Scotland!

We had a lovely bonus time in Dublin. And now for the big trip we've been wanting to do for a few years!  Scotland!!!

Scotland Day 1, Saturday

We arrived at the airport around midnight or so. Thankfully the area is really walkable. We walked about 20 minutes to our rental van that I booked through Turo.  It was a foggy night. Cal and a toad!

We stayed the first 3 nights at the Lost Shor Surf Resort. It was only 10 minutes from the airport, thankfully. We weren't really sure where to go, but Kent told us some good directions. We found the gate, parked, and walked towards to office with our luggage. We found a security guy. He told us which place was ours and gave most of us a ride up to the cottage!  

Rapeseed field. It's so bright and pretty!

We thought some of us might stay with Kent & Saundra in their cottage. The resort double booked the pod that Clark and Chloe were going to stay in, so they gave us these two cottages.  Downside is that it's about a 5 minute walk from the parking lot. But our cottage had 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms!  It was great!

We slept for a little bit. Time to start the adventure!  We went to Lidl for breakfast then headed into Edinburgh for our first tour. Lidl and Aldi always have fresh pastries in the mornings.  So yummy and inexpensive!


The rental!  Seats 8 which is perfect. 

Our first tour was the Real Mary King's Close. A close is a type of alley. Edinburgh is built up quite high, building on top of building and built on a hill. My friend told me that this was underground city...but it's really just underneath-other-buildings-city. I guess you can get lost in these alleys. Mary King was a real lady that lived in the 1600s or something like that. It was a fun tour and fun to see this interesing part of Edinburgh. Pictures weren't allowed so I splurged and got the tourist trap photo. 

The creepy doctor mask dude. But it worked--he did get the black plague!

Edinburgh is such a pretty city!  The pictures do not reflect it's charm!

Kent and Saundra looked online and saw that the Mary King's Close didn't open till 9:30, but our tour started at 9:00am. I gave them the info. Sadly they showed up late and couldn't get in to the tour. 

Next up Edinburgh Castle! More like a fortress haha. But I guess that's what castles were.

You can wander around a see things. I think you could have done a guided tour, but I didn't do that. 

We splurged again and did high tea at the castle. Way too expensive but very fun. 

A little more of the castle. 

Next stop the National Museum of Scotland. We spent a bit too much time here. It was free, but it put us off timewise for the next little while. 

The Royal Mile is so fun!  There is the Edinburgh Castle at one end and the Palace of Holyroodhouse at the other.  Chloe, Clark and Shanna went to a jewelry store that one of Chloe's companions told her about that's by the Royal Mile. Kent and Saundra hung around there and the rest of us went to the National Portrait Gallery. I didn't realize that Lee really wanted to go to it and Haley too. We didn't have much time, but they let us in. 

My mom wanted me to stop by here, but I have never read the story, nor care too much about dogs. But we happened upon it so I got some pictures. 

I was petting it and someone said, you're supposed to rub his nose!  Too bad, haha. 

We had a hard time finding a place to eat. Restaurants don't like seating 10 people. I should have gotten reservations but didn't even think about it. We ended up at an fun Italian place, Assaggini. The one downside with having people other than our family along, it that many meals we ate with Kent and & Saundra and not our kids. So that was a bummer to me. Fun to visit with them for sure, but would have loved more time with my kids. Next trip, we'll just go ourselves, no invites. 

Day 2, Sunday

Edinburgh Ward for church!  It was about a half hour from our cottage. So funny...Saundra's cousin was at church!  He is from Utah and was in Scotland visiting with his family too.  Crazy!

Lovely members in the ward. The mission president and his wife are in that ward and Cal had fun talking to them. Saturday night we went shopping and got food for Sunday. We had a pasta lunch! Clark and Chloe bought some fun juice to share. And wow, it was SOO sweet!  We had to water it down. 

We drove out to Rosslyn Chapel and walked around. You had to pay to go on the grounds and we didn't want to do that on Sunday. 

We walked to a nearby cemetary. 

Then to the Rosslyn Castle grounds. 

Haley is always creating, I love it! 

St. Giles Cathedral does a free Sunday performance. St. Giles at 6. We went back to Edinburgh, parked and headed over for some piano music provided by students from an Asian college. I picked really bad seats and we moved a couple of times. Oh well. I thought there would be a singing group, so that threw me off. Nope, it was piano!   

On the way back to the carpark....a fire guy. 

And Jackson's Close!  Goodbye Edinburgh!

Day 3, Monday

We then went to a quirky place, the Kelpies in Grangemouth, at Felix Park. Just these random, huge giant horseheads. 

Sterling Castle was next! Kent and Saundra joined a tour and we just wandered around. 

Out at the front is a statue of Robert the Bruce! Our Robertson line might be descended from him, but either way the name came from him somehow...like someone named themselves after Robert...son of Robert or whatever...

I think we all liked Stirling Castle better than Edinburgh Castle. 

We then stopped at Sainsbury to grab lunch. These cherry scones and clotted cream were so good!  We had an hour and a half drive ahead of us so we enjoyed some eating time. 

We stopped at the Elie Ness Lighthouse. Not impressive. 

But we struck some luck with the nearby stone building ruins. Not only was it pretty cool, but someone was having their wedding there. And who do we see escorting them on the Scottish soil? A real life bagpiper. It was sooo cool!

Next up was St. Andrews Cathedral Ruins. St. Andrews was the birthplace of golf!  When we arrived at the ruins they opened up this tower!  Up at the top we saw the St. Andrew's golf course from there, so we didn't drive over there. 

The stretch of green heading out into the ocean on the right is the golf course. 

A famous Robertson golfer!

I picked out a place to eat for dinner, but when we got there they said they couldn't take 10 people. But we found this place and they let us in--super yummy!

Lee and I got a yummy sampler plate. Going out to eat is so expesive there! I let people do 21 pounds, but that's about $28 per person. I'm not a huge foodie, even when we travel. I do not eat at fancy restaurants...$20 a person is really expensive for me haha. I like $10-$12 a person...that's my happy spot. Or less!

Clark had a lot of fun seeing all the different cars.

We then drove over to Dundee at stayed at the Queen's Hotel, a Best Western. Wiston Churchill stayed there several times! Haha, the letter though...so disgusting about the food! We did not see any maggots in our food. 

We walked over to an ice cream place and saw this bakery on the way.

Old Mother Hubbard...

On the walk back we realized that Dundee is kind of sketch. At least the section where we were. Night games!  Sheldon gave us Flip 7 and we played a lot...almost every night on the trip. 

Day 4 Tuesday

We had breakfast included with our rooms and enjoyed that at our hotel. 

We then went to Glamis Castle. A guy still lives there!  It's a cool building, but not cozy, and it's old... Not a place I would want to live. 

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang car came to Glamis! We couldn't take pictures in the main part of the castle so I got them where I could. 

Glamis Castle!

The grounds were fun. We walked over to the kitchen gardens....maybe this is the gardener's cottage?  That's my kind of house!

We walked over to the other gardens too. 

Some of the kids were inspired to make their own movies of Macbeth haha. We are eagerly awaiting them!  We've seen some snippets. 

Such a creative thing to do with tree stumps!!!

Again...struggles to find a place to eat! We ended up at a Denny's type place. Yummy lunch though!  

The main part of the trip, going to the John Robertson home! Lee's 4th great-grandfather died when he was 39, born in 1793. He had 6 or 7 children. We know that his 5 sons (or 5 of the sons) joined the church and all moved to Utah! The current owner of the house said that over 200 Robertsons have come to visit the house. His wife died from COVID. So sad. He said we could walk around the yard and get pictures. Really nice fellow-Finley. He also said that he heard the brothers were baptized in Dundee! It would have been fun to have spent a little more time there. But so neat to be at the Robertson ancestral home. 

The five Robertson brothers. The one in the middle, William Robertson, is Lee's 3rd great-grandfather. 

                                                                                    

This is the church nearby. 

We then went to this waterfall about a 5 minute drive...I thought it was further away, but here it was!

Stopped randomly at this little farm...treats for the win!

That night we ended up in Pitlochry. We stayed here the next three nights. For dinner we hit up the local grocery store for food. Such a cute town. We had this apartment type hotel room that Lee, myself, Shanna and Haley shared with Kent and Saundra. Clark, Chloe, Cal and Elden were in the main building in a room they all shared. Breakfast was included every morning. It was a great price to stay here. My goal was $400 a night or less. This met that! 

Fun to walk from our hotel to the cute downtown. 

Lois saw the picture of the circular stone building and they had been there too!  She sent me this photo of Rhett and Blake. So fun!

A screenshot that I need to load into family search to help people find the John Robertson home. 

We saw TONS of these at Glamis Castle on our walk (I think that's wher it was...)

Day 5, Wednesday

Breakfast at Westlands!

This red door leads to the room Kent and Saundra had.

Well done Richard! Haha, Studio C skit for the great British Bakeoff. We went to Dunkeld, a nearby town, to see a cathedral. I saw this recipe book in a fancy kitchen shop. 

Dunkeld Cathedral. Construction started in 1260! 

 

Wow, quite the view and side yard! So pretty to have a river right there by the church.

Next stop: Queen's View. So pretty!  

We then went to a shopping center in the country: House of Bruar. It's by Blair Castle-which we just saw part of it but didn't tour it. There are some cute shops at House of Bruar--highland clothing and a boutique grocery store with some plant offerings like flowers and such. Also a Robertson Museum!!!  The guy there said we could get some whiskey for free since we were Robertsons, haha. We declined. 

Our main purpose was to go on the hike to the Falls of Bruar. 

On these hikes Shanna and I had a lot of wedding talks, haha. She and Nate decided to get married and to get married in August! The siblings don't know yet...

Elden loaded up his backpack with rocks, haha. Then had fun throwing them into the river.

At the boutique grocery store. 

Had to buy this!

That night we ate here...just down from the hotel. Auld Smiddy Inn. We DID get a reservation there the night before. And then people that own this, own the shops up at Queen's View. 

More Robertson Whiskey!

Ice cream again!

Scum!

Day 6, Thursday

Our last full day in the area!  Breakfast first. 

We did the Balmoral Cairns Hike. Stopped at the grocery store again for lunch items. No porridge for lunch, just fun to see. 

It was an hour and a half drive to the hike. Such pretty scenery! Closer to the hike it was kind of brown though...they must be having a drought up that way. Some of the roads were horrible, some were fine. It was nice that Lee had an automatic for driving on the left side of the road.

We parked at a carpark and walked to the trail. Fun seeing these!

Lots of cairns on the way. They are dedicated to different people, like Prince Albert. We stopped and had lunch at one point. 

Balmoral Castle!

It was about a 6 mile hike. Very pretty! 

We got reservations again for dinner that night at the Bridge Restaurant. A cute park in Pitlochry on our walk to the restaurant. 

The bread pudding was really good!!!

We had dinner somewhat early, 5:30pm, so we did a couple of adventures that night. Shanna and Saundra both stayed behind. Shanna wanted to talk to Nate during his lunch break back in the states. Cal saw there were some old castle ruins, but we couldn't drive down to them due to a private road. But fun seeing them! 

He also saw that there were some stones we could see--like Stonehenge, but not that impressive like those. 

Here they are!  

We saw this cute church on our drive to the stones. I had a headache and just wanted to go back to the hotel, but we found in it and walked around.  Very happily situated church!

Last full night in Scotland we played a round of scum, then scriptures, then bed. Chloe and Clark treated us to yummy Scottish ice cream!  With scum, I bought a pack of cards at a gift shop so we could play with more than one deck. It was 4 pounds. I went back to the shop to buy another deck, becuase the two we had weren't the same size. I bought the deck the next day and a different person was manning the till. He charged me 5 pounds. What?!  So weird, ha. But I didn't say anything. Wow, what a great time in Scotland!  We'll be back!  I want to go to the Outer Hebrides and go further north next time!