falkirk wheel. It is a boat lift, the only one of its kind in the world. Rather than going through 12 or more locks to get from one canal to another, a boat can now enter the lift and get up to the other canal in just a few minutes. We went on the boat ride through the lift and down one of the canals, but we’ve decided it really wasn’t worth anything to do that. We later realized that we could have actually walked along the canal, and we could have stood on the ground and watched the Wheel working instead of sitting in it and not really being able to see anything. So, for anyone else who’s going to be near Falkirk, don’t bother with the boat tour. The idea of the wheel itself is kind of cool though.

The rest of the morning/early afternoon was quite consumed with getting into Glasgow. It was somewhat nerve-wracking, being our first experience on the motorway [the UK’s biggest, fastest, many-laned highways – these ones definitely deserve to be called highways]. We did survive, and managed to return our rental car to the airport with no dents or scratches, having put 608 miles on it in the last week. Did we mention it was brand new when we got it. Really, really new. It had eight miles on it. What genius gives a brand new car to people who aren’t even used to driving on the left-hand side of the road?? [Answer: National Car Rentals]. Happily, we proved worthy.

We gladly left our car, and got on a bus to go into Glasgow. We found our B&B here without too much trouble, although we did find out that you can be standing at a clearly marked bus stop and still have the bus fly by you, because you have to put out a hand and flag it down. We learned fast.

After we found the B&B, we went back downtown and headed for Glasgow Caledonian University, where Andrew is staying. Before we left for Scotland, Andrew had told us we could just ‘come and find him’ at the university, just ask around for Alberta Caledonia. We thought sarcastically, ‘yeah right, we’ll just stroll onto campus and ask for you, and someone will know where you are’. Well, it actually did work like that. We found a pair of girls who brought us to the residence halls, and then one of the first people we saw there was actually a drummer in Andrew’s band [and one we knew, on top of that!], who told us where to find him and let us into the building. So we surprised Andrew while he was sitting in the kitchen of his little flat, and we took him with us for supper. We probably won’t see much more of him until we leave for Edinburgh on Monday morning, so it was nice to catch up. The band did quite well [firsts and seconds] at the two competitions they played at over the weekend, so they’re hoping to do quite well in the qualifying rounds this Saturday.

Mom and I had planned to do laundry after supper, but were foiled at every turn as any laundromat we tried to go to was closed by 7:00 [it was at least 8:00 before we started looking], and kept silly hours like 10 am – 7 pm, Monday to Friday. We found a coffee shop where we had a latte (Mom) and ice cream (me) and now we cautiously have a [fairly complicated] plan worked out so that we can do laundry tomorrow and still do everything else we’d planned to do in Glasgow.

Added on Friday night: It’s 7:30 pm and we have finally found a free wireless spot. After trying four or five or six other places. Oh well. Turns out we probably won’t post a lot from Glasgow anyway – we plan on being pretty busy! Tomorrow is the Worlds – the whole reason we came here. Sunday Mom and I are planning on visiting the Isle of Arran, and on Monday morning we are all three heading out to Edinburgh.

Today, we did manage to get our laundry done, got our fill of shopping, saw a museum called the Tenement House [a look into what life was like in Glasgow around 1900 or so], and saw a movie called Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. Now we’re sitting in a pub and our dinner has just arrived. Hope everything is well at home!!

Hi everyone,
Just a quick post to let you know that you can see more photos of the last few days if you click HERE. We’re finally in a place with internet where I can access Facebook to put them up.

We left Perth for Stirling this morning. Now that we’re in the much more populated areas, the navigation is a little trickier. Meaning, there’s more than one possible road to take! We’ve been to see the Stirling Old Town Jail already. Now we’re going to check in to our B&B, then go see Stirling Castle and later tonight [if it doesn't rain], a ghost walk.

Enjoy the photos!