Tag archives for Scotland Trip
Posted by Gale force winds and short skirts don’t mix, but I took the risk all the same. My aim was the great and imposing Scottish mountain called Ben Nevis–the highest point in the United Kingdom (4,409′ ft, 1,344 m). As for wearing a kilt, well, when in Scotland . . . True kilts are made of…
Shetland may just be the most photogenic corner of Britain–the weather is moody and dramatic and the light (if it’s there) is always surprising and cinematic. Though I travel with several different cameras, it’s my phone I grab first–always. Phones may never compete with DSLR for clarity, stabilityf and megapixels, but I find phone pics…
“You’ve come at the wrong time.” This is what everyone tells me. They don’t say, “Welcome to Shetland!” Instead they say, “It’s such a pity you came right now, in January.” Then, like an answering machine instructing you to call back later, they tell me to come back in summer. Some insist that June is…
All libraries smell the same—the smell of very old paper and canvas, old carpet, old air. It’s the smell of old milk and the scent of history and like a hound sniffing the air, I followed the trail to the domed research room inside Scotland’s National Archives. Genealogy is nothing more than serious detective work.…
To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive. Robert Louis Stevenson penned that lined back in 1881 (Virginibus Puerisque) and as I drive east on Scotland’s A1—in the hopeful direction of the Scottish author’s boyhood vacation home—I am following his wise counsel. I never actually arrive at his home—the one rented in summertime…
It smelled like bacon. I was afraid to say it out loud, though—I doubt any real food and drink connoisseurs compare the smell of some grand old Scotch to an everyday pork product, but that’s what my nose captured. In the heart of Edinburgh, in a room walled with brass- and bronze-colored bottles, I sniffed…
New Year’s Day is a strange holiday, with fewer fixed traditions than most. It seems that January 1st is a kind of “anything goes” festival where people celebrate the start of a new year in whatever way they deem best. In my country, so many tend to lounge around at home and watch football, but…
High above Iceland the man began screaming uncontrollably, “Save me! Save me!” It wasn’t his shouting that jolted me from my transatlantic midnight rest, but the sound of total fear in his voice. I quickly sat up, checked my seatbelt, and then turned around to catch the panic on his face. “Make it stop, make…
