I'm back!

Had a GREAT time.

Got in late yesterday afternoon, spent much time greeting kitties, unpacked, crashed. Got up at 4:30 or so and laboriously deleted twenty-two and a half meg of spam. Started laundry. Went out and ran a mile. Now I'm back to my regularly scheduled programming!

Wondering whether to post full journal from each day or just highlights. Input welcome.

Must be time for breakfast: now nearly 5PM where I came from. :)

Kleiner Eisbär

An adorable German children's book line is the stories of Lars, the Little Polar Bear. I am now working my way through "Kleiner Eisbär, wohin fährst du?" In this story the Little Polar Bear goes with his father to the edge of the sea. Dad catches a fish for dinner and the two make snow-hummocks to sleep behind to protect them from the wind. When Lars awakens he is on an iceberg surrounded by sea, and he has several interesting adventures as he finds a way home again.

My vocabulary is not quite up to this job. I can order food, deal with money, understand directions, and complain about the weather, but I have to look up words like "iceberg" or even "discovered". :)

Trip Highlights

Haven't got around to slurping the trip-journal off Rob's laptop yet, so here are some snippets and tidbits from memory.

It is not standard practice for hotels or B&Bs to provide soap and shampoo. Heh. Oops.

There are friendly cats everywhere: Barmstedt, the Scottish Highlands, a run-down Glasgow suburb, everywhere.

Driving on the left side of the road isn't so bad. Driving a car obviously engineered for the driver to sit in the left seat, and poorly reworked to have the driver on the right side, is bad.

I had pizza exactly once on this trip, and it had haggis on it. For the record, haggis is delicious.

The UK has blackcurrant Starburst candies. In general I like our flavors better - ours are more tart - but I'd gladly get rid of our horrid cherry to get their yummy blackcurrant.

The best shortbread in the entire universe is hand-made by the people at the Artists' Gallery, Easdale, island of Seil, by Oban. Best in the uuuuuuniverse. Walker's is a pale imitation.

I am apparently descended from the MacDonald clan. I did not find my tartan. MacDonald has splintered into too many septs each with their OWN PLAID. Grr.

Rob and I calculated that there are two point five trillion midges in the Highlands.