Tag Archives: Glasgow

Scotland 2014

We had a great, albeit, quick visit to Scotland. We flew into Glasgow from Iceland, drove up to the Isle of Skye, ran over to Aviemore, and our last city was Edinburgh. Surprisingly, we had quite a few sunny days! We really enjoyed the scenery, the people, and, especially, the cask ales. Jacquelyn was able to find a cask cider that was out-of-this-world delicious in Aviemore.

We were able to see the highland games outside of Glasgow in a very small city of Dunoon. Very, very, cool experience. We showed up to the Isle of Skye on a sunny day and had beautiful scenery. The single lane roads were tough to navigate at first but I was finally able to handle the narrow roads and driving on the wrong side :).

Here’s some things we learned:

  • Driving on the wrong side of the road is super tough, at first. Pulling out of Glasgow airport to drive to our first destination near downtown was an absolutely terrifying experience. The shifter is in the middle of the car and I have no coordination with  my left hand!
  • Scotland is a few weeks from a vote on independence. It’s pretty cool to see the various political banners throughout the cities and countryside. It appears as though farmers are not big fans of independence. Maybe a subsidy related thing? I’m not sure.
  • Scotland has a hog-pogg of measuring systems. Speeds and distances are in imperial (miles, mph) and volumes are in metric. Weird.
  • Scottish sausage (think breakfast sausage) is terrible. I worked in a meat processing facility while in college and it tastes like like how the meat processing area smelled. Terrible. Just terrible.
  • We had mind-blowingly awesome fish and chips. Just out of this world delicious.
  • Driving on the wrong side of the road is already bad enough. Driving on the Isle of Skye where the two lanes (my lane & opposing traffic) drop to a single lane for both directions is insane. Buses, trucks, cars and sheep all share the narrow road.
  • Cask ales are the best. It makes me re-thing what I’m doing with my life and makes me want to drink only cask ales. It’s too bad cask ales are not common in the US.
  • The faucets are ridiculous. I guess the technology of combined hot / cold faucets hasn’t arrived to Scotland yet. Everyday we looked forward to either scolding hot or freezing cold water. No in-between.
  • We had very good weather in Scotland. I guess that’s not common.
  • Much like Iceland, gas is expensive at about $10/gal

 

Enjoy the photos!

Chris W.