Scotland

My friend Maura is a school nurse, so she gets the summers off.  Big bonus!  This year, she and her sister decided to take a month long vacation to Ireland.  They are staying in a farmhouse and having a very relaxing time shaking off the stress of the east coast (of America).  Maura suggested we meet up for a weekend trip and we decided on Scotland since neither of us had been there.

We both booked tickets to go into Glasgow.  We were going to do Glasgow for a night and then take the train to Edinburgh for a few days.  We hit a small hitch when a week before we were meeting I tried to book hotels in Edinburgh and found out it was the Fringe Festival (http://www.edfringe.com/) aka the biggest festival in Scotland.  Thousands of performers, tens of thousands of people...no hotels.  So we decided we'd stay in Glasgow the whole time and then take the train to Edinburgh for the day.

I got there on Thursday night around 11 pm and met Maura in the hotel room.  It's been a few months since we've seen each other, but probably 5 years since we've had one on one time, so we had tons to talk about.  We went to bed a few hours later and woke up the next morning to have breakfast and then head to Edinburgh.

When we got there, they were just setting up for the festival because Friday was the first day.  First of the list was Edinburgh Castle, obviously.  The jewels were meh...but the cool part was the prisoner of war area.  Most of the soldiers that were captured during the American Revolution were housed in Edinburgh Castle.  It's crazy the different treatment they got - worse treatment - from the Spanish and French POWs because they were considered traitors.  So the Americans got less food, worse sleeping quarters (just hammocks instead of beds), and they didn't get released when the other POWs got releases.  Always trying to hold the man down!!  It was really cool to see the carvings in the doors of ships with the American flag on the back and the tagging from the 1700s and 1800s:

SO COOL!

After the castle we strolled around for a few hours doing nothing in particular.  We sat in the park, went to a free tasting, went to a beer tent, just really enjoyed the scene!  Then we headed back to Glasgow because we thought we'll get there in time for dinner and then we can go out.  Well we ended up substituting dinner for a bottle of wine on the train, a bag of wasabi peas, and some Percy Pigs (candy).  Maura loved the idea of traveling while enjoying a glass of wine.  

When we got back to Glasgow we headed out on the town and then called it a night around 1 because we had another trip on Saturday morning.  Maura's sister Molly is dating a Scottish guy who lives in America.  His family lives 40 minutes outside Glasgow.  When he found out Maura and I would be there, he insisted that we spend the night with his family.  It was awesome!  His mom picked us up and drove us around all the sites of his town, and then we went to her house, dropped our stuff, and then his sister, her fiance, and his two brothers, their wives and kids all came over for dinner.  It was soo fun to be around the kids the family.  They were really welcoming and sweet and we were up until 3 am talking!!  I was ready for bed around 1 but that would have been rude so I powered through!  

Sunday morning we headed back to Glasgow, found Maura a place to stay and then went to dinner at an Indian place that was really good.  

Overall I would say that the best part of Scotland was definitely the fun times with Molly's boyfriend's family.  I don't know that I would spend a lot of Glasgow or Edinburgh in the future, but I'm glad to have checked it off the list!