Skip to main content

Scotland Day 1

I just returned from a whirlwind trip to Scotland and am still trying to get back into things here in Montreal.  A few days before we left on our trip, we acquired some house guests (a young family who is immigrating from Venezuela to Montreal and staying with us until they find their own place) and they were kind enough to take care of Jazz and our condo while we were away.  It is always a joy to help people out who are new to Montreal, but is also means that my writing/thinking/studying time is usually cut back.  So this is the first time in a few weeks that I have had some time to write here.

So...Scotland.  Where do I start?  There were so many wonderful experiences and quite a few complications, which is normal in any trip that is as involved as ours was.  We drove to Toronto, flew from there into Glasgow, drove through Loch Lomond Park, visited the Isle of Mull, the Isle of Iona, Stirling, Doune, St. Andrews, Arbroath, Ethie, Inverkeilor, Lunan Bay, and Edinburgh.  We stayed at 6 different hotels/bed and breakfasts, drove over 650 miles, took 4 ferries, 3 buses, 3 taxi rides, and walked and climbed and walked and climbed and walked.  No wonder I'm still a bit tired!

It is hard to pick just one highlight, so perhaps I will briefly outline each day of our trip in the next few blogs.  Writing about my experiences is probably more about helping me process and think about what happened than about offering an enjoyable travelogue, but hopefully both purposes can co-exist.

DAY ONE:

After stopping for chocolate croissants at a local patisserie on Saturday around noon, Dean and I drove to Toronto to catch our flight to Glasgow.  We decided to fly out of Toronto instead of Montreal because it saved us over $600 between the two of us.  The times of our initial booking also meant that we would not have to drive late into the night or early in the morning when commuting from Montreal.  However, once we arrived at the Toronto airport, we were informed that the flight was delayed by 3.5 hours.  This wasn't a major glitch, but it did mean that we would be quite tired when we arrived in Glasgow.  Nevertheless, we decided to make the best of it and have a romantic dinner in the airport (which is totally possible, in case you are wondering).  At 1:25 am on Sunday, our flight finally took off from Toronto.  I promptly fell asleep and missed the complimentary champagne they served once we hit cruising altitude.  After a night of dozing off and on, we landed in sunny Glasgow at around 1:30 in the afternoon.  Yay!  The next challenge was picking up our rental car and getting right onto the busy M8 (Dean had never driven on the left side of the road or shifted with his left hand before).

Stay tuned...

the photo:  some of the scenery on the way to Toronto.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Names of God

The Hebrew word "YHWH" (read from right to left) This past Sunday I gave a talk on the Names of God, the beginning of a series on this topic. This first talk was to be a gentle introduction so I thought it wouldn't take too many hours of preparation. Well, I quickly discovered that the research is almost bottomless; every time I thought I had a somewhat definitive list of names, I found another source which added a few more or gave a different twist on some of the names I had already come across. After several hours I was getting overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data (and that was only looking at the Hebrew Bible). I wondered how I could present this to people in an orderly and accessible fashion and within a reasonable time frame. Not everyone is up for a 3-hour lecture crammed full of detail on a Sunday morning. So I took a break and spent a bit of time meditating on this problem and asking the Spirit for guidance. And then I thought that being overwhelmed by Go

comedic timing

Comic by Joel Micah Harris at xkcd.com One of my favourite jokes goes like this: Knock, knock. Who's there? Interrupting cow Interrupting cow w--- Moooooooo!! Timing is important in both drama and comedy. A well-paced story draws the audience in and helps it invest in the characters, while a tale too hastily told or too long drawn out will fail to engage anyone. Surprise - something which interrupts the expected - is a creative use of timing and integral to any good story. If someone is reading a novel and everything unfolds in a predictable manner, they will probably wonder why they bothered reading the book. And so it is in life. Having life be predictable all of the time is not as calming as it sounds. We love surprises, especially good surprises like birthday parties, gifts, marriage proposals, and finding something that we thought was lost. Surprises are an important part of humour. A good joke is funny because it goes to a place you didn't expect it to go. Sim

soul refrigerator

I went grocery shopping yesterday and came home with three bags of food. After I unpacked them all, this is what my fridge looked like: really empty. How does that happen? How can I feel so full and ready for any food emergency one moment, and after one quick glance, realise that I have nothing, really? Today is one of those days in my soul as well. I woke up with gratitude and fullness in my heart, ready to take on this day and all the wonderful opportunities that it presented. Then I caught a brief glance of some emptiness in my life and bam - my buoyancy was compromised. For the past few hours I have been treading water, trying to keep my head in a positive space, bobbing in and out of disappointment, and catching myself whining with pathetic indignity at the cement blocks of other people's stupidity that are tangled around my ankles. When I am staring at the empty refrigerator of my soul, these are my thoughts. Where do I go from here? Perhaps I should slam that refrigerator