Robertsons & Daughters: Shanna and Haley turn 19! End of Scotland and Dublin!

Day 7, Friday Glasgow

We had a pretty early morning of breakfast then driving to Glasgow. Goodbye Pitlochry! It was a fun, cute town. Elden is the lone survivor.

The Glasgow Cathedral--the oldest cathedral on mainland Scotland. We parked and walked over to it. We needed to use the restrooms so we sauntered in to a hotel and used theirs in the lobby. Thanks hotel!

Then we walked up to the Necropolis.

We loved Edinburgh a lot more than Glasgow. But Glasgow had its treasures! Like this yummy restaurant I DID have reservations for. Ardnamurchan. Super yummy....and so expensive for me! This was Clark's favorite food stop. And he had a few on this trip! People tried haggis and black pudding at different times...but not me or Shanna. Yuck. I'll take scones and clotted cream any day!

We then went to Kelvingrove Art Gallery for a little bit. Mainly to park. But you needed to use coins to park. Lee went to a Tesco to get cash out. Thankfully I stayed by the car because a security guy was handing out parking tickets. I told him my husband would be back with coins to pay. We said our goodbyes to Kent and Saundra. It was fun to have this visit with them.

Next up, a walk to the Glasgow Botanic Gardens.

Then we stopped at the University of Glasgow Cloisters. Very cool!

We stopped back at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery for about 10 minutes to poke around and use the facilities.

We had extra time to use. Edinburgh airport is only about an hour's drive. We drove around a little, stopped at a grocery store and hit up McDonald's for dinner.

We then spent a few hours at the airport. We weren't sure what else to do since it was the evening. Turns out we were at the wrong gate... I walked a lot and people watched a movie. And of course our plane was delayed by at least an hour. Ouch. Then another big ouch....My suitcase and Haley's suitcases were both too large. The Ryanair guy checking luggage wouldn't relent...they fit on the way over. But they were slightly too big. We had to pay $100 each to get the suitcases back to Dublin. Ugh.

We got to the hotel in Dublin in the wee hours, about 1:30am. Thankfully we were able to walk over to the hotel. The rooms were great! We slept for a few hours, then got an Uber and headed to Malahide, Ireland. It's about 20 minutes from the airport. It's Shanna and Haley's birthday!!! We were going to eat breakfast at this cafe, but it was tiny inside and super busy. We stayed so Haley could get some avacado toast. $16 later.... Whoa! The others walked down to a boutique grocery store to get their breakfast stuff, where we met them.

The other kids hadn't bought their breakfast yet and we were running out of time. I was not happy, to say the least. I thought everyone would be ready to go when we arrived. We were at the cafe for at least 15 minutes. Ugh. I need to work on that, and communicate my expectations. But people bought their stuff. We sat down for just a few minutes, but then had to leave. We still needed to buy our airplane dinner and wanted to see the castle before getting back to the airport.

We went to Super-Valu and bought our food. Irn-bru is a popular soda there. Tastes like bubble gum. We bought some tablet there...a grainy type of soft toffee...but more like biting into wet sugar instead of toffee. But it's not wet...anyway... One last effort to get clotted cream, I asked a store worker if they had it there. He didn't know what I was talking about. I knew we were in Ireland...but Ireland is a whole lot closer to England than we are! We also forgot our fridge items in the hotel room. Lee called and someone grabbed them from the fridge for us--yay! Off to the Malahide Castle!

We grabbed another Uber to take us back to the Clayton Hotel where we left our luggage.

There was a line at the front desk and we didn't want to wait for the hotel airport shuttle. Lee asked the Uber guy to stay. We grabbed our luggage when a desk person was finally available then got back in the van. We bought people lunch at the airport, which we rarely do, and waited for the plane. Clark had to take off his belt at security and forgot it there. He went back to get it. It took awhile for someone to help him and then he lost track of time. We were in line to board when he finally made it back.

Goodbye Dublin!

These were so cute!

We got home about 10:15pm that night. Sheldon came to stay at our house for a week. Haley got some ice cream, but a few people went to bed and Cal started packing to head off to pest control sales in Kansas. Scottish tablet.

Clark took Chloe back to the airport, and Cal left about 5:30am Sunday morning. Sad to have people go!!!

We celebrated their birthday Monday night. We tried to go to Vito's for dinner but they were super busy and of course I didn't have a reservation. We got Costco pizza, then went to see Mallece open her mission call. She's going to Japan!!!

Haley opened one last gift....a note saying that Shanna was getting married. Probably not my best idea to have Shanna break the news at the birthday party. I really wanted her to tell everyone so that they knew!

Lee is working on our front yard. It was all torn up from the renovation. The grass has been growing though. Weeds too unfortunately. Haley working on the yard! Back to life in Virginia!