With our latest visitors having completed what turned out to be a tortuous return trip home, we bucked down and started trying to tick off some of the major items on "to do" list.
1. Find a new place to live.
We have been to see a few properties. Some good, some bad. Our leading candidate was a detached house just a few blocks from where we are now, but someone (actually the latest addition to my staff at work) managed to grab that before we had a chance to view it. We're trying to stick to our list of musts - a garden, a master ensuite, parking, etc ... but it is hard. Fiona's leg work has us leaning towards a rather large place (5 bedroom) in the West End. It's way too much house for us - we'd probably never go up to the third floor - but it has a brand new kitchen, which is a perk that you seldom see. We need to wrap up this whole process sometime soon - we're aiming for the end of next week.
2. Driver's licenses
We're allowed to use our American licenses for one year here in the UK before having to switch over. As time seems to have raced by, we're fast approaching the deadline. We are a little luckier than your average couple coming from the US in that anyone who passed a driver's test in Canada can simply trade their license for a UK one. No trades with the American license. The problem is that we traded our Canadian licenses for American ones when we lived in Houston. My mother had to run around the registry agents in Edmonton to cobble together some suitable documentation - thanks again Mom, you're a lifesaver. With that taken care of the only other problem was finding someone who had known us in the UK for at least two years to sign our photos - which, if you really think about it, is a difficult problem to solve. We decided to drive to Glasgow which has one of the few registration offices that will do an identity check and not require you to give up your passport for 6 weeks.
We left early Friday morning and drove through the heart of Scotland. We passed some beautiful scenery - Stirling Castle sitting above Perth, a golf tournament at Gleneagles being filmed for TV, the Erskine Bridge crossing the Firth of Clyde and a most impressive cloudbank sitting just off shore. Glasgow itself did not make a good first impression. Road works coming into the city for miles, old factories and historic buidlings sullied with soot. Once into town, though, our impressions changed quite a bit. There is an abundance of fantastic architecture and it looks like there is plenty of good shopping as well.
We headed straight for the registry where we were ushered through by one of the UK's top bureaucrats. The whole system was quite efficient and impressive. In three weeks we should be able to cross this worry completely off our list ... and replace it with the fact that we now have to trade in our Renault for a car with automatic transmission. Oh well, one thing at a time.
Before moving on from Glasgow we found a nice place for lunch. I don't know if this is a chain or just a local place, but if you ever see one we highly recommend it. The name may have had something to do with it. I only have good things to say about Fifi's ....
3. Relax
Fiona had been thoughtful enough to book us a little holiday that took advantage of a drive we had to take anyway. The Trossachs are a series of large interconnected lochs near Glasgow that are part of a National Park. This has been described by many as the most scenic part of Scotland, which, if you have been following the blog, is saying quite a bit. The lochs are ringed with mountains, hills and forests of oak that go a long way towards fulfilling the promise. We're at a hotel on Loch Lomond, the largest of the lochs. Cameron House is our kind of place, where all the details are taken care of, including heaters behind the mirrors in the bathroom so they don't fog up, high speed internet, a nine hole golf course and a fantastic view. We did some wandering and driving around the area and found some nice shots for the blog. We didn't get all the way around Rob Roy's cave, it's on the other side of the loch and a quite a hike from the nearest road. We did find and follow a cute little shrew around one of our stops - he seemed so intent on going somewhere - but with no discernible plan. I think we'll take a page out of his playbook and just go with whatever moves us this weekend - some golf, some napping and enjoying the fine Scottish scenery.
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