Visitors Day 3

The house is quiet again as Pim & Sandra are headed home today.  We had such a great time with them this weekend.

Yesterday started out slow, we had a nice leisurely breakfast of pannekoeken. Then we headed out to the Sands of Forvie for a hike.  A quick 15 minute drive and we were there.  It is close to where Donald Trump wants to build a new golf course.  

It was a beautiful day, lots of sunshine.  The hike was really enjoyable and the trail was well maintained.  The scenery was spectacular.  There were lots of sea birds to be seen.

We were all tired out by the hike so the rest of the day was filled with relaxing and playing some more Wii.  

Thanks for coming to visit Pim & Sandra!

Visitors - Day 2

Day two with the visitors dawned overcast and rainy.  We tried to compensate for the lack of Scottishness in yesterday's breakfast by providing an enormous amount of sausages, but I'm not sure it worked.

We headed out to towards the Cairngorm mountains, with the idea of making it to Grantown-on-Spey by lunchtime.  The scenery was terrific as we travelled on the north shore of the Dee river.  We stopped several times for pictures - the scenery was magnificent.  We took a little detour to Balmoral to see if we could get a glimpse of Lizzie's house - but there was no admission allowed until April 1.  Close by was the the Royal Lochnagar distillery and they had a tour coming up quickly, so we ducked in for a wee look.  The tour was very interesting, with lots of detail about the whole process.  Unfortunately no photography was allowed.  Tasting, on the other hand, was not only allowed but recommended.  I'm not one for Scotch, but I thoroughly enjoyed their single malt.  You can see from the pictures that I was not alone.

After the tour we pushed on through the mountain passes to Grantown.  It started to snow as we went along the road and at some point we were stopped by a friendly Scotsman who informed us the road to Grantown was blocked due to snow.  It was a little hard to believe because we were sitting in brilliant sunshine, but several miles back the snow had been blowing quite hard.

We headed back into Ballater for lunch, which included all the Scotch staples: potato leek soup, toasties and sticky toffee pudding.  We stopped at an old, pre-historic stone circle for pictures before rolling back to Aberdeen.

We went out to a local restaurant for dinner - haggis croquettes as appetizer made sure that we kept to the all-Scotland all the time theme.  We got back in time to see the highlights of the incredibly appropriate Scotland vs Netherlands soccer match (I shouldn't have to tell you who won).  

Visitors - Day 1

We got to go to Aberdeen Thistle Airport on Thursday evening to pick up our first official out of town visitors - Pim and Sandra from Holland.  It was kind of nice to be going there without having to go through security or worry about missing flights.  Interesting point: Aberdeen airport labels itself as the "most improved airport in the world".  Is that a good thing?  How bad did it used to be?  

We all woke up bright and early on Friday morning.  I had managed to take a day off, so we all sat down together to a nice Dutch breakfast.  Pim said he was slightly disappointed not to get a full Scottish breakfasat (eggs, sausage, blood pudding, tomatoes, beans, etc ..).  This will now become the standard first morning breakfast for all future visitors.  Prepare yourselves.

The weather was quite nice when we left, full sunshine and blue sky.  By the time we got halfway to Dunottar Castle it had started to cloud over into what Sandra called her idea of what Scottish weather should be.  We passed a field with a few of the season's first spring lambs, and a few fields of daffodils, so we kept the spring mood.  

Dunottar was gorgeous as usual.  We were unsuccessful again with finding any puffins, but I think everyone enjoyed the ruins.  We even found a couple of rooms that we hadn't seen last time.

The 187 stairs back from the castle to the car park had everyone a little winded and tired, except Casey, so we drove down the road to Stonehaven for lunch.  We had a good hearty meal of fish and chips, washed down with a deep fired Mars bar.  

We did a driving tour of Aberdeen to show off the rest of the sights - it had started to rain, so walking was out.  We went through the harbour, where a CGGV seismic boat was in town, drove by the beach (Pim was declared stone skipping champion) and old Aberdeen.  I think the city acquitted itself quite well.

We spent the afternoon Wii'ing with various levels of success - bowling, billiards and shooting rabbids.  After dinner - BBQ'd steak and asparagus, with Fiona's spectacular apple-rhubarb crumble for dessert - we found ourselves just enough energy to put in a Blu-Ray and watch Batman beat up the Joker for a couple of hours.

We woke up to a little snow this morning.  We're hoping it clears a little, because we're going into the mountains.

Men in Skirts...

Here are a couple of pictures of my handsome husband in his brand new kilt.

Doesn't he look great?

Anniversary

On this day, 9 years ago, Fiona first walked into my apartment, sat down next to me, beat me at a video game and stole my heart.  Like that video game, our time together has seen some exciting twists and turns, a few head on collisions and been a cracking good time.

I won't bore everyone with the details of the "how we met" story, as it surely has made the rounds everywhere.  I also won't get all cheesey, with long soliloquys about the great love of my life.  I'm just glad I chose to go to her friend's birthday, that I wore a clean shirt (as advised) and that I bought her that first drink.

Tomorrow: kilt pictures!

Week in Review

Seeing as we haven't posted since Sunday, I thought I'd take a quick look back at the week that was.

Sunday evening we got confirmation of our first out of town visitors.  Although several fought for the honor, the distinction will go to Pim and Sandra, who will be in town the weekend of March 28th.  We're really looking forward to seeing them again and getting a chance to show off Aberdeen and surroundings.

Tuesday evening we went down the street to His Majesty's Theatre to see a traveling Russian production of Swan Lake.  Fiona had given me the tickets for Christmas and I was really looking forward to it.  The venue, as always, was great, especially from the floor seats we had, although the heat appeared to be on full blast.  The overall production was average, but was highlighted by an amazing performance by the prima ballerina.  We both agreed it was the best we had ever seen.  We had never seen Swan Lake before so we had fun trying to interpret the story.  Comedic relief was provided by a small child three rows back who kept asking (loudly) at every break point before intermission if it was time for ice cream.  The tradition at His Majesty's Theatre is to serve small cups of ice cream during the intermission of plays, ballets and operas.  Seems kind of strange to me, but it grows on you.

It's been a bit of a rough week at work, so we haven't been out and about in the evenings too much.   We've been pulled into this new show (at least it is new to us) called 'Who do you think you are'.  It follows minor British celebrities as they trace their family tree.  Most people find these wonderful and totally unexpected characters in their ancestry.  It's given Fiona the geneaology bug.  She is preparing to do some digging to see what pops up.  With the ancestors being Irish-Welsh, we're now well positioned to go to the relevant places should we need to look up records, etc ...  I've seen the results of an equivalent process done on my Dad's side of the family by a distant relation.  She had managed to track them back several hundred years.  She published a book with the results that is really fascinating.

One of the downsides of expat living is the transience of the people in your lives.  For me it is always been easier to meet people because I could make friends through work.  After each move, Fiona has always had to go out and make new friends, always with good success.  But the business moves people around and she's had to deal with good friends moving away.  We have a feeling that the world economy will be moving more of our friends this year.  Fiona finds that hobbies help her meet new people and keep busy, so she's adding another one to the list of knitting, photography and languages.  She's taken up painting.  Several months back she completed her first painting at a course with friends.  She has since bought some equipment and started painting on her own.  Her second piece was completed last week - photo attached.  I think she has a talent for it.

It's Casey's birthday today.  She'll be five.  She's already working on the sleeping in part, but I think we'll take her for an extra long walk today and throw in a pig's ear to make the day special.  She's working her usual charm offensive on the friends and neighbors here in Aberdeen - making friends has never been a problem for her.

We found ourselves looking at a house across the street that's for sale.  We even went to a bank site and looked at mortgage rates.  A little silly to be doing that in this economy and with my work situation being what it is, but we really like Aberdeen and could live with a long term posting here quite happily.  I guess we've said that before, raving about both Calgary and Houston, so maybe we're just easy to please.

No big plans for this weekend.  I think we'll try and find another nearby hike on Sunday - maybe even stick to the assigned trail this time.  I also might try and watch some of the Six Nations Rugby on Sunday (Ireland vs Scotland).  I still haven't figured out the intricacies of that game, although I think I've caught on to the whole cricket thing....

Lost in the Highlands

After a great dinner party last night - steaks on the new BBQ, back-alley bridge with Vicki and Bob - we decided to work off some of the calories traipsing around the highlands in and around Aberdeen.  We carefully chose our walk from a good guidebook we found in a local bookstore.  We prepared a little lunch, brought along some water, dressed in layers and headed out, Casey in tow.

The walk started with about a kilometer straight up a hill.  The gorse bushes were starting to bloom with little yellow flowers that made parts of the walk quite pretty.  When we got to the top we had a great panoramic view of Aberdeen and surroundings.  On one side we could see the city, with the North Sea in the background.  A little further up the coast was the airport.  180 degrees was a beautiful farmland vista of rolling hills, covered in heather.  We vowed to come back once the heather was in bloom.

Although we thought we had picked a nice day to do this particular hike, once we got to the top of the hill there was no protection from the wind.  It was quite fierce, at one point it was difficult to keep our footing.  So we started down the other side of the hill - perhaps we should have taken an extra look at the guide book before proceeding?  An hour later we were still wandering around the hill, the trail becoming less distinct and our patience running short.  We eventually agreed to retrace our steps to a parking lot we had mis-identified as being right around the corner from where we parked our car.  45 minutes later we stumbled upon our car.  I think Casey was about to give up on us.  She did have a few highlights herself, including bounding through the heather and meeting her first sheep up close.  The sheep were not impressed.

So now we're dead tired and finding a long blog posting harder to accomplish.  We'll leave you with some pictures.

For those who have been asking, it looks like our next trip will be to the Isle of Skye for the Easter weekend.  We just need to finalize the details early this week.  We're quite excited to be traveling again...  

Who Watches the Watchmen? We did ...

As is my wont with movies that I really look forward to, I took the afternoon off yesterday to drag Fiona to the premiere of the Watchmen movie.  Reviews are fantastically mixed.  I loved it.  Fiona was giving a depressed sigh every 20 minutes.  That's a lot of sighing in a 2 hour 45 minute movie.  I did read the comics, which I think will increase your appreciation of the film, but I think it can be enjoyed without reading it too.  It was long, be prepared for that.  And, in highly concentrated outbursts, extremely violent.  Visually, though, both of us agreed that it was stunning.

So I guess I owe Fiona a few romantic comedies.  I tried to buy my way out of the debt with surf and turf after the movie, but I don't think it worked.

Flower power

Well it has been a nice quiet weekend here. Yesterday morning we moseyed down to the monthly farmers market in the city center with Casey. It was Casey's first time walking around the city. She did really well, and received so much attention from people passing by, a great walk by her standards.

We bought some goodies at the market and headed home. On our way to do some more errands we passed the park not too far from house and saw carpets of beautiful purple and white flowers. So today we decided to take a walk and take a closer look. They turned out to be these gorgeous crocuses.

We have been thinking that it is spring but according to locals it isn't here until we see the daffodils. Hopefully soon!