Edinburgh Castle

Here are some shots from our visit to Edinburgh Castle. It was a gloomy rainy day, which suits the mood of the huge gray castle on a huge gray rock hovering over the windy streets of Edinburgh, but it's not the best for photography.


Looking at the gate toward the city:
The view onto Prince Street from the castle grounds:

Approaching the castle...
Chapel:
Mons Meg, a big famous gun given as a wedding gift (google it):
Fancy woodwork in the great hall (and a cute guy).
Randy standing where American POWs from the American Revolutionary War would have been held. Check out the orb! It didn't show up in the same shot without Randy moments later.




The sign reads: "Cemetery for Soldiers' Dogs" - Aw.





Well, it's time to pack up our things and head to Munich - seriously! I think they're going to let us go today.

You Learn Something New Every Day! :(

And the lesson of today is...

(a) That thing about confirming flights 24 hours in advance...they mean it.
(b) Check your junk email box
(c) Aer Lingus Sucks!
(d) All of the above.

Yep, it's (d) - with a strong emphasis on C.

Randy & I went to check in for our 3:30pm Munich flight, only to be told that supposedly on February 9, the airline emailed me to say that oops! they sold me a flight they didn't intend to operate and we should instead check in for a 7:00am flight from Dublin to Munich.

This would have been quite a feat since we were booked on Aer Lingus #256 at 9:00 am from Edinburgh to Dublin.

With no further flights to Munich today, they offered to send us to Dusseldorf or Frankfurt, where we could spend another $500 on train tickets to arrive very late at night in Munich OR we could be stranded for 24 hours. So much we could say here but I'll save it for the letter we will no doubt have to write to the suits at Aer Lingus.

On to nicer things...
Sunday, we had a nice lunch at Gowanbank after church service at Darvel Gospel Hall. It was great to be back there and experience the sense of family we had there three years ago with friends and new acquaintances. Isabel made a great lunch and finished it off with rice pudding and tiramisu (two desserts, of course!):

(This is Joseph, but we secretly call him Mr. Burns...excellent!)

The concert that night was a small affair but a fun one. We sold a few cds and had just a few more pounds than what we needed to get back to Euro-land. Doug (our promoter) and his wife Kerstin were so much fun, we felt like we had known them all our life. There were so many parallels in our lives, it was uncanny and we really hope that they will come to Denver soon for a visit!

Monday morning, we set off for Edinburgh on the megabus - two tickets for a total of ₤4 just can't be beat! We had a busy day of visiting the castle and touring Mary King's Close but first, we had to get some food. We found this little place called Maxies that didn't look like much fro the outside but it turned out to be just great inside.

When Randy tried the local beer called Innis and Gunn here, he fell in love!

Mary King's Close doesn't allow cameras down inside (except the one that THEY take your photo with for a mere ₤6.00) but you read about it here:

http://www.realmarykingsclose.com/

or google for images--there are some photo sharing sites like flickr where people have shared images that they may or may not have had permission to take!

It was creepy to be walking underground and thinking about families living in such poverty with no shoes and no sunlight and raw sewage and rats everywhere. No wonder there was so much disease in Edinburgh in the early 1600's! It was very depressing, but then we had to laugh a bit when they took us to the haunted room of Annie...

Annie was a small girl who died of the plague back in that time, and when a psychic came into the room where Annie died, she was overwhelmed with sadness. She saw a little girl who had lost her doll and immediately ran out to buy a doll. Once the doll was placed in the room, the sadness left. Is it possible that after hundreds of years of haunting the room, all that Annie required for eternal peace was a tartan Barbie? Come on! I like a good ghost story, but in this case, I'll stick with the hymn writer--I'd rather have Jesus.

Before we fly out tomorrow, I'll try to post some photos of Edinburgh Castle.

Quickie

We are in the Dublin airport now and blogging will have to come to a stop until we get home most likely. We're heading to Munich today and internet is expensive here and non-existent in the world of George & Ilsa Guther our hosts in Germany.

Thanks for your prayers--our concert went well. Edinburgh was fun.

Today, I logged on to find the sad news that our friend and my first musical boss ever Larry Norman has died. I'm sure it is a sweet relief for him as he had struggled with his heart health for years, and I am glad that Randy & I were able to visit the last time we were in Oregon.

1947-2008

http://www.larrynorman.com

Feb 21-23 '08

Well, there is not a lot to report, but that is just because we have arrived at Gowanbank.

This means that we are in our home away from home now, just relaxing in a gorgeous big house between Darvel & Newmilns, drinking tea and playing guitar and singing by the fire, eating way more than two people should ever eat, and enjoying the friendship of the Smith family here:

Willie & Isabel opened their home as a B&B last year, but they rented a room to Randy when he was a student in Glasgow three years ago. They even gave us Room #11, which is his/our old room, and Isabel always spoils Randy with two desserts!

 

KellyAnne is the youngest of their four kids and she's the only one still around the house a lot, helping out in all kinds of ways:

Chris & wife Elaine live in the town of Newmilns & are expecting their second child at any moment. We are trying to convince Elaine to introduce the child to us before she leaves, but she just won't go into labor. Callum is taking a new engineering job in Glasgow starting Monday, and marrying his supermodel fiancee Zara on an island this summer, and Lorraine graduated in November with a music degree and may sing w/ me tomorrow on a song or two. She & boyfriend Al have offered to drive us in for soundcheck. Al is continuing his indie label Moo Juice Records and starting some new music industry side businesses.

(I know you probably don't know these people but this is also serving as my travel journal and they are very special people to us. If you ever stay at Gowanbank, you will understand).

I haven't even taken many pictures, but you can see the house here:

http://www.gowanbankhouse.com

Today, we slipped into Glasgow for a few hours and had lunch at the Universal, a restaurant tucked down an alleyway behind Sauciehall Street, where Melanie and I had gone on our trip of November 2006. 

On the way back to Darvel, we nearly missed our second bus because the driver didn't have change for our ₤20 bill and offered no solutions--just a gruff face and a big fat no. Randy had to dash into a store to buy a newspaper and change the bill before she would let us on!*

So...that's it for now. We're off to Darvel Gospel Hall tomorrow. For those of you offering up prayers tomorrow, think of us at our concert. We are rusty and a little nervous about playing for and (probably moreso) talking to a new audience--and especially singing our song "Finnieston" in a neighborhood not too far away from all the local references in the song! In 2004, we had a hard time connecting with Scottish audiences so I'm just hoping this time, it goes over better.

This is a fundraiser for International Justice Mission, and we also brought some cds to sell to help with our expenses. We are excited about raising money for the cause, and we'd be thrilled to lighten our load and replace those cds w/ some extra pounds to spend in Edinburgh Monday too...we haven't paid for the room there yet and we want to see the castle and the underground tour. Ok, I am starting to sound like an infomercial. But wait, there's more. No, there's not. Goodnight.

*Most bus drivers in the UK have been very good to us and the public transportation system here is truly fantastic in general. This lady is definitely the exception.

Feb 20, 2008

RAIL N SAIL

Wednesday, we bid the hostel farewell & got a cab to the dock. Our taxi driver spent the drive telling us about how he worked 12 hours a day to support the ex-wife while playing Sinatra on the radio. Sinatra is not what you want to hear on your drive to the docks when someone is saying the words "hit man," which is actually what he said! Granted, he was joking...but little did he know, that I was the one whose wallet survived! No tip for him.

SAIL

We opted out of the easyjet flight and decided on the Rail n Sail deal from StenaLine Ferries:

The view of the Irish Sea from the "no smoking" deck was pretty cool, but the smoke was pretty thick. This was one place where the Irish smoking ban was not being honored! It was still worth slipping out on the balcony for some pictures and a gust of sea wind.

In case I got seasick, I bought some sparkling water at Tescos, and found this label kind of funny:

After a movie onboard (Grow Your Own), the Scottish coast came into view:

RAIL?

Since the ferry was late, we missed "rail" part of our Rail n Sail connection, but they provided a coach for us to get to the Ayr train station where we could get another train to Glasgow. This was a beautiful coastal drive and sort of a bonus because I doubt the train ride would have taken us this close to the coastline. 

RAIL! 

In Ayr, we caught the train to Glasgow, where we met up again with Sammy Horner, who took us to his really cool house in Balloch, about 40 minutes outside the city, and we met his wife Lynn. 

DO YOU LIKE INDIAN FOOD?

The four of us had a huge Indian meal at Delhi--my first Indian meal in years, the first since "the incident following the Tool concert" whereby I lost 9 pounds overnight following a large Indian meal. Folks, I am back on the horse! It was delicious! Thanks Sammy & Lynne. Randy also left with a Cobra beer pint glass for a souvenir. 

The next morning, Sammy took us to see Balloch Castle & Loch Lomond. We just had time to snap a few photos before heading into Glasgow to meet with Doug about our soundcheck & concert details for Sunday. I'll wrap up with those photos for now:

2/19/08

After a breakfast of hot cross buns, bananas, and coffee, we decided to have a fairly "normal" day. The movie theater in Belfast has cheap movie Tuesdays so we saw the Bucket List, which we liked.

had fish & chips for lunch, took a nap, and began to put the international into our Belfast International Youth Hostel experience. 

While Randy was still napping, I watched the Simpsons with a guy from Somalia. It was the magical chili peppers episode (with Johnny Cash as the desert fox), so we talked about Somalian food and I learned that yes, it is spicy and that Muslims in Somalia eat no pork and take no alcohol, while Christians "do not use the goat." That is about as far as his English got me, but it's way further than  my Somalian(?) would have gotten us.

At dinnertime, we met Jason from Seoul, Korea and he told us about mandatory military service, the popularity of soccer, the average age of marriage in Korea being much older than in the USA, and the horrible maternity leave laws, often making the fat belly gesture with his hands to indicate pregnancy. He says the people of North & South Korea have no discord--only that one is a democracy and the other communist, using his handheld translator to find the two big words there. I thought to myself, yeah, no problem! ;)

Anyway, today is Jason's (whose Korean name is something unpronounceable) birthday and he is off to the Giant's Causeway. I can't think of a better way to celebrate and it seems way better than the beef and brown seaweed soup tradition he was telling us about. Happy Birthday Jason!

STOCKMANS

Steve Stockman & his wife Janice and her brother Tim live down the road about a  20-minute walk past Queen's University, so at 9pm, we went to visit them. It was cold and we could see our breath, but the walk was beautiful and the neighborhood was jumping.

We gushed over the new Matthew Perryman Jones cd, Randy & I were forced to be nice about Canada in light of our weak dollar, and Steve says he has been off teacakes for 50 days in preparation for his trip to South Africa. Randy & Tim still enjoyed several while he painfully abstained.

I translated some aged Alabaman handwriting for him. Apparently, the Rev. Stockman is cordially invited to dinner at this couple's house after church in Birmingham when he goes down there to speak. Between the language of Southern hospitality and the proper cursive, the message was nearly lost.

We took the semi-annual picture on the green couch at Derryvolgie, said our goodbyes, and with a brisk walk home at midnight, put the lid on Day 6.

2/18b

FEB 18 - LATE
Right, where was I? Oh yeah, so we left the Globe to the college kids...we decided to exert our "adult" status by breaking some rules at the hostel--mainly the one about no drinking & eating in your room. 

After a snack and a good talk, we called it a night--Randy reading Anne Rice's book Christ the Lord, and me listening to the audiobook version of CS Lewis's That Hideous Strength. (Although this is the book my small group is reading/listening to together, it felt very appropriate as CS Lewis is a Belfast man.)

2/18/08

Feb 18 '08

There were no big plans today. We slept in, ate breakfast at the Causeway Cafe here at the hostel and went shopping in Belfast. 

Downtown Belfast has great shopping and Randy got a new hat:

I got some sunglasses:

And we bought some cheap towels because our hostel does not provide and we learned this morning that a fleece jacket is no substitute! Who thinks to pack a towel? 

Heather Wilson (Peter aka Duke Special's wife) met up with us for lunch. 

She took us to the art gallery where she works and shows her stuff. She is an accomplished artist working in glass and photography with water, words, and light. It's hard to explain what she does (so check out www.heatherwilson.eu) but a lot of it takes up some space so she gets commissioned to do things in public spaces and large buildings in addition to smaller pieces she has for sale. We fully expect Belfast will be "decorated" with Heather's work over the next several years. 

In addition to her work, the gallery showed several other artists' work in jewelry, crafts, vessels, etc. so it was like our own private tour of a small art museum--except we got to touch stuff!

Tonight, there were a couple folk sessions nearby so we debated whether and which one to go to. After choose the Globe's, we took a quick walk down to have a look see. The Globe Bar looks cool from the outside but it's a dive college bar on the inside and we left it to the kids after a pint. The walk was nice though as the university neighborhood is full of pretty old buildings.