UK Trip - First (brief) installment
We’re home. I would so much rather be in Scotland! What an amazing place Scotland is. I am sure heaven will be like Scotland and every meal will be sticky toffee pudding.
So, you’re all waiting to hear all about our trip, and I’m anxious to tell you all about it, but it will have to come in bits. Today is my daughter’s 30th birthday and I am making dinner for her. It’s 4 pm, they’re coming at 6, and I’ve yet to go get what I’m cooking. So, today’s post will be limited to ten things I learned about the United Kingdom.
- Brits are very thrifty. By that I do not mean cheap. I mean they are very conscientious about not wasting stuff – water, power, food, etc. It made me realize how wasteful we Americans are. No wonder we are thought of so poorly. In both England and Scotland, every outlet has an on/off switch, not just lights. All the appliances are very energy efficient. Toilets use very little water to flush. In England, you had two buttons, a low water and higher water flush, depending on the need. The showers were very water and energy efficient. The cars are TINY and very fuel efficient. Even the Ford Mondeo Estate Wagon we had in Scotland, big by comparison to most cars, got almost 40 MPG. At $8 per gallon for gas, that was really important.
- Scots are the nicest people in the world. Truly!
- Scotland is the most beautiful place on earth. Even the cities are beautiful. The western highlands, Glen Coe, Isle of Skye, the Great Glen… if you’ve never been, you need to go before you die. If you have been, you know what I mean. Around every bend in the road is breathtaking scenery unlike any I’ve ever seen before. Words cannot do Scotland justice. Photos barely capture the beauty.
- The Brits are very polite. Even the road signs are polite. At the end of a stretch of road construction, the signs say “we are sorry for any delay”. When you leave a village, a sign says “thank you for driving safely”. The people are just as polite as their signs.
- The central part of Scotland is so green I can’t imagine Ireland being greener, but those who have been there say it is. Hard to believe.
- The roads are unbelievably narrow. The natives drive these narrow, winding roads at breakneck speeds, and tailgate with a passion, but not in an angry, hostile way like Americans. Their tailgating was more a result of them knowing where they want to go while being stuck behind some stupid Americans who can barely drive on the left side of street from the right side of the car. By the end of the week, we were driving at a pretty brisk pace ourselves and the roads didn’t seem quite as narrow (they are, though).
- Scotland is exactly how I thought it would be – small villages with stone buildings clustered around a small town center and lots of stone farmhouses with stone fences surrounding fields of sheep – while England was much more populated and towns were closer together and not as quaint as I thought it would be.
- I think there are more sheep in Scotland than humans.
- In Scotland, the weather truly does change about every 15 minutes.
- Everything is really expensive. With the pound worth nearly two dollars, things that seemed reasonable in price – a burger and beer for 5 GBP, for example – looked a bit different once the math was done. But it was worth every penny!
- The food was great. I think British food has gotten a bad rap. We ate really well.
So, that’s the first little post. We loved Scotland. We want to go back soon. We left our hearts there. There is so much we didn’t get to see – the northern highlands, Angus and Dundee, the Borders, the area around Oban, and Glasgow – that we want to go back and see the rest of the country. The resort in which we stayed was stunning. The accommodations were fabulous – clean, spacious, beautiful. JK Rowling lives just 5 miles away outside Aberfeldy.
I will post photos on my photobucket sometime tomorrow. I’ll write more about our adventures in detail beginning tomorrow. Suffice it to say, it truly was the trip of a lifetime and we are so glad we went! Charlie, you live in an amazing place! And I thought we had it good here in North Idaho!
