Aberdeen Scotland

We have arrived in Scotland. Our luggage did not quite make it as we had to run for our connection in Heathrow. Aberdeen is a city made entirely from grey granite rock.

Ok....now I am making Anthony quit with the fancy imagery of the city in which we are staying. We arrived yesterday and found our Priceline hotel 3 miles north of town or as our cab driver said "that's pretty remote." In staying with the true spirit of Scotland Anthony rented us a Holiday Inn Express with an oil rig right next to it. I'm taking the keyboard from my friend Clara that I have to spend the next month with. OK, so we're staying at a fabulous place. Yesterday, we went to the bikeshop to pick our bikes out. Jim and the bike guy, Russel, got along very well and we were well taken care of (when we were picking out bikes and asking him questions all he said was, "That's horses for courses." and laughed, we laughed too, but weren't quite sure why). We enjoyed our first meal at a Scottish pub (Clara had a veggie burger that was deep-fried corn) and then went back to our hotel to get over our jet-lag.

Today we jumped on the train while waiting for our bikes to get ready and went 15 miles south to Stonehaven, a little town on the coast. There we walked to the ocean and followed a cliffwalk to Donnottar castle. The castle was used from the 11th to 18th centuries and was quite beautiful perched on a cliff on the edge of the ocean. The weather has been beautiful. No one here can believe how nice it is. After we got some fish and chips from a chippy and had a picnic in the sun on the beach.

Back to Clara: Are we in the Carribean or on the North Sea? Can't quite tell today. I am sure when we get on our bikes tomorrow morning it will be in a downpour. We are saying goodbye to Aberdeen tomorrow and heading north. Not quite sure where but we will be going but we're hoping to end up in Inverness in a couple of days. Not sure when we'll find a pub with free wireless but hopefully in a few days. After reading Anthony's part of the blog I see that he mentioned the castle was quite beautiful. Well...yes, it was. However, he failed to mention that it was missing all roofs and was in complete ruins. It had been destroyed by a seige in the 18th century, but it took 8 months to get the occupants to give up. They were guarding the crown jewels and when they surrendered the English could not find the jewels. Leave it to a woman to have the guile to smuggle and hide the jewels and come back for them later. Go Ladies.

FYI: Yes, the ladies that are my present company have quite the wits about them. In fact, they go back through my portion of the blog entries and edit out the parts they don't like... Alright, we will be leaving this beautiful grey granite stoned city tomorrow and heading up the north coast on our bikes. The weather is supposed to turn rainy. It will be our first day all biking together. It will be interesting to see how it goes.

Cheers.
Clara, Anthony, Emily, JIM