Scotland!!!!
Sorry for yesterday's silence. I was en route to the Scottish Highlands. At the moment I'm perched next to a giant wall of windows in the second floor of the lodge I'm renting with six others. I'm gazing out the window at a stunning vista of pine-covered hills, with higher mountains rising beyond. The highest peaks of the Cairngorm mountains are capped with snow! It's a lovely, sunny day and we're all about to go exploring.
I'm staying at Craigendarroch on the Royal Deeside, near the Queen's Balmoral Castle and outside the village of Ballater. We're about an hour southwest of Aberdeen, the "Granite City" on northern Scotland's eastern coast, from which about 70 oil rigs drill into the North Sea. It took us about 8 hours yesterday to drive from Nottingham to Aberdeen, where we picked up one girl who'd flown in from Denmark, then we headed back to this resort. It was a gorgeous drive on a sun-filled day. I exclaimed many times over the beauty of the countryside as we drove from the Midlands up through the Lake District, finally crossing into the Scottish Lowlands and passing through the city of Glasgow before turning towards Aberdeen.
This week-long holiday was an unexpected sojourn. My dear friend Kristen invited me to come on Thursday morning, when I told her another trip I'd planned fell through. Just a day later I found myself on this journey with Kristen, her brother and five of his friends. We're staying in a very nice time share owned by their parents, and I feel like I've won the lottery.
I promise to soon start uploading photos. We're about to go explore, but for now a few facts about this part of Scotland: the Highlands are sparser settled than the Lowlands, although Aberdeen has sprung to wealth and prominence since the discovery of oil in 1972. However, this area along the River Dee has been popular with wealthy English tourists since Queen Victoria purchased Balmoral Castle in 1848, although the area has long been associated with British royalty. Most of the "stock images" of Scotland that you find on calendars and the like (Highland games, bagpipers, castles and moors and mountains, etc.) come from the Highlands. Then, of course, there's the delightful Scottish accent. We've tried hard to listen to the local dialect, but unfortunately the only employees we've spoken to so far at Craigendarroch were from America and Spain, respectively. And when we tried to hear some by asking questions of grocery store employees at the Sainsbury's in Aberdeen, we were wordlessly directed to the correct aisle or otherwise assisted in silence.
More to come soon, I promise.
