Scotland #1of2

When we arrived in Glasgow it was Sunday, so we could look around without problems, but whether it was us or the weather or Glasgow, we saw no reason to spend much time. Maybe we didn’t look in the right places, but we didn’t find any part of the city that appealed to us. But it appeared they are trying to clean up some of the area. We stopped to see the Cathedral, and like all Cathedrals, I found it interesting.

We drove to Edinburgh and looked for a campsite. As happened many times in our travels, when we stopped in a gas station to ask for information about the Edinburgh campsite, a customer said, “follow me,” a phrase that is our favorite when directions are perplexing. We found Edinburgh to be a very nice city, but not in the class with some Capitol cities we have seen, but more interesting than several others.

The main street is Princes Street. On one side of the street are the best department stores. On the other side is a park that drops into a deep ravine, then raises steeply up a high hill, crowned by the Edinburgh castle, which overlooks the city.

We toured the Holyrood House, where the Queen spends part of each year. It was refurbished, and is beautifully kept.

Drove on to Perth and shopped a bit, and found some of Mrs. Thornton’s Special Toffee, and still had enough appetite to stop at a little restaurant for some fish and chips. A sweet old gentlemen sat with us, and we had an lively conversation.

In late 1879 an almost new railway bridge across the Firth of Tay, collapsed and 75 people died in the Dundee Rail Disaster. When they proposed to build a bridge over an even wider part of the Firth (body of water), they came up with the most unique bridge design ever. The Firth of Forth Rail Bridge, a cantilever bridge near Edinburgh, opened in 1890. It is one of the strongest, one of the strangest, and some people say one of the ugliest ever built, but everyone agrees it is safe. Nearby, the Firth of Forth Road Bridge (which we crossed), a long-span suspension bridge with 494 feet towers, was opened in 1964.

In 1980 in both Scotland and Ireland, it was obvious the people really liked the TV program “Dallas.” In Scotland they had coffee cups for sale saying “I shot JR.” And the words, “I love JR,” were scratched on the wall in a phone booth far out in “nowhere” in Ireland.