Lovely. Brilliant. Gorgeous.

 

We spent the weekend in Scotland with our friends Paul & Terri McGinty and their family. The trip was perfect and homey and just what we hoped it would be. Here are the highlights:

- We rode the train ½ way to Scotland in cramped seats next to a smelly (dirty underwear smelly) guy. That made the 2nd half of the trip that much better, when we were able to move to odor-free seats with a table!

- Paul, Terri and Tracy (Paul’s sister) met us right at the train platform and we walked around downtown Glasgow a bit. The weather was gorgeous and so is the city.

- We headed to Tracy’s flat in Castlemilk, a suburb of Glasgow. Her flat is on the 11th floor and has a brilliant view of the city and mountains in the distance. Paul & Tracy’s mom lives on the 6th floor, so Tracy turned her flat over to us, Paul & Terri, and Leann, Terri’s sister who arrived that night. Daniel & I had the kingly accommodations…Paul & Terri kindly took the air mattress in the living room and Leann had a single bed in the guest room, leaving us with the queen bed in Tracy’s room. It was the most comfortable bed I’ve slept in since leaving California. Tracy has lovely taste, and her flat is so cute and cozy!

- For dinner Friday night, we ate a traditional Scottish meal of Indian take-out. It was fantastic! We spent the night visiting, relaxing and thoroughly enjoying ourselves.

- Saturday morning, Paul prepared a delicious, traditional Scottish breakfast, including potato scones, which I really enjoyed, and blood pudding, which I wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole. Daniel tried it, and I couldn’t even sit at the table with him while he was eating it. It looks like half-congealed blood mixed with a sausage patty, and it just turned my stomach! (Daniel didn’t care for it, by the way.)

- After breakfast we hit the road to Stirling. We stopped at Falkirk’s Wheel along the way – a cool engineering feat for lifting boats from one canal to another that’s 100 or more feet above. I was really impressed with the design of the wheel, which makes it an amazingly energy efficient tool for moving a large amount weight. We saw Stirling Castle & the William Wallace monument, and ate lunch in a pub, which took about 100 years to deliver our food. I got to do an ad-hoc photo shoot for Leann, which was fun in such a great location!

- Saturday night we went to a family party at Paul’s mom Mary’s flat. We got to meet Paul’s brothers & their families and experience another facet of Glaswegian culture.

- Sunday morning we headed to worship with the church in East Kilbride. We heard a wonderful sermon about grace and met lots of really nice people, including Steve who went to eat lunch and spent the afternoon with us. Steve is the person who taught Paul the gospel years ago. He’s an ex-pat from Ohio, very recently retired, and a science-fiction writer. An interesting, nice person.

- Sunday afternoon found us wandering through a park not too far from the church building. It was really beautiful…everything here is so, so green. I can’t imagine Ireland being any greener…I can’t wait to see it and find out.

- Sunday night I watched the X-factor with Tracy while Paul & Terri took Steve home and brought back chips & rolls for dinner…we put the chips (thick cut fries) on the rolls with butter and malt vinegar (optional), and that was our sandwich. It was tasty. And Simon is still Simon whether in Britain or America.

- I have to mention that we had tea several times throughout the weekend, and even though I’m not a habitual hot tea drinker, I did enjoy it every time (with milk and sugar). I miss my easily accessible iced teas & green tea lemonades!!

- I should also mention that the personality of the Scottish people, as far as our experience went, was notably friendly & cheerful. It’s fun just to hear them talk, and everything, from the view out the window, to a particular favorite song or the quality of their food is “lovely”, “brilliant” or “gorgeous”.

- We woke up early(ish) this morning and Paul & Terri walked us to the #75 bus for the ride in to the train station. We had to brow-beat Paul into letting us take a bus, rather than him driving us himself.

- Now, we’re all set up at our lovely table seats on the train. It’s not crowded, and life feels just about perfect as I sit across from Daniel, watching the rain stream down the windows as the impossibly green hills and valleys roll by.

What have we been up to?

I’ve slacked off on the blogging….not good! I want to be able to look back at all the things we’ve done, and I’m already forgetting the things I haven’t blogged, so I’m going to attempt a recap.

 

-Thursday 8/26: Dinner at Rock & Sole with Liz, Brian, Porter, Zach, Tracy & Tyler. The Rock & Sole is a really old fish & chip shop. They claim they’ve been serving fish & chips in this location for the last 130 years or so. It was raining out, so we crammed into the basement seating area. It was cramped but great food and great company!

-Friday, 8/27: Legal London walking tour (I’ll eventually finish my post about this)

-Saturday, 8/28: We took the Oxford Tube bus to Oxford, ate lunch and walked around Oxford. We slept pretty late this morning, so by the time we made the 1.5 – 2 hour trip to Oxford and finished lunch it was around 3:30, and many of the places of interest were closing up. We experienced Oxford from the outside for the most part, but it was such fun to wander the streets! There is so much history and awesome architecture in Oxford. One of our favorite spots was the Great Hall of Christ Church College – a.k.a. Hogwarts’ Great Hall in some of the Harry Potter movies…however, as I said, we didn’t actually get to go inside. It was really beautiful on the outside though (probably better than inside, because, of course, there would not be any floating candles or ghosts about). I was glad we got to see it. As an aside here….Harry Potter tourism isn’t really such a big deal to me…I adore the books, but the movies are just fun. Lots of guide books focus on sending you to the actual spots where the movies were filmed, but for me, that’s not so significant. It’s really enjoyable to experience some of the British culture that you see throughout the books though….treacle tarts and so forth. (Not that I’ve had a treacle tart yet, but I intend to.) And, just to further complicate this aside, I do want to visit the Elephant Room café in Edinburgh where J.K. Rowling wrote some of the early books…For whatever reason, that seems much more significant to me than a film set.

(pictures from Oxford)

-Sunday, 8/29: We worshiped at a nice little congregation in Kentish Town, and had our first experience with sharing one cup for communion. It was surprisingly off-putting to share germs with strangers….I am a wimp. Also I find it so intriguing how uncomfortable it can be to step outside the norm on something like that. I did make the effort not to let that physical detail interfere with the spiritual meaning of the act. I really enjoyed the singing at Kentish Town. The acoustics of their old, old church building (with a neon “Church of Christ” sign out front) were amazing. Following worship, we ate lunch at my reigning favorite joint, the Serpentine Café. Daniel got a whole trout...head and all! He had to fight with fish bones for every bite he ate. I made him hide the fish's head under a lemon!! After eating, we got coffee / hot chocolate and lounged outside, enjoying the lovely (but windy) afternoon.

 

-Monday, 8/30: I worked, and to be honest I don’t remember what else I did! Likely, grocery shopping and laundry….or maybe nothing. This is why I need to keep up with the blog!

-Tuesday, 8/31: Daniel headed off to class, and we made loose plans to meet up for lunch. The weather was gorgeous, and as lunchtime approached, I found myself thinking about this hot dog stand that had been tempting us every time we were in the vicinity of Hyde Park Corner. We met there and ate lunch on a bench in the rose garden at Hyde Park. It was perfect. Daniel encouraged me to spend a little more time enjoying the weather, so I popped over to, once again, the Serpentine Café, and sat listening to a book on tape for a while. Again, it was perfect. Then, it was home to work.

 

- Wednesday, 9/1 & Thursday 9/2: I was pretty sick with a cold and didn’t feel like getting out! The question that plagued me was: did I get germs from Kentish Town?? Or was it that guy that coughed directly in my face in the Underground. I decided to blame the cougher. I was so concerned that Daniel would get sick, but thankfully he didn’t! I think it’s the first time in our marriage that I was sick and Daniel didn’t catch it. Hooray!

-Friday, 9/3: I was still feeling a little under the weather, but we had plans to go see Wicked with Zach, Tracy & Tyler. I wasn’t going to miss that!! Getting out of the house was good for me…I wasn’t a sniffling wreck, and I loved the show! I hope I have a reason to go see it again while we’re here. There are so many other shows to see, I don’t know if that will work out, but I can hope. I’m pretty sure Wicked is my favorite musical ever…Lion King being a close second. (I want to know how they got Elphiba to be so green without constantly rubbing green paint onto every other actor.) By the way....Don't you love the poster??

 

-Saturday, 9/4: We took a bus tour to Windsor, Stonehenge & Bath with Zach, Laura, Koy, Victoria. It was a whirlwind trip, but I’m really glad we got to see these places. It was fun.

- Sunday, 9/5: We worshiped at Wembley, then came home for some work, and then ate dinner with Liz & Bryan and their Sicilian friend, Tony. We all walked over to feed the swans in Hyde Park and then headed back to hang out in their flat until just before the last bus ran. It was so great to sit and visit and get to know them, and especially fun to hang out with their little boy, Porter!!

-Monday, 9/6: Labor Day, we hung around house, met Noelle (our landlord), and I had coffee & dinner with Melisa & Michael Ackermann (who were in London for a few days vacation) at the Serpentine (where else!?)

-Tuesday, 9/7: This was one of my favorite days so far in London. I got up and headed to the V&A museum (museum of art & design) in the morning. On the way, I stopped to take some pictures of the outside of the building, where they have chosen to leave the damaged caused by German bombers during the Blitz. We'd noticed this before, but on this day, I found myself visualizing what it must have been like to be in this area during that time, and how scary it would have been to have bombs raining down, doing the kind of damage I was witnessing to such a solid structure. On Wednesday, I had one of those "goosebumps" moments, when Daniel shared a newspaper he'd picked up the day before. As it happens, though I didn't realize it at the time, the day I was imagining what the Blitz had been like, was actually the 70th anniversary of the day it started. How weird is that? (Maybe not that weird...but a little!)

 

I thoroughly enjoyed a leisurely stroll through some of the exhibits. I especially loved the sculpture, and I was intrigued by some of the ancient functional design on display - for example an ancient Japanese fire suit. It was woven of heavy cotton and included a jacket and helmet. Before the firemen went to fight a fire, their suits were doused with water to provide some protection from the flames. I am completely resolved that visiting art museums by yourself is the best way to go. I discovered their awesome café &, as the museum is a block from Pepperdine, I took Daniel there for lunch. It was the best of both worlds, because I was able to point out some of my favorite works to Daniel as we made our way to the café. Another reason it was a great morning for me - I LOVE museum shops….they always have the best unique gifts, and the shop at the V&A did not disappoint! I didn’t buy a thing, but I left inspired to try some new techniques for making jewelry, and I will probably go back to buy a few souvenirs for friends before we go home. Of course, I had to pay for my freedom in the morning by working all afternoon and evening, but it was so worth it!!

 

- Wednesday, 9/8: On Wednesday, I worked in the morning, and then headed to Cambridge to meet one of my coworkers, Yamuna, in person for the first time. Lis, Michael, Yamuna, her family & I ate dinner at Jamie Oliver’s restaurant. It was fantastic, and I have to take Daniel there sometime soon! Also, while in Cambridge, I stopped in at the University Press book store and bought Daniel a Cambridge Bible, straight from the source.

 

- Thursday, 9/9: Turned out to be a great day, because, in spite of some craziness with FedEx (in which our BritRail passes were sent to South Africa), I was able to pick up new copies of the passes at the local BritRail office. That was crucial, since we planned to use the passes to get to Scotland on Friday.