Connecting with my Family Roots

If you are just starting to read this, scroll down two entries and make sure you read them in order. The first blog for this trip is "And There's No Place Like London" and then "On the Streets of Dublin" and then this one. Or I mean, you can read them out of order and it probably won't make any differnce, but I myself would want to read about someone's travels in sequential order.

Blake and I arrived in Edinburgh from Dublin around 8:40. We got off the plane, got our bag and went to go through customs. Or at least we thought we were going to go through customs. We got there, went to the door for people with nothing to declare, turned the corner and saw absolutely no one. Usually there is someone at a booth to stamp your passport or at least someone standing there watching you walk by. No. There was not a single soul around. Basically I could have smuggled anything into that country and they would not have noticed...

We found a bus that took us close to our hostel and got there around 9:40. It was a pretty nice place that was really cheap. We settled in, and then I was feeling dehydrated so we were gonna go find somewhere to get a bottle of water and walk around a little. As we were leaving our room, the door SLAMMED shut, and my middle finger got caught in it. I looked down and I was bleeding. I went to the bathroom to wash it off, and I felt like I was going to pass out. I think it was a combination of seeing the blood and not having a lot to drink that day. I ran back to our room and layed down for about 20 minutes until I felt better while Blake got me a glass of tap water. By that point, we were so tired, that we just decided to sit around and talk.


They really do play the bagpipes in kilts (Or at least they make American tourists think they do...)

The next morning we woke up and decided to find the Edinburgh Castle. However on the way there we got distracted by the Scotch Whiskey experience. If we went before noon, we could get a special discount, so we decided to do that before the castle. This of course was even cornier than the Guiness Storehouse and even more like Chocolate World at Hershey Park. Like Chocolate World, this tour had a really horrible ride that you went on that explained the history of Scotch starting in the 1300s. Before the tour started, they gave you a free shot in a specially designed whisky glass. Unlike in America, they explained how to fully explain how to enjoy scotch (The smell, the color, etc).

The Edinburgh castle was only about a minute down the road, and it was absolutely gorgeous. It was on a hill that overlooked the entire city.


Edinburgh Castle






Do you SEE how nice the weather was?!


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Connecting with my childhood roots













We saw these signs and at first thought nothing of them until...


Castle Well?? Huh? You would have to walk really far to get from Edinburgh Castle to Castel Well...
(The sign was for the water well of the castle but shhh. It's more fun to think they meant Kasteel Well)

We found out why Edinburgh Castle was such a safe fortress...

...They have ADT


Stunning



After a few hours wandering around the castle, we walked around the city for a little bit. There are gift shops EVERYWHERE and they all have little nic nacs with family heritage stuff on them. The best part was every single place had things for Sinclair


Our family Coat of Arms


Our family crest

We had some lunch and then headed over toward the Scotish Parliment. It is in this awkward modern looking building that I personally did not like, but apparently it has won a lot of awards for the architecture.


Blake sitting in Parliment



Again. Look at how beautiful everything is.

On Saturday morning, we woke up, showered and checked out. The day before, we saw this mountains near Parliment that looked like they would be fun to climb. We headed over there, and it was one of the most beautiful sites I have ever seen. It was honestly like a movie set.













Since I didn't get to spin around in the alps in Austria...

I took the next best thing.




I really have no words to describe any of that, so I am just going to let the pictures do all the talking.


We saw this sign, and were a little confused...


Ah yes...this explained it now.



While at the top of the mountain, we could see the sea, so we decided to try and find out where that was.




We kept saying that we wished we had a car so we could drive around and see the country side and all the cliffs, but he had to settle for that.


This made me laugh

On the walk back from the sea, we found this weird playground with a strange jungle gym type thing...


And of course we played on it...







TK Maxx??




Around 3:30 we got on a bus to take us to Glasgow which took about an hour. When we got there we realized we were staying in one of the strangest places ever. It was a cross between a hostel and a hotel and an apartment and a pod. I can't really explain it, but we recorded a video tour of our room so everyone back home can see it. Once I edit it together, I will put it on youtube and put it on here.

We both were so tired and there was not much to do in Glasgow (It is sort of dirty and modern looking) so we just went to bed really early. The next morning we woke up at 3 and walked to the bus station at 3:30am.

We got a 4:30 bus to the airport that took a half hour. The bus was on time and we got there a few minutes before 5 and our flight was not until 6:55. Perfect. We had two hours to catch our flight. Wrong. Little did we know there are FOUR airports in Glasgow. Being the cheap/shitty airline that it is, Ryanair only flies out of Glasgow Prestwick airport. When they say GLASGOW Prestwick airport, they lie. It is no where near Glasgow. In fact it is about an hour outside of Glasgow. Its basically like if Newark Airport decided to call themselves Newark NYC Airport.

We started freaking out and we asked someone how to get there, and they said the only way to get there would be to take a cab for 50 euros. We found a cab driver who was INSANELY nice and told us he would take us and only charge us 50 euros. It took a half hour to get there and ended up being 60 euros, but he kept his promise and we only had to pay 50. While in the cab he was talking to us and told us a really funny story/joke. I couldn't understand it completely because his accent was really thick but the essence of it was this. We started off by saying how beautiful Scotland is and how nice everyone has been. He said there was this angel that came down and told the Scottish people "I am going to give you this beautiful setting and the nicest people and anything else that you want." Everyone was so surprised and didn't realize why the angel was being so nice until the angel said "Well look who their neighbors are." I still am not really sure if that meant the Irish or the British, but either way, it was funny.

We got to "Glasgow" Pretwick Airport around 5:30. The optimist in me was saying "Oh no one will be there at 5:30am so we won't have any lines to wait on. Nope. We had to wait about 20 minutes to check in, and another 10 minutes or so to get through security. The lines seemed a lot longer than they actually were, and we luckily made this plane.

We arrived at Düsseldorf around 9:30, got a 15 minute cab ride back to the castle and were in our rooms by 10. Everything worked out in the end, but it was very very stressful and exhausting 10 days. Oh well...I live in a castle.