Travel to Pitlochry – June 10

Today we left Edinburgh and headed for the Scottish highlands. But, before we left, we stopped to get David a haircut. They are quite serious about their men’s haircuts in Edinburgh. David is extremely happy with his cut! And I was able to stop and buy a gift for my mom on the way out of town.

The train to Pitlochry was crowded but fun. A group of teenagers were practicing giving speeches a couple of rows up from us. Fun to hear them say silly things like “thousands of hundreds” when they obviously meant it the other way. Scenery was nice and we made it to our B & B before the afternoon rain.

One thing you don’t have to worry about here is seeing things before it gets dark. Currently sunrise is at 4:24 am and sunset is at 10:05 pm. However, even then it is more like dusk than a true sunset. Either you get used to sleeping when it’s light or get a sleep mask!

We ate dinner tonight at the Old Mill Inn. David’s dinner was their special—Chicken Killiecrankie (baked chicken stuffed with haggis)—and it was quite good. I tried the butter chicken curry with basmati rice. My food was equivalent to me trying to make butter chicken curry at home when I don’t quite have all of the ingredients and am approximating it the best I can; however, I at least have basmati rice at home and didn’t try to pass off short-grain white rice as basmati.

After dinner we got some ice cream at the local shop. David had Edradour whiskey ice cream and I had Scottish tablet (which is like crumbly vanilla fudge). Mine was great and David said his wasn’t the best flavor for ice cream. (It was better before they put it in the ice cream, as we found out earlier at the restaurant. Edradour has the smallest historic distillery in Scotland, but unfortunately they’re closed for tours at the moment.)

After that it stopped raining and we went for a walk around town. They were out lawn bowling and we watched them for a while. It’s sort of like bocce ball, but the balls are weighted on one side so they can curve different ways. And you play it on a square grass field that is cut short. (A very nice local man came up and explained it to us.)

So many of the houses had pretty gardens and flowers in bloom. (It’s basically like early spring here.)