Photos of Scotland

We're a little bit behind with posting photos, so here are some highlights from our two weeks in Scotland!

Rory and Jeff at Doune Castle, where Monty Python and the Holy Grail was filmed

Doune Castle

The Scottish Highlands at Glencoe

Glencoe

Rory posing at Glencoe

Incredible sunset at Morar, a remote village on the west coast

Our hotel at Morar. Its address: Morar Hotel, Morar, Scotland. There was only one road in the town.

We took a ferry to the Isle of Mull, where we stayed at the Tobermory Hotel

Tobermory

We drove from Mull on the west coast all the way to St Andrews on the east coast in about 5 hours. Rory's grandparents live in St Andrews and we celebrated his grandma's 88th birthday there. This is from the top of the cathedral tower overlooking St Andrews.

The Castle at St Andrews

Highland cow hat (obviously)

We spent a week in Glasgow while Rory attended a linguistics conference. I took a bus tour one day and stopped at the Botanic Gardens and a number of other places. It was fun!

My first time on a double decker open-top bus

Glasgow Cathedral

Glasgow Cathedral

The Glasgow Necropolis is a cemetery that sits atop a hill behind the Cathedral. It's impressive to walk around. And I randomly met a woman there who not only was attending the same linguistics conference, but had also lived in Columbus and was also traveling to Paris by train on the same day as us. 

This video is from the linguistics conference ceilidh (Scottish dance). 90% of the participants had no idea how to do these dances and they still had fun!

A soujourn in Scotland

Our brief stay in Scotland is nearly at an end!

Some travel highlights, in chronological order:

• Dumfries
• Angus
• Stirling
• Glencoe
• Western Lochaber
• Ardnamurchan
• Tobermory
• Calgary
• Iona
• St Andrews
• Glasgow

And now we're back in Dumfries again, with my parents. We'll be back up to Glasgow soon to catch our train to Paris on Monday morning.

Some event highlights:

• Susan and Stephen's wedding! Susan is an old friend of mine from uni, who now lives in Dubai, where she met some bloke called Stephen. Their wedding was really lovely, in a beautiful country estate. It was also great to see old friends at the reception.
• Travelling with Jeff! Jeff is a good friend of ours, a former OSU graduate student (who has since graduated and moved on to other things), and he was in Scotland to attend a phonetics conference (see next bullet). We decided we'd all take a trip to the highlands and the Isle of Mull, to show Jeff some of the "real" Scotland (and lots of sheep).
• Phonetics conference! I've been networking and sciencing at a week-long conference in Glasgow while Talia entertains herself and has tea with friends.
• Seeing family and friends! This is definitely the best part, and the most bittersweet, since there were several people who we weren't able to see on this trip. Still, it's been very good to get to hang out and catch up with various people who mean a lot to us both.

Me and Talia in the dramatic landscape of Glencoe

Sorry for the telegraphic nature of this post - I really ought to be (re)packing my bags in preparation for our departure! Scotland, I will miss you, but we'll be back soon, don't despair.

The sun setting over the Atlantic at our hotel in Morar