Home Away From Home

HELLO...is anyone reading this anymore?

Once again...I have put off writing my post...why? I don't know. I think I feel like I am so far behind in what I wanted to write and pics that I wanted to put up that I put it off because I am so far behind. My last adventure of trying to put up a gazillion pics of The Beatles Tour was way too time consuming and so it has made me not want to return to do more. Well, no more of that. I have decided to start with the present and skip the "behind" stuff. I really will try to do better. Thanks for still checking in once in a while. I truly want to be able to do this once a week. I'll see how it goes.

Recently Brian and I took a long weekend and went to Edinburgh, Scotland. Wow...was it ever beautiful there! We were so lucky to be able to attend the Edinburgh Military Tattoo which is held each August and it's a BIG DEAL!!! I didn't know about it until I started looking into what to do while there and read all about it. The tickets go on sale around December 1st the year before and usually sell out within 1-2 months. When we checked in at our hotel, the Conciere asked us if we were going to the Tattoo and of course, we were not--tickets all sold. Lucky us, he had four behind the counter and so we were able to buy two of them from him. It was SO COOL!!! All the military bands and the bagpipers coming out through the entrance of the Edinburgh Castle. The Citadel from South Carolina was a guest this year so we were able to see someone from "home". If you ever get the chance to see this--DO IT!! It was really neat. While there we also toured the Edinburgh Castle, walked the Royal Mile, toured the Holyrood Palace (where the Queen stays when she is in Scotland--it is a working Palace)...I loved the Palace. There is a cafe outside the Palace with the BEST scones ever. Yum Yum!! We had a scone and some fruit tea.

(SIDE NOTE: Speaking of SCONES...Shirley Burgon is our RS President and she is awesome. I told her how much I loved scones and wanted to learn to make them. Bless her heart! She brought me a beautifully wrapped package of some that she had made along with the recipe. I will be trying my hand at making some. I try not to eat them very often as they just want to hang off the hips...haha)

OK--Back to Edinburgh. We were lucky that the weather was not too bad. It only rained one time for about 5 minutes and it was at night as we were walking back to the hotel. The rest of the weekend was chilly and we wore sweaters and jackets. Some sun and some clouds. I love the clouds there (well, here in England, too). They feel like they are lower and closer to us and they are so pretty and the sky behind and around them is so blue. We did several other things while there, including going to Roslin, which is a small town just outside of Edinburgh. Roslin is where the Rosslyn Chapel is--the chapel that was in "DaVinci Code". It was amazing. They are currently restoring it but have already done a lot to it. We saw it the morning that we were coming back home--and the night we got back we watched the movie (just so happened to have brought it with us) and it was kind of weird to watch it, knowing we had just been all through it the very same day. Anyway...it was a fabulous weekend. We want to go back and see the Highlands some day.

By the Way...we took the train from Chester to Edinburgh. I LOVE riding the train. It was a 4 hour ride but relaxing and you could just watch the countryside go by.