The Trimmier Life

When done in London (although I think we could have stayed there 3 weeks and still not have ‘been done’), we hopped on a flight with Nick and headed back to his flat in Aberdeen (he’s living there while working for Drill-Quip) and started the second leg of our England journey.  Once arriving in the eastern part of Scotland we grabbed dinner at Soul, one very interesting place.  Several churches in the area have, over the years, been converted into businesses.  When a church would no longer be able to support itself, instead of closing its doors forever and being torn down to make room for a new business, the city decided to sell the buildings so that the architecture could be seen and used for years to come.  Personally, I think this was a great idea – I mean, what a waste to tear down such wonderfully exquisite  buildings dating back centuries.  I understand that some may not agree with the use of religious buildings as regular businesses, however if the alternative is to lose the building forever, I believe the right choice was made.  That being said, Soul was one such building.  Although the outside of Soul looked like a traditional, gothic-styled church, the inside was a testament that the modern world had taken over.  Bench seating lined the walls and a square bar stood in the center of the room.  Booths and tables surrounded the bar and the pulpit is now the DJ stand (weird, but cool all at the same time).  Even weirder, the upstairs of the old church had been converted into a casino — full fledged with slot machines, black jack tables, craps & roulette – I must say that the enormous stained glass windows really added to the ambiance of both parts of this restaurant/casino.  The food was good too – skink soup (yes, skink) was a fist for us, but we enjoyed it!

Day 2

Our first full day in Scotland kicked off a whirlwind of castle touring.  Nick had half the day off and drove us out to Stonehaven where we walked through the ruins of Dunnottar Castle.  Lucky for me, the history continued (see London blog) in this unbelievably picturesque castle that was perched on the edge of beautiful cliffs and sprayed by the chilly northern seas.  Dunnottar was once the hiding place of the Scottish regalia (crown jewels) which are the oldest in Europe!  The grounds of the castle were quite expansive and provided plenty of picture taking opportunities…I was enamored at the beauty of it all.  We walked through the kitchen areas, the Warden’s Quarters, bedrooms, the brewery, and stood in the chapel.  A-MAZING!

Dinner (after a few pints of course) that night was in the cute town of Stonehaven …as we watched the tide roll out of the bay, we dined on scrumptious seafood at The Marine Hotel.

Interestingly enough we were home before sundown – Scotland sun rises around 4:30am and sets about 10:30pm!!  Talk about maximizing sunlight   I LOVED IT!

Day 3

Nick was brave enough to lend us his car throughout the week since he walks to work and Dustin was more than brave enough to drive every round-a-bout that he could find on Scotland city streets!  In fact, he drove us all the way to the Queen’s summer home, Balmoral Castle, between Braemar and Ballater (about 40 minutes outside of Aberdeen…even though it was only about 20 miles away!).   We quickly found that the roads (even the highways) were never quick.  They were very windey with lots of switchbacks and once you got off the main road, most were 1 way with very few passing opportunities.  This made most trips much longer than they would have been in the states…we never really went faster than 50 miles per hour.  If we had been comfortable enough to speed though, we could have.  There isn’t really a police presence on the roads, but there are speed cameras.  But have no fear, before you get to a speed camera, there will be a sign letting you know as well as big yellow reflective stripes on the ground alerting you…really….

Although it rained throughout most of our drive and tour, the castle’s allure couldn’t be dampened…it’s huge Baronial style tower stood at the front of the property demanding respect from all who stepped foot on the grounds.  Just walking up to the dilatant estate we felt as if we should stand taller…the aura of pomposity could be cut with a knife!  We walked the expansive gardens (the entire estate encompasses 24,000 acres) taking time to stop in the conservatory and to stroll along the River Dee (very peaceful).  It was apparent how easy deer stalking would be on the property, with all the wooded areas for wildlife to live.  Deer stalking (aka deer hunting) is a popular past-time of the royal family!

After touring the ballroom and having a biscuit with jam (very popular snack over there), we headed back to meet Nick and his friends at a cute little boutique hotel, Malmasion.  After a few drinks we headed to Prohibition (a pub) to catch the Manchester United versus Barcelona soccer match.  Barcelona won (2-1), night over…

Day 4

When I talked about the whirlwind of castle touring earlier in my post, I was mostly referring to this day of our trip.  We saw 3 castles on day 4…Fraser, Crathes, Drum…all spectacular, the first 2 still having some of their ORIGINAL contents.

Castle Fraser.  A z-plan castle begun in 1575 by the 6th Laird of Fraser, Michael Fraser – completed in 1636.

Crathes Castle. Begun in 1553 by the Burnetts of Leys after the land was given to them by Robert Bruce.  Robert the Bruce actually gifted the land in 1323 by presenting Alexander Burnard (Burnett) of Leys with a carved and bejewelled ivory horn…we saw that ivory horn with our own eyes!!  The building was completed around 1600.  The Green Lady’s Room is said to be haunted and the Chamber of the Nine Muses and the Chamber of the Nine Nobles have magnificent Jacobean painted ceilings.  The Long Gallery has an oak-paneled ceiling decorated with heraldic carvings.  There are over 500 acres of ground that surround the castle along with walled gardens and massive yew hedges.

Drum Castle – one of the oldest tower houses in Scotland dating back to the 13th century.  We didn’t go into Drum, but the outside was magnificent!

While driving from castle to castle that day, we saw some of the most vibrant and ebullient countryside we’ve ever seen.  I had a hard time capturing it on camera, but the easiest captured was the bright yellow crops that were often seen along the roadside.  The yellow stood out from the surrounding land and really made a mark on the landscape.  We later found that the crop is rapeseed and it’s used to make canola oil.

Day 5

We couldn’t take it anymore, we had to sleep in and that we did, waking after noon!  It was quite nice since we had been burning the candle at both ends for over a week…although we had wanted to tour more of Old Aberdeen, we did get to see some of the city.  Nick was gracious enough to take us for a drive around town and down to the North Sea. The streets in Aberdeen are lined with massive granite buildings and city codes require that new buildings/businesses/homes be constructed of mostly granite.  You would think that it would make everything look arid, but it doesn’t at all – it actually makes everything very uniform and clean.

After eating at Nawaabs (my first Indian cuisine experience), we hopped around town sampling what the local pubs had to offer.  We met a lot of Nick’s friends, all who were very fun and friendly.

On a rather random note, this was the funniest thing I saw in Scotland…and perhaps one of the funniest signs I have EVER seen!

Now, it would be impossible to end this post without talking about the royalties that were present throughout our Scotland journey.  Although a lot of the royal treatment occurred within the beautiful castle walls hundreds and hundreds of years ago, the most impressive and most meaningful royal treatment came from a quite unexpected source…our awesome host, Nick!  He really went out of his way to ensure that we were comfortable and that we were getting the most out of our vacation.  Nick, we can’t say THANK YOU enough…you made our vacation better than we ever imagined it could be!  Your superfluous hospitality did not go unnoticed – London & Scotland were 1000 times better because you were there!

To see all of the pictures from our Scotland adventures, click here.

I’ve never really been interested in history and I used to blame that on my lack of imagination – I could never envision the likes and times of the stories and facts being told in history books or even in movies.  I got my Henry the Firsts mixed up with the William the Fourths and my Elizabeth the Eighths mixed up with the Mary Queens of wherever they came from. From as far back as I can remember, I preferred puzzles to fairy tales and to me, history was merely a tale about something I couldn’t actually see, touch or solve.  But now, I know that ‘seeing is believing’ and all I ever needed to keep the facts straight and to enjoy the story was a ‘walk’ through history and that is exactly what I got on our recent vacation.

I’ll start with London and save Scotland for another post (the 2 were such different experiences).  London was everything I thought it would be and a little more.  During the day it had the hustle and bustle of New York City, but at night it became quite the sleepy town.  Everything in London was monumental – in more ways than 1.  First, there were literal monuments to commemorate everything…the number of plaques, statues, memorials and mausoleums in this town were too numerous to keep up with.  Upon walking around town on our first day we realized there was no way to see them all, so we stuck to a few that we knew we couldn’t miss and had to save a lot of them for the next trip.  Second, everything was monumental in size…the statues were the tallest I’d ever seen, the memorials more grand than I could ever capture in words, even the pigeons were of proportions I had never seen before (HUGE!). I’ll try to capture some of the history and character of London in this post, but there’s no way to accurately describe the grandness of it all…here’s how our sightseeing went…

Day 1

We arrived at our apartment around 11am (5am Texas time) and met our friends Nick, Chris and Keridon there. Nick had done the research on finding us an inexpensive place to stay and he hit the nail on the head with our flat located right on the Thames river at the end of Lambeth Bridge and just one block up from Westminster Bridge.  We were on the 18^th floor and our view gave us a great vantage of the city skyline.

Although we wanted to push through the time change and kick off our trip in full sightseeing mode, our eyes just couldn’t stay open after having been awake for almost 24 hours.  We quickly grabbed a bite to eat and then napped for a few hours.  The good thing about napping until 4pm was that even though it was late afternoon, we still had 6 hours of daylight left!!  The sun in that part of the world rises around 5am (I’m talking fully risen with dawn breaking close to 4am) and doesn’t set until a little after 10pm!  By this time, the group was ready to eat and we ended up at a little pub near the flat and had some authentic and delicious fish & chips.  One thing that surprised me about the pubs was that they were really small – most of them we visited in London were upstairs and the size of about 1 or 2 large hotel rooms (not ballrooms, actual rooms)…they had 15 to 20 tables at most, but all had a great selection of beer   On our walk to and from our flat that night we saw the Palace of Westminster (aka the Houses of Parliament) and Big Ben.  Both of these sites were magnificent in their size, Victorian Gothic construction and dominance in this part of the city.  To try to explain their grandeur, Parliament has 1,200 rooms, 2 miles of corridor, 100 staircases and a river facade 320 yards long.  Big Ben’s dials are 23 feet long!

Day 2 was a whirlwind that trekked us all over the streets of London.  By the map, we estimate that we walked over 8 miles this day from noon to 8pm (this might not seem like much, but taken that we stood or walked through all of our sightseeing stops that day, it was enough to make our feet, backs, knees and hips ache!).  First stop of the day was Westminster Abbey, the tallest Gothic church in England that was built starting in 1245!  It’s hard to imagine how such a magnificent building was constructed so long ago and this adage magnifies its mystique.

One thing I learned (and didn’t expect) about the churches and chapels in London was that they often contain multiple monuments (the large ones have hundreds) and separate chapels within them as well as the tombs of well-known kings, queens, authors, architects, and historians of the time.  Westminster Abbey for instance has 9 different chapels dedicated to different memorials and effigies, over 600 monuments and is the resting place for over 3,000 people!  Statues and tombs at the Abbey celebrate Sir Isaac Newton, Henry VII, Edward I (also known as Edward Longshanks), Queen Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots (Elizabeth the movie is so much more appealing now , Chaucer & Shakespeare!  The monuments within the chapels, often several feet high with large inscriptions and death masks (an actual plaster impression of the person’s face after they have died, usually used on their effigy) of the commemorated, are just as elaborate and imposing as the churches themselves.

The coronation of the king or queen also takes place at Westminster Abbey with each initiate using the same coronation chair, constructed in 1297!  The chair was first used in the coronation of King Henry IV in 1399 and is the oldest piece of furniture in Britain still used for its original purpose (we saw the actual chair!)!

Our complete tour of the Abbey took nearly 4 hours and we were lucky enough to be there during Evensong (an evening prayer and meditation service in which the choir performs – magnificent).

Second stop was next to the Abbey at St. Margaret’s Church.  This church, although much smaller than the Abbey, had beautiful stained glass windows.

Next on our tour, Tower Bridge (which is technically not London Bridge), built in 1886 to help relieve congestion on the other bridges crossing the Thames.  The highlight of our tour of this Gothic styled bridge was walking to the top of its spires giving us expansive views of the Tower, City Hall, and the rest of East London.

Along the walk home that night we passed Shakespeare’s Globe Theater (not the original, but built where the original once stood and using drawings from the period to recreate the very likeness of what used to be), the London Eye (similar to a ferris wheel, but each car is enclosed…we didn’t go up in it since we had already gotten such great views from the Tower Bridge) and Jubilee Gardens.  London has so many nice manicured gardens and parks that were filled with people the entire time we were there.  We took time out to rest and relax in Jubilee Gardens before heading back to the flat.

Day 3 was again packed with lots of walking and sightseeing including the Tower of London & the crown jewels, Trafalgar Square, the West End, the Texas Embassy, Piccadilly Circus, and Buckingham Palace.

Day 4 found us winding cramming in the last of our tours with what we consider the best stop on our trip in London.  After watching some of the BUPA 10K from a small café near St. Paul’s Cathedral, we stepped inside the church for a ‘quick tour’.  This tour turned into a 3 ½ hour awe-struck expedition through one of the most bravura buildings we’ve ever stepped foot in.  Upon entering the nave and looking down the choir into the high alter, we knew we were in for a treat.  The church (the 5^th to sit on this site, England’s only with a dome and constructed from 1675 to 1711) houses stunning grisaille frescoes (painted in the early 1700s), glorious glass mosaics (added in the 19^th century by Queen Victoria), and the tombs of Sir Christopher Wren (the only architect of St. Paul’s) and the Duke of Wellington.  We visited the American Memorial Chapel (added after World War II) which is directly behind the high altar and climbed 440 stairs to the Whispering & Stone Galleries.

Overall, our 4 days in London gave us time to feel the city and to see some pretty spectacular sights.  If we had to sum it up in 1 word, you guessed it, MONUMENTAL.  To see all of our pictures from London, click here.