Adventure
High Tea
When we got to Edinburgh, we went to our new room for the night. We were blown away at the upscale nature and size of it. It would have easily fit three plus London boat rooms inside of it and the staff were so helpful. They even got online and searched for a place for us to have high tea. After we dropped off our stuff we went for our first high tea experience. It was in The Howard, a high class hotel in town. It was highly rated, but in the write-up it said it was impossible to get a table without reservations, so we prayed instead! The butler (and we had three waiting on us) told us it was the strangest thing, normally the place would be packed but today we were the only ones who were there for high tea. As part of our high tea we had peach tea, salmon crackers, ham finger sandwiches, mint cucumber finger sandwiches, sharp cheddar finger sandwiches, coconut scones, plain scones, chocolate mousse, short bread cake, fudge, lemon curd pie, and cheese cake. It takes two to three hours to enjoy, while the classical music plays in the background. We were pretty full when we finished, but ready for our next activity.
Castle Edinburgh
The Beautiful Highlands
Let's Go Boating
Just Duckie
We met up with George that evening, a relative of some dear friends of ours. George has been living in Edinburgh, Scotland for the last fourteen years. He took us on a night tour of Edinburgh. It is a beautiful city full of history and old castle-like buildings. The Edinburgh castle at night was a real treat and the views from it were spectacular. From there we made plans with George for the next day, whitewater kayaking! George rented a car and took us to the Tay River in Aberfiedy, Scotland. The river was very low, so they allowed me to take Chloe in our own tandem duckie and George got to ride with another guide. We paddled flat water through miles of beautiful Scottish dales, with pheasants running along the banks. There were two rapids on our trip with the last having a four foot waterfall drop. Chloe wanted to surf back into it, but the current was too much for us to paddle the barge back upstream. George took us all over the highlands, showing us the Keelpies, Loch Tay, the Falkirk Wheel, and the hairy cows. It was such a blessing to spend the day seeing so many great sights and getting to know a new friend. Our day ended with a Scottish pub meal, animal entrails for me and a fourteen inch monster sized hot dog for Chloe. It was so big I was sure she would not be able to eat the whole thing, but she surprised me yet again and finished it.
Whitewater
Cheers
Fall Colors
Highland Coos
Chloe’s take:
I love you all. We went to Edinburgh to spend the day with Mr. George. He is the nephew of some good friends of ours, Mr. Nathan & Jane Phillips. He was not available to do high tea, so instead we went and had high tea without him. Mommy really wanted us to do high tea while we were on our trip. We made plans with Mr. George to meet him later. The “High Tea” consisted of finger sandwiches, ham (with some mustard), cucumber mint, and a sandwich with sharp cheese (and as I said, “some salsa”. The sharp cheese was not my favorite. Oh, and I got to eat some fish and chips; maybe it wasn’t as bad as it may look in the video but…well, it didn’t taste good to me. Well, then we ate the scones. The scones were basically cream tea (but way smaller). One was coconut, the other was plain (but you couldn’t taste the coconut). Then we were on to Dessert. There were some little cheesecake bites, fudge bites, two pieces of shortbread, and very small glasses of chocolate mousse with small swirls of white chocolate on top. YUMMY!!!! And then we went back and had a night out with Mr. George; Mr. George took us to all the sights and that sort of thing. Daddy talked with him, and I listened and imagined things. It was FUN!!!! The next day we went whitewater kayaking in duckies. It wasn’t as fun as I anticipated, but it was BEAUTIFUL. And it was perfect for Mr. George (he’d never gone before). And we also did see tons of pheasants – they were PLUMP!!! And then we got back in the car and started on our way to the airport. After we saw some pretty waterfalls – small, but pretty and had some lunch. It was not at the duckie place though. On our way to the airport we saw a really cool big hairy cow; and the very very cool Falkirk wheel. And then we ate at our hotel with Mr. George; after that we got in bed.
