We may run, walk, stumble, drive or fly, but let us never lose sight of the reason for the journey, or miss a chance to see a rainbow on the way. Gloria Gaither
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| The rivers had exceeded their banks. The rains stopped the day before we arrived, and we hoped it would stay that way! |
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| A home on the river banks. It does not show in the photo, but the kids spotted a rainbow that stretched across the sky. We could see both ends of the bow! |
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| A marina with the boats in dry dock....saving them from the raging storms of the past few days. |
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| We did not expect to see snow capped mountains! We were optimistic that the roads would be open the day we had a trip scheduled for the countryside. |
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| We also did not expect to see green green grass! Almost everything is brown in Florida, but the grass here is soft and wavy. And green because they get a lot of rain all year long! |
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| Could it be? This is the Cairn Hotel, Edinburgh! How lovely! |
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| The hotel was actually on both sides of the little street. It was a quaint hotel, classified as economy. These are great little places to stay because you get the old world flavor of the city! The management was wonderful and they had a great lobby area for our gatherings. |
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| "Way Out" does not mean "groovy." It means Exit. We saw "way out" signs all over the place! |
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| Tired travelers! After 15 minutes to drop our bags in our rooms, we were off for a late afternoon walk and a sunset surprise! No sleeping, even for the weary, until bed time. We always have a plan to beat the jet lag and students who follow our lead survive quite well! (The WORST thing you can to is to take an afternoon snooze!) |
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| A view of some of the rooms. The goal is always to snap a photo before dumping our belongings, but that rarely happens! Most European hotels work like this. A double is two twin beds. For a 'couple', they are pushed together. A triple is three twin beds, or two beds and a cot like thing. A quad is four twin bed/combos. If you are really really fortunate, your quad room is bigger than a double room, but there is no square foot requirement according to the number of people. Some of the students fared very nicely! Oh if we had only snapped a shot of the double...for the adults...Imagine a very large closet housing two beds a desk and an armoire (closet). But Mr. Corey won for the single. Imagine a generous bath room with high ceilings, housing a bed, a desk and a closet of sorts. But he had three doors! All in all it was a great hotel, and even better once we figured out how to turn on the shower and the heat! The hotel staff found us puzzling but they were very helpful! Yea for the Cairn! |
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| For some reason everyone is curious about the bathrooms. European toilettes flush differently from ours and almost every one you meet has a different kind of flusher. Most sinks are pedestals, and the tubs are really deep and narrow. Showers are mostly for really short people. Generous space is not considered a necessity to most Europeans, they would call us extremely spoiled....or wasteful. Our bathroom had a towel warmer ...heavenly! |
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| Oops, this photo is out of order and won't move....but look, FIVE beds! Lauren was very pleased that I made an adjustment. This has NEVER happened before! (Five beds...and adjustment) |
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Every room must have a set up for late night or early morning snacks! Scottish Shortbread, Coffee, Tea, and HOT CHOCOLATE. Boy did that pot heat up quickly....and hotly as well!
Notice the environmentally friendly glass cups and metal spoons! |
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What good listeners! Ready for that afternoon walk we promised! Brr....evening will be coming on soon and it is going to get chilly when the sun goes down!
Joys come from simple and natural things: mists over meadows, sunlight on leaves, the path of the moon over water.
Sigrid F. Olsen
and for us....a sunset over Edinburgh!
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