A Seaplane Ride, a Castle, a Palace and a Short Flight

After getting back from Giant’s Causeway on Tuesday evening last week, we crashed and went to bed after eating a late dinner. Wednesday, we ran some errands, Heather did a little bit more shopping and we all went over and had lunch at St. Stephen’s Green. We then headed over to look at The Book of Kell’s at Trinity College in downtown Dublin. The Book of Kell’s is one of original manuscript copies of the Four Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They only show two of the books at any one time, and show a couple of other manuscripts of similar antiquity in the same cabinet. There were many people in the room at the same time and so the view was limited. We waited our turn and saw the Book of Kell’s and then headed up the stairs to find ourselves in another library. Among the other books in this upper library are one of the oldest and largest collections of bound books anywhere in the world.
Imagine for a moment, walking into a long darkish room the length of a football field. There are dark shelves on either side of you. You look up to the 30 foot ceiling to see that the room has a second story on either side also containing similar shelves. On the shelves are thousands and thousands of dark red, pale green and gray leather-bound books. There are sliding ladders, spiral staircases, and as many old books as you can imagine. We weren’t allowed to touch anything of course, or really even get close enough to look at any of the titles. The college employs a full-time book restorer and several students to work at keeping these many books maintained and when necessary, repaired. We saw a few of these people actually repairing several of the books. It was an interesting and most delicate process.
After we were finished there, we headed home and Heather collected and packed the rest of her belongings, getting ready to head to the airport. We walked down to the corner to catch a cab, and for the first time since I arrived, we were unable to just hail a cab. Twenty minutes later, Amy and her parents had walked down to where we were, as the four of us were going to go out for dinner that evening. So, we all headed down the street carrying Heather’s luggage. We’d walked 10 or 12 blocks when we finally found her a cab. She apparently made her flight with no problems as she didn’t come back to stay another night, and I have since received an email from her. Thursday during the day, we didn’t do jack-squat. Amy’s parents were recuperating from the previous several days adventures. I took this time to do laundry, read, check emails, pack, and watch Everybody Loves Raymond. That evening after Amy got out of work, we headed to the airport with her parents for our weekend in Scotland. We had a great weekend. We had heard that the accent was much stronger and difficult to understand, but Bob confirmed it 5 minutes after we got of the plane. We were at the car rental stand and we pretty much had to translate for him to understand what the attendant was saying. It was funny. We got our car situation figured out and packed our things and hit the road.
We drove for about 2 hours from the airport to a place called Lake Lomond, about an hour north of Glasgow. We stayed in a really cool lodge hotel on the edge of the lake close to a very small town. The food was good and the rooms were very nice. Amy misunderstood the price quote and it was more than what we had planned but I guess it was worth it. The English Pound, as some of you may be aware is much stronger than the American Dollar, so anything we spent in Scotland (because it is considered economically and politically to be part of England, and also uses their pound) we had to multiply times about 1.75 to determine what we were actually spending. We stayed at the lodge Thursday and Friday nights. Friday, we drove around the countryside, went through a garden walk. This wasn’t any garden walk you would do in the US. It was more like a hike through someone’s enormous back yard. It was about a mile long path through a thickly growing collection of hundreds of different types of trees, shrubs, flowers, mosses, and bushes. It was overgrown in spots and the path was almost indeterminable in others. There were benches and pools, waterfountains and old buildings that had been there for a long time untended and the plants were apparently taking back the land. It was actually really cool because of this though. It felt very natural (no pun intended), and not so manicured and perfect as many botanical gardens are. When were done, we drove around for awhile through some of the other small towns and headed back to the hotel and used the pool, hot tub, and steam room. That evening, the four of us went for a chartered sea-plane ride. Our private tour lasted about 60 minutes. We flew at between 1500 and 4000 feet over the many small towns, castles, and the multitude of other lakes in the area. Our pilot was really cool, and flies 747's from Glasgow to Hong Kong full-time, and does the seaplane thing in his spare time. He actually owns the company and knew a great deal about the surrounding areas. We all had our own headphones and could ask questions and point out things to each other. We got some really cool pictures, as you will see.
Then Saturday, we headed over to Edinburgh. We got there around 1pm or so, checked into our Bed and Breakfast (B&B) and spent the remainder of the day bussing/walking around the city. We saw Edinburgh castle, The Holyrood Palace where the Queen of England stays when she comes to Scotland (AMAZING), and a few other small attractions. We had dinner at a little store on a corridor of pubs, stores, and restaurants, and churches called The Royal Mile. This street stretches from the Edinburgh Castle down to the Palace, hence its name. We then went home and rested for awhile. Then at around 9pm we headed back into town to hit the pubs. By the time we found a suitably quiet pub for us to be able to hear ourselves talk, it was after 11 and after one round, we all headed back to the B&B. Sunday we got up and bussed out to the Royal Brittania, which was the British Royal Yacht up until 1997. It was huge and the tour was fairly cool. If you took all the time they suggested it would have been a two hour tour of a boat, but Amy and I sped through it, leaving Bob and Kay to finish at their own pace and went to the attached mall and shopped around. They really know how to hook you in. They put this attraction, which is likely one of Scotland’s most visited tourist stops in the third floor of a shopping mall. That way, either upon entry or exit, you have to walk through the mall and will likely get sucked into spending some more Pounds in their stores. It was okay, though. We mostly resisted the temptations.
When we found each other after the tour, we all went back into downtown Edinburgh. We went through an old (1500's) cathedral, called Gile’s Cathedral which is over on the Royal Mile. It was not as ornately decorated as some of the other cathedrals we’ve seen, but was obviously very old. We then went to the Scotland Historical Museum. Amy and I made it through the first couple of floors, but we quickly lost interest and decided to do something else. Bob and Kay stayed there and finished the museum, to later meet us back at the B&B where we’d parked the rental car. Amy and I instead went back over to see another cathedral we had heard about. The cathedral was nice and different from the other we’d seen that afternoon. It wasn’t overly decorated either, but was elegant and pretty. They had recently had all the stained glass repaired and cleaned. In order to do it correctly, (because it is a historical monument, the government paid the bill) the windows had to be removed, were taken elsewhere for treatment, and then returned. It cost about 20,000 Pound per window, and the total ran somewhere close to 500,000 Pound, or just shy of a MILLION dollars. When we arrived, there were other people around. After looking around a bit, we were the only people left inside and the hostess there was apparently starved for conversation. After about another 25 minutes of torturous stories about everything from the lady’s helicopter-flying uncle to the way that people need to be more conscious about the way they deliver goods to poor countries, we finally made our way back out into the streets of Edinburgh.
We then went through another shopping area and looked for a skirt for Amy, but never found one. HOWEVER, I found a really cool sport coat for 4 pounds (7 dollars....a-frickin-mazing!!!!) and a pair of cool slacks for 12 pounds(20 dollars). We then headed back to meet Bob and Kay where we'd parked the rental car and drove back to Glasgow on the way to the airport and stopped for dinner. We had a good dinner in an interesting restaurant buried in the depths of a fairly unmarked building. It took us a LONG time to find a restaurant that was open at 7pm on a Sunday night in the downtown area. We headed for the airport for our 10:45pm departure and took our 28 minute flight home. Yes, 28 minutes. It is so cool. You get into your seat, buckle up, the flight attendants go through their mandatory (RIDICULOUS) safety demonstration (If you don’t know how to use a seatbelt yet, you shouldn’t be allowed out in public. To quote Jerry Seinfeld, "Oh!!! You pull UP on the handle? I thought I would just try to BREAK the metal apart".), get up in the air, reach cruising altitude and then begin to descend into Dublin. It was great. The Shortest flight ever. We got back to our apartment here in Dublin at around midnight Sunday, July 24th, and went straight to bed. We aren’t doing much today. Amy is, of course, at work until 5 or 6. We will go out to dinner, letting Bob and Kay finish packing, and have a pretty early night. They leave tomorrow at around noon to head back to Dallas. Amy and I leave for London Friday night. We will be there until the following Monday evening. It should be a great time. Until next week…