THE Castle

also known as Edinburgh Castle. We visited it today. We froze to death. We ate a delicious burger, drank a delightful coffee (well, i didn't, but Dan did), and came home to a wee chippy.


We woke up at 9am this morning (after having gone to bed around 2am), pulled ourselves together and headed over to the train station. 50 minutes later, we arrived on platform 12 in Edinburgh and headed off to see the castle.


It seems however, that we picked a somewhat terrible day for an adventure. It was cold.....and windy......and cold. After Mark and Dan waited in line for 20 minutes to get our tickets, we took off to see what the castle had in store. Frankly, it was a bit of a disappointment. Perhaps this was because our feet were blocks of ice, or perhaps it's because it was SO BUSY that you couldn't really see anything, but it wasn't that great.


Having said that, it's still a castle. And it's old. And it's cool. And it houses the Scottish Crown Jewels.

Below are some pictures.

See, it's cold. Even Dan's cold.

Dave, this one's for you.

This is Jack. And it's cold. And windy.

After we toured the castle, we went and grabbed a hot bevvy at Costa.

That's Mark. He's artistic.

Then we walked around, took the train home, ate a most delighful fish supper and now we are about to make jello shooters for Hogmanay.

Wishing everyone a Happy New Year!!! Looks like the next post will be the first of 2010.
woohoo!!!

oh yeah...here are some more random photos of today's adventures!

Yeeeaaaahhhhhhhhh cannons.

oooooooooooooooo dungeons.

Scottish word of the day

So the cousins are teaching us how to speak 'properly' and in doing so, we are learning many new words and phrases....thus, we are starting a word/phrase of the day post. In an effort to make up for lost time, here are some words/phrases we are working on perfecting:

pished - pissed aka drunk aka what i was last night
canny whack it - you can't beat it or you can't get better than
baltic - frozen
baw bag - ball bag aka scrotum
joggy bottoms - sweats
shattered - tired
gutted - upset
greetin - crying
squiggly - tipsy

Our accents are coming along nicely and today was the first day we actually felt cold - to the bone - like everyone was telling us we would. It was not pleasant. In fact, it sucked donkey balls. (that was a little shout-out to the swoop aka cousin Mark).

Here are some random photos of the last few days.




This is Mark, me and James at Vodka Wodka....previously the Grosvenor Cafe where my mom and dad would hang out back in the day when they were at university.

This is Dan, Moira, Mark, James and me outside in Ashton Lane in the West End of Glasgow.

Next post.......Edinburgh Castle.

Whisky without the 'e'

This afternoon we went and visited a whisky distillery - Glengoyne to be exact. It was quite fascinating actually. The guy who ran the tour was very smart and knew his stuff. They weren't in production, but we did get to sample both a 10 year and 17 year whisky. Both were delicious, but the difference between the two was quite something. The 17 year whisky was thick and warmed you from the inside out.

No pictures to share because you can't take any when you are on the tour, so nothing to share that way.

This post is a boring one. This is probably because i'm not funny and i'm not good at telling stories.

So, i'm going to go and drink my wine, of which there is plenty! It's also SO cheap here, like half price cheap - love it!!

Downtown Glasgow and a good curry dinner tomorrow.......awesome.

ciao,
aileen & dan

We are in Glasgow!!

We have arrived safe and sound in the lovely city of Glasgow....and we were only 20 minutes delayed! Heathrow is like a little city. It took us 7 minutes to get from the departure terminal to the terminal we needed to connect to by BUS! We struggled to keep our eyes open in London and eventually gave in and had a nap on a bench near the gate.

Flights were good. The people have been very nice so far, and we didn't lose our luggage.

There is a ton of snow on the ground here and people drive on the other side of the road which is scary when you think people are about to hit you head on.

We kept ourselves up until 1030 last night and slept until 1230. We are off to see my mom's side of the family today. I'll update with pictures when i can.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas!!!

talk soon,
aileen & dan

p.s. sorry for the terrible update......my head isn't quite in the game yet.

The Countdown.....

So we leave on Friday. We still have a lot to do, including pack our bags and have Christmas celebrations at both the Lozie house and Boyle house.

Fingers crossed that the weather cooperates and our flights are on schedule and we aren't delayed getting into Glasgow. Apparently it's snowing in the UK and apparently that means the country goes into disarray.

People are asking what we are most excited for. It's a hard question to answer, mostly because I'm overwhelmed at the idea of being half way across the world in a place that is so different from what I'm used to. Right now though, I'm just excited to be going. I know, a cop out answer, but it's all I've got right now!

In an attempt to make sure I know how to upload photos, I took a picture off the Cape Town Tourism website. It's a very, very pretty city.


Looks like it worked! yay!

Also, we are going to be leaving this sweet face for 5 whole weeks. She's off to the Lozie ranch where she can play with Jaxen and watch horses.

Well, that's all for now. I'll update again when we arrive in Glasgow on Saturday.

Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas!

aileen & dan

The Journey Begins....

On Christmas Day, Dan and I will be taking off on what we consider to be the adventure of a lifetime! We will be visiting London, Glasgow, Amsterdam, Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Lyndberg.

The first leg of our trip will be spent in Glasgow, Scotland visiting my extended family. Dan hasn't met all of them yet and we've been saying for years that we were going to get out there to say hello, so we've finally buckled down and are doing it. We will be spending New Years there and are looking forward to ringing in the New Year in a different country!

From Scotland, we make our way to South Africa. The bulk of our trip will be spent at the Enkosini Wildlife Sanctuary, located about 4 hours east of Johannesburg in South Africa. We will be volunteering here for 3 weeks and have no idea what we will be actually be doing while we are there. From what we understand, we will just be doing whatever is required of us while we are there. We are looking forward to seeing what it has in store for us!

While we are there, we will be doing a 2 night/3 day safari in Kruger National Park. Again, not too sure what to expect aside from lots of big animals!

Our last week will be spent in Cape Town. The only real plan that we've made for this leg of the journey is a date with Great White Sharks. I'm not too sure what to expect (seems to be a theme in this post!) so again, we'll post when we can (hopefully with pictures!)

Keep checking back as I hope to be able to update the blog on as regular a basis as I can.

19 days and counting.......

Aileen & Dan