Aberdeen

Flying over Scotland - - just as green as it ought to be, though a bit foggy.

Our arrival in Scotland, on July 10, was in Aberdeen, where our daughter, Allison, and her husband, Jan Peder, have an apartment.  They met us at the airport.  It was a bit unsettling at first, to experience the whole steering-wheel-on-the-right-side, driving-on-the-left-side-of-the-road thing.

Most buildings in Aberdeen are built of granite, available locally, so everything is about the same color.  It's sometimes called "the grey city" or "the silver city," because of the granite, which sometimes sparkles in the sun. 

In the city, we mostly saw row-houses . . .

And every house has several chimneys.











Aberdeen also has several beautiful churches.

Pretty sure this one's attached to a university.

We could see three great steeples just from our bedroom window.

On our first evening in Aberdeen, we took a drive down by the waterfront.  Aberdeen is an ancient city, built between the mouths of the Rivers Don and Dee.  It has been a seaport since Medieval times and has launched thousands of fishing boats.

We saw a restaurant near the waterfront, called The Silver Darling, which name was explained when I saw this bit of pavement nearby:

An old light

A fishwife, looking forever out to sea

Several ships awaiting their turns to come into the harbor

Many ships coming into Aberdeen these days, such as this one, supply the oil-drilling platforms in the North Sea.  We saw two of these come in while we were there that evening.

On the ocean side,  we watched a surfer trying to catch a wave, though there wasn't much to catch.

My favorite discovery was the little fishing village of Footdee, or "Fittie," right by the harbor.  This little neighborhood was built about 200 years ago, to provide housing for fishermen who were displaced by some changes made to the harbor.  It was originally built in two large squares, with the openings facing inward, away from the winter winds.  Later, "sheds" were added inside the squares, and even they are still occupied today.

The original squares of housing are made up of row houses.

They were all originally one story tall, like these.

Some were made taller to provide more living space for families.

Slate roofs

Lots of colorful little "sheds" fill the insides of the squares.

The village has its own chapel, too.

Thus began our two-week journey with Jan and Allie.  More adventures to follow.  : )

St. Andrews

Tuesday morning, we left Aberdeen (Scotland), heading for Edinburg, but, acting on a request from a friend at home, we took a little detour to St. Andrews.  It's not too far out of the way.  What we didn't realize was that The Open had started that day - - a big, important golf tournament - - so traffic was much heavier than usual.  We are not fans of golf, but St. Andrews is where golf originated, so we had to just suck it up and go with the flow.

St. Andrews is a beautiful little city and we took a lengthy walk around.  First off, we were on assignment to find the house where our friend, Lia London Gubelin, spent part of her childhood, which we found easily.

See us, on the porch?  Hi, Lia!

Add caption

After finding Lia's house, we set off toward the beach.  We quickly discovered that St. Andrews is all about golf!

Soon we came to the grandstands set up at the 18th hole of the golf course.

Funny, what a quiet sport golf is!  I've never seen so many people, so quiet!

Another goal of ours was to find the Royal and Ancient Golf Club and take a picture there for another friend, Gerry Mullett.  Gerry loves golf, and he and Tony have jokingly bantered back and forth about it for years.

The Royal and Ancient Golf Club

So, there you go, Gerry!

By this time, we were right next to West Sands, so we took a little walk there.  Well, some preferred to take a run.  This is the beach where part of "Chariots of Fire" was filmed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-7Vu7cqB20

Soon we headed back into the town.  Such a pretty skyline, if it weren't for those big white grandstands! 

We took some different streets and found lots more beautiful buildings and houses.  Really, EVERY house wants its picture taken! 

Had to include this pic of "Ma Bell's" in memory of Tony's former employer.  : )

And so-o-o many beautiful churches!

Then we turned down a little lane and came upon St. Andrews University, where Prince William met Kate, just tucked away within a wall.  Actually, many of the surrounding buildings have been incorporated into the school now.

St. Andrews has its own jewel of a chapel, right there in the quadrangle.

After that, we had just enough time to grab some fish and chips and head back to the car, before saying goodbye to St. Andrews.  This was a little market street where we heard a bagpipe and found that it was being played by a very young boy.  : )