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Heading home

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Heathrow (2nd attempt), May 30 Our last day (or so we thought) in London was pretty low key, but we did have time to head over to Nopi for some delicious veggies. While I found the food in Scotland quite good, they were very light in the vegetable department, and those they had were largely potatoes and turnips. I like both, but I’d been missing the green ones. Nopi satisfied my craving, as well as highlighting that vegetables needn’t be boring. The highlight of our night was watching the first installment of Springwatch on BBC2. If you like spring, it’s worth checking out on the BBC website or their Facebook page. The program goes on for three weeks, and largely consists of watching birds in their nests, fox in their dens, puffins protecting their young, etc. Any TV exec in the US who suggested this would be fired on the spot, but it’s pretty beloved here. I watched a bunch of birds begging for food for an hour while we got ready for the plane, so once again I certified my cr...
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Traveling to Edinburgh

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Edinburgh, Sunday May 27 Yesterday, after we took the ferry to Mallaig, we stopped at a pleasant tea room for lunch. The food was good, but it reminded both of us that our common language doesn’t assure common menus.  It’s a small thing, but it’s odd to go to a casual restaurant and not quite recognize anything. I just wanted a snack, thinking I’d have a baked potato, but upon further investigation, saw there wasn’t a single topping I was familiar with. Cole slaw might be great on a potato, but neither it nor cream cheese, nor Heinz beans sounded right to my American stomach. Same with the sandwiches. I made the mistake of having a BLT with egg mayo the other day, thinking they were just mentioning one of the ingredients of mayo for some odd reason. But when it was revealed as egg salad on a BLT, it almost went uneaten <s>. Yesterday, instead of trying to have American food, I chose cullen skink, a really nice chowder of haddock, potatoes and onion. Gi...
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Skye - day 3

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Aviemore, Saturday, May 26 With regret, we’ve left Skye, passing out of it on perhaps the most sparkling day of our trip.  I think both of us like to imagine living there, certain we’d love the mesmerizing views, striking weather, and unexpected geological surprises. In reality, I think it would drive us stark, raving mad! Skye is almost fifty miles long, and just less than half that wide. There are only a couple of roads that are reliably two lanes, which means that every trip turns out to be a long one. It’s tough to count on going faster than about fifteen mph, and even that can be hair-raising.  Couple the difficult driving with very few places to eat, and even fewer places to shop and you have a recipe for frustration. But it’s so magical that it lures you into thinking it would be grand as a home. It’s like the syrens of the islands, trying to transfix you. We were slightly disappointed to wake yesterday to low clouds. But they blew away by the time w...
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Isle of Skye day 1 and 2

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Isle of Skye day 1 and 2 It can be hard to do a posting every day when the internet is spotty, but it is good today, so here goes. Skye is a really beautiful place and most of the people who come here hike and hike and hike to various lovely places in the mountains. We have, so far limited ourselves to taking lovely pictures of the views along the way. We picked up a car in Inverness at Avis at the airport - the excellent news was that they upgraded up to a lovely Mercedes C-Class sedan. Smooth ride but the electronics can be difficult to decipher. We decided to take a different route than we took last year - heading east into the Highlands to drive down to Skye. It was a most excellent drive. The views were wonderful. We stopped at a little golf course and had a panini lunch. Panini is super popular in Scotland - go figure. Rogie Falls - just West of Inverness One of the many Lochs we passed Clubhouse for the Locharron Golf Club Just another beautiful ...
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Orkeny day 2 and 3

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Tuesday, May 22. Arrived in Inverness Seems like a while since I’ve posted. I blame the pokey internet in Orkney, which was really glacial. I suppose I could live somewhere that didn’t have internet at all, but having it be spotty and slow, kicking you off every few minutes, would drive me bonkers. Now we’re in Inverness, a much bigger, more tourist friendly town. You can tell by the stores selling tartan everything! On Sunday we took a long ferry ride up to North Ronaldsay, the northernmost of the Orkney Islands. (There are around 80 of them with 20 inhabited.) I wanted to go there mainly because I have a character in an upcoming book with family ties there, and I wanted to check it out. Part of the reason I placed my character there was because it was so remote I figured I had a good chance of not having a bunch of readers who’ve gone there and would notice all of the errors I commit. It didn’t dawn on me that it would be just as difficult for me to get there! Yo...
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