Far, Far Away

On August 25, my husband and I drove to San Francisco.  On the 26th, we boarded a plane, and on the 27th - which coincidentally was his birthday - we stepped off our plane into Wonderland.  I mean Scotland.

But if you are from Central California, where the air is brown, the dirt is brown, and the grass and trees are dying, well, Scotland just blows the senses.  Wet, green, cool, wet...did I say wet?  It was a 180 from what we have come back to.  And with the Rough Fire still burning aggressively, well, the air today  is chewable, and we're being warned not to breathe it.  Like I said, Scotland was a Wonderland.

I have about 3000 pictures, and it's hard to know what to share and what to keep to myself.  I mean, really, you DO want to see a pretty, green place, don't you?  I've posted a few pics on Facebook, but mostly I've kept them to myself.  Each day I look at about 200 or so.  They bring a smile to my face.

We stayed until we had to board a plane on Sept 5, back to SFO, and now, back to home.  It's a memory that's quickly fading in the hustle bustle of home life.  But I'll share a story with you, if you're not already bored.

We retraced many of our steps from a family trip taken in 1996.  One of the places that we visited was Linlithgow Palace, in Linlithgow.  A story I've often told, is of the patchwork shop that I spotted as we were running up the hill to catch our train.  They had closed 5 minutes before we ran by.  It was the only patchwork shop I'd seen on that trip.

This time, we again traveled to Linlithgow.  On our way to the palace, I stopped to admire the architecture of a particularly intriguing building.  When I walked to the front of it, it was the very same patchwork shop from 19 years ago.

 Look at that!  A quilt store!

 We went inside, and I found some tartan-printed cotton yardage.  (Or is it metre-age?  They sell it by the metre.)

 It is a cute little shop, and under new ownership (compared to 1996).

 My husband was pleased to buy fabric for me.  (He'd almost left me behind at the train station, with my tickets in his pocket...but I'm not supposed to talk about that.)

Fabric in hand, we walked to the palace.

Palaces are where the monarchs live.  Castles are defensive structures.  There are no cannons in Linlithgow.  I'll probably get this wrong, but I think it was the birthplace of Mary, Queen of Scots.  My husband is the Scot-o-phile, and can quote dates and names for just about everything.  Me, I prefer poking around, exploring, and enjoying how it is now.

I'll leave you with this last castle picture.  Do you recognize it?  Think, think hard.  Doesn't it look familiar?  Didn't you see it in a movie once?  Weren't there Frenchmen in it?

It's Castle Stalker, a privately owned residence that played a memorable part of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  I really got a kick out of it.  Hubby was excited about seeing it, I looked at it and said, "That's it?!!"  But when he gave me the Monty Python connection, I started laughing, and this is one of my favorite memories of that particular day.  Can't you just imagine the cow in the trebuchet?

And with that, I'd better hit "publish."  Hope you enjoyed the narrative!