Favorite Moment.

I’d love to start by telling you about Edinburgh. It’s where our Scottish journey begins, where we started at 9am one Friday and it’s lovely. The history, the castle, the Royal Mile. I’ll go into more detail later so please forgive me for jumping ahead; the day we left Edinburgh is actually my focus. We’d planned to see St. Andrews, drive along the coast, go through Dundee to Aberdeen. The Man, however, had plans I knew nothing about. We picked up our rental car (fun fact, if you reserve a standard but change to an automatic a day or 2 before you pick it up, you’ll save hundreds of pounds. Get the standard, we thought. It’ll be an adventure, we thought, plus it was half the cost. Believe me, driving on the left is all the adventure you need. Once we realized this after a couple days of watching cars fly by, we changed the reservation and were surprised to find the cost difference was 40 pounds. WELL worth it. Don’t get the standard.) and loaded up, headed for St. Andrews. The Man is an excellent driver anyway, but adapted very quickly. I didn’t attempt until I’d been in the car a day or two, which helped the learning curve for me, but you do need to focus.

St. Andrews is beautifully quaint and the weather was perfect. We toured the castle and then went to the cathedral, at which time The Man started looking for someone to take our picture in the arch. No problem, I said, we’ll do a selfie with the arch behind us. I felt very clever. The Man was not amused. Usually very easygoing, he was a stickler for finding the perfect person to take our picture. Seemed weird, but okay. He spotted 3 young women walking behind us and went over to ask, then had what felt like a 5 minute conversation about a picture. Again, I thought huh, weird. But okay. The women seemed VERY into taking our picture, but this fit well with our experience of everyone in Scotland being exceptionally nice.

He came back over to me, the woman took a picture or 2, then he said “I think I can make this more special.” He grinned and dropped down to one knee.

GASP.

You could’ve knocked me over with a feather. I was stunned, speechless (rare occurrence). He said some very nice stuff, ending with, will you? (He later said that’s asking. I said you have to say the words.) Eventually he did say the words and through my tears I think I said yes – he later confirmed that I did – and the woman took pictures through it all.

In looking at the pictures – which still make me cry – The Man’s expression is a constant grin while I go through the whole gamut of emotions, from gasping in surprise to asking repeatedly are you sure? to the inevitable ugly cry.

A perfect moment in a beautifully picturesque place. Even the other tourists complied by standing back while this happened, then walking past us to congratulate us once it was over.

I promise I’ll talk more about Edinburgh and all the other sights and experiences we had through Scotland, but this one day overshadows the rest of our vacation and had to be described in detail. Later The Man told me he’d talked to all 4 kids to make sure everyone was on board before we left, so everyone knew this was about to happen. That everyone gave their blessing is as important to us (if not more so) as the beautiful moment we experienced, on a perfect day in St. Andrews. That, girls and boys, is how it’s done.

In order: the beautiful arch, my clever selfie, our picture, The Man on one knee, asking if he’s sure, tears, happy tears!

Fun facts about Scotland

• While the rest of the planet is surface-of-the-sun hot, it is a delightful 55-65 degree range on any given July day.

• Jet lag is real and it’s miserable. Getting into a routine is crucial, as is staying awake the first day you arrive. Try hard to sleep between 10pm and 6am.

• We’ve been here over a week and the sleep thing is just starting to work itself out.

• Because it’s so far north, summer nighttime lasts approximately 5 hours. Sun rises at anywhere from 4:30-5am, sets between 9:30-10pm. Meaning it’s light from roughly 4am to 10:30pm.

• I can’t sleep when it’s light out.

• Hotels usually (in our experience) DON’T have air conditioning. The windows do not have screens. Your options are leave windows open and die from hundreds of midge bites or close the windows and suffocate in the stuffy, warm air.

• I can’t sleep when it’s hot. Also, midges and various other no-see-ums love to bite me.

• Driving on the left becomes easier the more you do it, but roundabouts are a whole thing. LOOK and YIELD to the RIGHT!

• The drive between Fort William and Loch Lomond is one of the most beautiful stretches of road on Earth.

• There really are bag pipes played on street corners. And it’s beautiful.

• Haggis is everywhere. We haven’t had the nerve to try it.

• Sheep are everywhere. If there’s a field, it’ll have sheep. Don’t care where you are.

• Hairy cows (Hielan Hairy Coos) are the best. Seriously just the best. I love them.

• Kindness is the strongest character trait of the Scottish people. The accent is pretty fantastic but really, they are so nice!

Scotland 2 – Trip prep notes

When you’re planning an international trip, you typically spend time planning said trip. That’s an exciting part of the trip, learning about your vacation spots and planning to be there.

In our case, life happened. We’d (The Man) decided to run Marine Corps Marathon, which meant a LOT of running to establish a base. We did half-marathon training through the winter, marathon training started in May. Adding to that, The Man moved in at the first of the year, so we had the Herculean task of blending 2 full households. At one point we had boxes everywhere and a desk living in the upstairs hallway because there was just nowhere else to put it. Little by little we sorted that out, just in time to start thinking about a month filled with travel and Memorial Day. A graduation in Dayton here, weekend in Orlando there, weekend half marathon trip. The Man’s parents travelled to us before Memorial Day, in part to see family and in part to see the final National Rolling Thunder. Rolling Thunder was first organized by Viet Nam vets to commemorate POWs and MIAs. The Man’s Dad is a Viet Nam vet so we were thrilled that he came for this final time. The Man’s younger son, wife and 2 boys also came, as they do for Memorial Day weekend. We were having a house full of guests and needed to prepare for that. Life happening.

Finally, the trip was just a few weeks away and we needed to sit and plan. Turned out that Dubb was not going to play the Jazz Festival, so we had an open schedule. The plan became spend a few days in Edinburgh acclimating (and watch everyone drive on the “wrong” side of the road), pick up a car and take in as much of Scotland as we could. Our German friends who’d thought about meeting us in Edinburgh for the first few days couldn’t make it so we had 12 days together, just the two of us.

The plan became as follows:

Days 1-4 Edinburgh

Day 5 St. Andrews, Dundee, Aberdeen

Day 6 Inverness

Day 7 Fort William/Ben Nevis

Day 8-10 Loch Lomond

Day 11 Glasgow

Day 12 Edinburgh

We figured we’d cover about half of Scotland. Since neither of us had had Scotland on our radar, we just had no idea. I literally looked at a map and thought, huh, this looks good. Then I started looking up things to do in each place, as well as places to stay. Plans were starting to take shape, which is good because we got to this point within days of our flight!

Morale of the story? Don’t travel 3 weekends in a row before a houseful of guests.

Traveling? Make plans! We are currently figuring out where to sleep tomorrow night. That is NOT relaxing!

Coming soon: Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans, aka Scotland. The Trip.

Scotland Part I.

Aye, wee lassies and laddies, gather round for a tale of 2 wanderers touring round Bonnie Scotland. Words cannot describe the sights. This land is so beautiful, so untouched, so pristine and gorgeous, it takes your breath away. Let’s say I am a fan.

Scotland wasn’t on the list. It’s a long list, full of lots of interesting and classic tourist places. Italy (feels like home), Croatia (ancestral home), Germany (friends’ home), places throughout the US we’ve yet to explore together (24 more states!) – that’s all on the list. Scotland was, is and continues to be on my brother’s list. The Dude loves him some Scotland. He’s been quite a few times and it has inspired and fed his fascination with Scotch. He suggested this trip many months ago to several people, basing it around bottling Scotch at a distillery near Lossiemouth and the Edinburgh Jazz Festival. The Dude has a friend, Dubb, who is a blues musician and has played the Jazz Festival in prior years so it seemed like an easy trip to tag along.

Given that I love my brother and Dubb and The Man and I love to travel, we settled on Scotland for this year’s trip.

Little by little everyone else bailed until it was just The Man and I with solid plans. We booked flights using points so were locked in early.

We booked our flights around the dates of the Jazz Festival because we didn’t know if/when Dubb was playing this year, so we started planning and eventually a loose itinerary began to take shape.

Flying in and out of Edinburgh gave us a base. We wanted to see St. Andrews since this is the Mecca for golf and The Man is a golfer. Going along the coast since I love the water takes us up to Aberdeen, then we go across to Inverness, passing the castle of The Dude’s dreams just north of Rothes, then into Elgin for the Mecca of cashmere at Johnston’s of Elgin.

Inverness brings us very near to Loch Ness, and how do you pass up seeing Loch Ness? After searching for Nessie, we head south to spend some time at Loch Lomond, and area I know absolutely nothing about but which looks gorgeous. The plan then takes us to Glasgow, Stirling, Doune (the Holy Grail castle for you Monty Python fans), Falkirk, and back to Edinburgh for our return flight.

This was the plan. Little did we know how different reality would be than the planned itinerary! Stay tuned, lovelies, for the tale of our actual trip which is still unfolding!