It’s been an eventful couple of days. Jeff and I decided yesterday that we would go out and do the “touristy” thing. Our first stop was business though, get me put on the checking account and get cell phones then we were going to go castle “hunting”. Little did we know that going to the bank and to get a cell would take the better part of a day! We went to Union Street, which is the heart of Aberdeen is probably very similar to Times Square in New York. They have a mall there and it’s super busy and people walk everywhere it seems. Anyway, the bank and cell phones took longer than we expected. Here we are learning to get anything accomplished; it will take “five days”. That’s the answer we get to EVERYTHING! To add me to the account that Jeff already has………….takes 5 days! To get my pin number for a check card, takes 5 days and to get the card takes another 5 days. To get broadband hooked up at the house, takes another 5 days, not to mention that when the guy came out to actually hook up the line was a 5 day wait and you have to get that done before you can get broadband. Needless to say, we are learning. We are also learning they don’t use check cards the same way we do. You walk up to a place to pay and you put your card in this machine and you still have to use a pin number to pay. Very few places actually take the card and can swipe it or put in the number. And our cards here don’t work as well, because we don’t have chips in our cards. So my advice to anyone that is thinking about coming to visit us………….bring cash or be prepared to go to ATM’s and pay the fee to get money out. Sorry………it’s quite a pain.
Oh and among the many things I learn each day, I learned yesterday that the women here that are “housewives” consider it an insult to call them housewives and would rather be considered “unemployed” (which was explained to me by the bank guy because I put housewife on my application form) and I’ve also learned that they don’t call wheat bread “wheat” here. If you ask for wheat they think you are asking for white because of the accent and so when I ordered my sandwich yesterday and ask for wheat bread, I got white. Jeff says they call it brown bread. So when you order a sandwich you order either brown bread or white bread. I ask him about other breads like rye, pumpernickel, etc and he said that so far he’s not seen that kind of bread. So I had a sandwich yesterday on white bread, since I ordered wheat. LOL
Downtown Aberdeen at Union Street
So anyway, after that we decided since it was raining and the day was nearly gone that we would go to the big ASDA (aka Walmart). Its two stories, has a parking garage outside of it. It’s truly the oddest thing I have ever seen! Groceries are down stairs and things like household goods and clothes are upstairs. To get from upstairs to down stairs there is an escalator and the wheels have a magnet on it so you can push the cart onto the escalator and it locks it in place. So anyway, we went there and got a few things. Oh and FYI, I seen a guy wearing a kilt in the grocery store!!! ;) On our way out of the ASDA I saw a place where you can ski! Yes………..it’s like this manmade slope that you can ski on and of course it’s not real snow, not this time of year. Pretty nifty. Maybe one day I’ll have to be adventurous and try it out.
So today, since we didn’t get to go yesterday, we made it a point today to go castle hunting. We went to a castle right by the house. Called Dunnottar Castle. Really beautiful day for it! The wind was blowing and it was a little cold but it was sunny. Most famously known for having a small garrison that held out against the might of Cromwell’s Army for eight months and saved the Scottish Crown Jewels, the ‘Honours of Scotland’ from destruction. It’s mostly ruins now, at least from the inside of the grounds. Truly a site to see though and its beautiful. It’s right by our house too, so we figure that it will be nice place to visit often. It sits on a flat rock right on the ocean and it’s quite a hike to get from the main grounds to the castle itself. We definitely got some exercise yesterday. We packed a picnic (in the cool picnic backpack that BWR co-workers got us………..thanks SO much) and we sat on a cliff overlooking the castle and had lunch. I was completely in awe! After lunch we made our way down to the castle and went inside. We got a brochure so we could read all about it. While we were walking around the inside of the castle grounds I could hear bagpipes! I looked at Jeff and we were about to decide that it was a recording that they were playing until we looked over at the grounds of the mainland before you make your way down to the castle and seen a man wearing a kilt and playing bagpipes! J I was deeply disappointed though because by the time we got back up that way from our tour he was gone! I told Jeff though that I am determined when we go back to visit the grounds again to see him and get a picture! ;) We will go back too because not far from there is memorial for the Scottish soldiers that died in both world wars and from the castle you can hike over and it’s about a mile probably. It’s hard to tell because it’s a path that goes up and down and around, so it might be much further than that. But we are going to do that one day when we just want to enjoy the weather. I did take a picture of it from the road, when the zoom lens though. Of course the only access to it is to walk that path, that we know of.
The Memorial for the soldiers of the World Wars
Dunnottar Castle
There are so many castles around, we thought maybe it might be fun to try and see one castle a weekend, when the weather is good until we’ve seen them all or we are plan wore out from seeing castles. I told Jeff I would imagine after about 10 castles your frame of mind is if you’ve seen one castle, you’ve seen them all! But we’ll see.
Awesome! I would see them all!
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