Hello from Scotland! I have been here for 2 days now, and let me tell you, they’ve been quite the two days. Well, there’s nothing but to tell the story, so:

Day 1:

Fly to Edinburgh. The planes were rather nice, with screens for every seat. I watched The Soloist which was nice, if a little hard to watch with PA announcements popping up very loudly every few minutes. My mom and sister, Lizzy, are touring Scotland with me for 16 days before school starts for me, which I am grateful for, since I doubt I would have seen this much of Scotland without them. Anywho, we arrived in Edinburgh and rented a car. It was brand new (only 29 miles to its name) and big enough to fit all of our luggage, which was great, but is also a stick shift. My mother drove a stick maybe 30 years ago, and thought she could do it now, but within 7 miles of the airport the car was smoking and there was this noxious smell coming out of the engine. It turns out my mom had had the car in 3^rd when it should have been in 1^st. We almost burnt out the clutch, but luckily it was still functional, though the car still stank for the next day or so. Well, that problem dealt with, we started to head south to Dumfries (pronounced dumb-freece – like Greece with an f), where my sister wanted to see a castle and abbey. Well, just outside of Biggar (not that far from Edinburgh, maybe 20 min away) my mom scraped against a curb and our front left tire got slashed. LUCKILY we pulled into a driveway that belonged to this wonderful woman Joann who not only knew how to change a tire, but helped us do so and directed us to a place we could get the other tire fixed. We went there, but they said that the tire size we had was very odd/rare and they didn’t carry it, and the flat tire had been slashed on the side and so couldn’t be repaired. We called the car rental place and they said there was a place in Dumfries that could get a new tire for free, so we drove the 3 hours on the big highway down to Dumfries and got it changed. We then decided to find The Merlin B&B, which was recommended in our Lonely Planet guide book, only The Merlin is extremely difficult to find when you’re in a car. So, we got lost for about an hour. Then, my mom ran against another curb and slashed both wheels on the passenger side. We called the VW roadside assistance and, after a few hours, our car was fixed, again. We also got the VERY nice man who fixed our car to show us where The Merlin was. We parked, checked in, and went to a decent Indian restaurant in town.

Day 2:

Today was my sister’s birthday! We had a wonderful breakfast at The Merlin – I had scrambled eggs on toast, it was delicious, though the coffee was incredibly strong – and we headed south once more to go find the Sweatheart Abbey in New Abbey. It’s a really beautiful old ruin of a monastery founded by Lady Devorgilla. Lady Devorgilla had her husband’s heart embalmed when he passed and carried it with her until her death, where it was buried with her in the Abbey. Behind it was a cemetery and a cow field with a footpath along a little river. We ate lunch at the Abbey Café and we all had a tasty plum crumble with custard. We then went to the Caerlaverock Castle (pronounced Ca-lav-rock), also south of Dumfries, but we had to go back to Dumfries in order to get there. On the way to the castle my mom developed a strong and unreasonable hatred of trash bins and ran into one that was outside a house. It unhinged the left rear view mirror and shattered the glass. Luckily we were able to pop the mirror base back on the car, and the broken mirror is being held onto the base with two hair bands. We continued on to the castle and had lots of fun taking pictures. The castle itself was surrounded by a moat and a lot of the structure was still intact, we could even go up to the second floor and go up three or four floors in a stairwell. It had an interesting story behind it. It was built to stave off the English, but was only manned by 60 Scotsmen. It held up rather well under and English siege, but eventually fell. Apparently there’s a famous poem about it, I suppose I’ll have to look it up. After that we decided to head north towards Glasgow, but stop before the city and stay at Lanark since my mom, for some reason, is afraid of staying in Glasgow. So, we head back to Dumfries again and take the A74. About 7 miles before we hit the English border, we realized we had taken the A74 south. Oh yeah, that’s right. We decided to just stay in Gretna Green, since my sister had a Jane Austin-inspired fondness for the place. We’re here now, and have finished a family meeting in which we’ve decided we don’t have enough time to go to the Shetland Islands, but we still want to go to the Northern Highlands. Tomorrow we’re heading towards Glasgow but will probably sleep in Stirling. We might travel up the coast and then swing towards Inverness before heading down the middle of Scotland, stopping by Loch Ness and Loch Lochy.

Basically, we’ve had lots of drama so far, and I’m more than a little tense (what can I say, having to keep an eye out and shout “CURB!” every time my mom drifts too far left can do that to you), but hopefully things will look up. On the bright side, I’ve been too busy to become homesick, though I suppose that could kick in when my mom and sister leave. I haven’t missed Tara overmuch – there was this cat outside the motel we’re in, though, it was so friendly and adorable! Liz and I flocked to it like a magnet… Anyway, I hope to post pictures at some point, it might be tonight but I kind of doubt it… Sleep beckons…