Year of the Visitor: Part the Third

The trend of welcoming visitors (versions 1 and 2) into our home during our second year in Scotland continued last week with a surprise visit from my Mom! Well it wasn't a total surprise, but it was planned about two weeks before she came. We had so much fun!

We got to do a lot of sightseeing that James and I haven't done yet.

Here we are at the William Wallace monument in Stirling, where the famous Battle of Stirling Bridge took place. You might remember this battle being depicted in the movie Braveheart, but in the somewhat inaccurate portrayal, they fail to mention the bridge which was key in the Scot's defeat of the English.

There was a substantial uphill hike to get to the monument. Here's the view from the parking lot.

A statue of Sir Wallace

And a somewhat difficult to see view of the Monument. We were standing at Stirling Castle across town.

Showing our support of the World Series champions (that happened to be the day that they would clinch the title)

Whiskey is extremely popular in Scotland (for all my fellow non-whiskey drinkers, Scottish whiskey is referred to as Scotch in America). There are over a hundred distilleries in Scotland which is impressive considering the area of Scotland is slightly less than the state of South Carolina. The Glenmorangie distillery is in a town next to Dornoch and we decided to go on a tour.
These are the stills where the distillation process happens.

Here are some of the casks where the whiskey sits for at least TEN YEARS to mature, sometimes longer.

They have a 14 warehouses full of casks like these. Our tour ended with a little tasting of some of their best whiskey; I still don't like it.

One day my mom and I drove to the West Coast of Scotland, the scenery is different from the east coast. We wanted to go to a local pottery shop and eat at a pie shop that we've heard people rave about (the pies are absolutely delicious. well worth the 1.5 hour drive. if you visit us we will do everything we can to take you there so you also can enjoy the wonderful pies)

We drove by these ruins when my parents visited after Christmas and were able to walk over to them; as you can see we couldn't do that this time, the water was super high and blocked the path. This picture can help to give you a bit of an understanding of how the weather changes so drastically at a moments notice in Scotland. You can see a bit of blue sky in the foreground, grey clouds in the background, lots of raining coming out of some clouds in the middle of the photo, and snow on the mountain peak. the famous phrase here is, "don't like the weather? wait five minutes."

Lochinver: home of the pie shop. I had a venison and cranberry pie for my meal and a peach and apricot for dessert. Mom had potato, leek, and something else for dinner, and strawberry and rhubarb for dessert. We took James a Steak and Guinness pie as well as an apple pie. yum.


The coolest part about the pottery shop were the sculptures they made out of extra or broken pottery.



The roads we were driving on were single carriageway (one lane) with passing places (tiny areas to pull over on) when you meet a car coming from the other direction.

Sometimes the road looked like it should've just been a walking path. Other times the sheep let us know that we were imposing on their land and they have the right of way.


The locals were kind enough to warn us of such a problem

The drive along the coast was breathtaking





We came to a tow truck in the process of removing a caravan(motor home)from being stuck in the middle of the road. Since the driver said it would take at least an hour and there was no way to go around, we figured we should turn around and go back the way we came. Kinda out of the way, but that's how it goes on these roads.

Another day we took a trip north up the east coast to a town called Helmsdale and went to a museum called Timespan. It was insanely windy.


We ate at a popular restaurant in Helmsdale: La Mirage. They had some of the tackiest decorations I've ever seen. Including this lamp that looks like the one in A Christmas Story. But the fish and chips were really tasty!


Another day we took a trip to the Black Isle, which isn't an island but a peninsula located about 30 minutes south of Dornoch. We saw a few funny sights there. (You can't buy Aunt Jemima's pancake syrup in Scotland, but maybe this is where the name came from?)

This has got to be the smallest Post Office in operation

Personally, I prefer to do my bathing indoors.

No trip to Dornoch is complete without a visit to Shin Falls. (Richmonders: For a funny story about the name of this place, find one of the team members from Stony Point who came for the Holiday Bible Club during Easter) In the spring you can see tons of salmon leaping up the falls, but typically not in the winter, but mom spotted one!


So that's it, a sampling of what we did when my mom was visiting. It was awesome having you here mom, thanks for coming!

Back to the Summary of Our Summer

To finish catching you up on our summer travels, here's a bunch of photos from our trip to Marseille, France.

It wasn't a trip we'd planned on taking at all, it totally came out of nowhere. A family who works with the same mission organization as we do were interested in coming to Scotland for their vacation. They wanted to do a vacation home swap, so we figured it was a pretty great opportunity we should take advantage of. I mean seriously, free accommodations, free use of a car, and really cheap flights through Ryan Air; how could we pass that up?!

Providentially, the timing of the trip was pretty perfect. When we agreed to go on this trip, we had no idea how badly we would need a week to totally relax and have nothing at all to do, no schedule, no one to be responsible for, no plans to make.

This trip was great, but lots of work. This part of our trip to America was awesome too, but it was exhausting. Then there was this, which needless to say, totally wrecked us. The school year for the kids in Dornoch began the day after we returned from France, and with it, began all of the events we lead for kids here. So it was fabulous to have that week in Marseille, before we jumped back into our regular work schedule.

We spent a lot of time on the beach. This was our first experience with French beaches

A view overlooking that same beach

It's hard to tell from this angle, but this is at the edge of an intense cliff (how incredible is that water?!)

Didn't I tell you? That's a cliff!

An area of downtown Marseille called Vieux Port (Old Port)

I don't remember the name of this structure, but it's includes a portion of the original wall around Marseille.

Here's James, looking perplexed, on top of the structure looking out on the port.

Here's me, enjoying the gloriousness of wearing flip flops and tank tops (doesn't happen much in Scotland)

This is the Notre-Dame de la Garde. It sits on top of the highest natural point in Marseille. I can attest to that because we walked up some seriously steep city streets to get to it.

We made it to the top and had a rest.

The inside was really impressive

There were tons of really cool streets like this that were super close together and curvy. I loved them. See that guy in the bottom corner with the fresh baguette in his back pack? You really do see tons of people carrying around their recently purchased fresh baguettes like that. It seemed like a very French thing to do.



There were several nights when we sat on the porch of the condo we stayed in and watched some amazing sunsets.


The second beach we went to had streets that reminded me of Miami

It was so windy that day, sitting on the beach meant getting blasted with sand constantly (it was the kind of sand that is actually just little rocks. ouch.) so we found a spot on the other side of the boardwalk in the grass.

It still felt like the beach though, because we were this close to the ocean

The next day we decided we needed some exercise so we took a hike to the base of some calanques (think "cliffs")


This is the view about half way down to the base of these calanques. See that little island rock formation in the middle? We saw people cliff diving off of those while we were sitting on the smaller rock that is directly to the left of the island

Almost at the bottom!

Self taken photos...my fave.

In the top right of the photo is a close-up of the rock-island you saw in other picture

Further to the right there's a little cove where lots of people were swimming

For all you Richmonders, this is Marseille's Pony Pasture.




You'll have to forgive my horrible video skills, I'm not sure why I thought that the camera angle would magically change if I simply moved the camera vertically.

The last beach we visited is in Cassis, a picturesque town. As you can see, the beach in Cassis is not popular at all. Don't look too close, you might see some topless sunbathers. French beach-goers reserve the right to leave their clothing at home. For those of you who don't know us well enough to know, and are wondering what we did, you can be assured, we chose to remain clothed.




More of those curvy, narrow streets I love.



We sat for a while in a courtyard surrounded by these amazing trees

Another one of my favorite kind of photos


The End!