Marc and the cats

I just really liked these shots of marc and the cats ^_^ Pachelbel is very good about making sure Marc does his homework.

Playing around

Though Marc is still limited by his school schedule, we are making the most of our time over the pond by taking nice day trips around the area. We went to the surgeons museum one day (Edinburgh is one of the major roots of medicine, the war exhibits from WWI and WWII were especially haunting). And recently we have found a BBC resource that provides audiotours of towns around scotland. We went to Dunfermline yesterday, which has an old and new abbey. Notably, Robert the Bruce rests underneath the alter in the new church, and St. Margaret is buried there. Macbeth's killer also took residence in the area, and had a large lookout tower which is now reduced to rubble. Andrew Carnegie, the steel tycoon was born in Dunfermline, and as a child he loved to look into gardens that were reserved for the wealthy. He later came back and bought the gardens, creating a massive public park for everyone to enjoy. And we ended the trip with a potent cider at the creepy wee pub, which is a fun little hole in the wall.

Return to Edinburgh

To end our wonderful two week trip, we have returned to Scotland and are enjoying exploring the city. We went to the writers museum, featuring Scottish authors Robert Louis Stevenson, Hume, and Sir Walter Scott, a optical illusion museum (complete with camera obscura and a mirror maze, way cool!), and a tour of Mary Kings close, the street that was covered over to build the royal mile. A great way to end a fabulous trip.

Dublin Part 2

We returned to Dublin before heading back to Scotland to tour the Guiness factory. While I have yet to find a beer that would be enjoyable to drink, it was a nice tour and my friends enjoyed drinking my share of free beer. I did like the Guiness chocolate though :)

Belfast

Northern Ireland is beautiful, and Belfast is a nice city and was fun to wander around. They have nice things like a free history museum and botanical gardens, sites to visit where the Titanic was constructed, and if I were to go back I would want to go on their black taxi tour focused on the graffiti propaganda during the troubles between the late 1960′s and 1998, divided the nation, mainly between Nationalist Catholics and Unionist Protestants. But our main reason for being in Belfast was to jump up to the Giants Causeway. Similar to Fingals cave, it is hexagon basalt columns formed by volcanic cooling. Legend says there were two giants; the scottish and irish giant. They were big boys who liked to argue, and one day the Irish giant decided to build a causeway to go over and beat up the Scottish giant. He did, egging on the Scottish giant the whole way and when he made his way over to Scotland, he realized that the Scottish giant was way bigger than he was and he was guarenteed to lose the fight. But by this point, the Scottish giant was angry and wanted to kill the Irish giant. The Irish giant ran home to his wife, scared of what would happen. His wife told him not to worry, and dressed him up as an infant, putting him into a cribe and telling him to be quiet. Shortly after, the Scottish giant came pounding on the door. He demanded to know where the Irish giant was. The wife politely said her husband was out hunting, would he like some tea while waiting for him to come back? The scottish giant sits down, then notices the baby in the corner. He is stunned; if the giants child is that large, then how large must the father be? There would be no way the Scottish giant could defeat such a large man. So the Scottish giant runs home, tearing up the causeway behind him so that the Irish giant could not follow him.

Dublin Part 1

We met up with another friend from high school in Dublin, Travis. We enjoyed a few pints of Guiness, wandered the city, saw dublin castle and the book of kells housed at Trinity college, and went to the National Leprechaun Museum (very cool actually, more of a interactive myth museum). And then we made our way to Belfast.

Cork

We spent our first night in Ireland in a Southern city, Cork. Very nice, busy downtown with fun things like an English Market and a four-faced liar clock (the east and west sides disagree with each other about the actual time.) Nearby is Blarney castle with the famous blarney stone. We did not kiss the stone (we believed the local rumor that the locals will pee on the stone with delight), but had a fantastic time roaming the grounds. It is huge; lots of beautiful paths, caves, a poison garden, a fantastic place to visit!

Tour around Oban

The hostel we stayed at offered tours of the notable sites around the area.











It was very personal; they put together the tour for Emily and I by convincing two Canadians to join us. Highlights of the tour: lots of upclose encounters with hairy coos :), a trip down Glen Lonan the funeral route of kings on their final trip to Iona, a drive through Glen Coe sight of the famous massacre, a peek at Stalker castle (the final castle in Monty Pythons holy grail), the monument to bonnie prince charlie and the place he raised his standard to claim the crown, and Glenfinnan viaduct (the train track the hogwarts express takes with the beautiful arch architecture).

And now, with three hours of sleep, Marc Emily and I are off to Ireland!!!

Iona

The last stop in the Hebrides is Iona, famous as the site the Book of Kells was started before it made its journey to Ireland. We saw the ruins of the nunnery, and the Abbey. It used to be the center of trade when ferries were more common, and many of the Scottish kings are buried there (Notably Macbeth and Duncan both rest there).

Isle of Staffa

If you ever make it out to Scotland, the Isle of Staffa is a must see. It is one of the most beautiful, impressive places I have ever seen. The big tourist attraction on the island is Fingals cave, the supposed home of Fingal the giant. It is formed by basalt columns in hexagonal steps as a result of volcanic cooling. It is a bit out of the way; we had to take a small boat out for a half hour to get out to this small island. As you approach, it is just like the cave out of Harry Potter that Voldemort hid his horucrux in. Because it is so difficult to get to, there are not many people, and we had the island practically to ourselves. Puffins also nest on the island, and although they are hard to find we did find some off of the cliffs on the northern end of the island.

Isle of Mull

The hebrides off of the west coast of Scotland was beautiful; it was an appropriately drizzly and cloudy day that we explored three of the isles (mull, staffa, and iona). Mull was the largest isle we visited, and most of our time there was spent travelling from one side to another by bus. But the views were spectacular :)

McCaigs Tower

We spent a few nights on the west coast of scotland, to enjoy the hebrides isles.

However, the first night we got in to late to go sightseeing, so instead we climbed up to one of the towns highest points, and enjoyed a spectacular view of Oban at sunset.