by Jim Bellomo | May 24, 2019 | Uncategorized
For our last full day in Edinburgh we left Edinburgh. We had pre-booked an all day coach tour to see Stirling Castle, Loch Lomond and the Kelpies. This involved being about three blocks up the Royal Mile to Highland Explorer Tours at 8:15 am, boarding a 32 passenger Mercedes bus with 14 other travelers and spending the day on the road. A quick mention that I was kind of dreading the bus ride as I was sure I would get crammed into a tight seat and with my knee it was going to be a painful day, brace or no brace. But lo and behold, the bus was half empty and Kathleen and I had the entire back row to ourselves. And since there was an emergency exit there, I could completely stretch out my legs, YEAH!
Before we did that I went out again at dawn (or just before) to take a Photowalk and shoot some more sunrise pics, this time on Calton Hill, the third highest point in Edinburgh. It was worth it as it wasn’t near as difficult as Arthur’s Seat but it gave me a chance to shoot some more great sunrise stuff.
After breakfast we were off on our tour. The first stop was to see the Kelpies. If you haven’t seen the Kelpies, check out my pics. It is a GIANT equine sculpture (the largest in the world we were told) that honors Clydesdale horses that used to pull the barges on the Scottish Canal which runs right next to the Kelpies. They are incredibly impressive and a photographer’s dream. We spent about 30 minutes there before we were off to Loch Lomond, Scotland’s biggest lake. We saw a part of it but not all (that would have taken too long), had a nice cup of coffee and then it was off to Stirling Castle.
On the way I have to say that the is country is SOOOOOOOO green. Green and lush. Check out my countryside pics and know that I did nothing to enhance them. They are amazing.
Stirling Castle (according to our superb and hilarious driver/guide James) is even better than Edinburgh Castle and I think he is right. Part of why we liked it better was Frank a Stirling Castle tour guide, who took us on an amazing tour that was one of the best tours I have ever done. Just outstanding. Pictures say it better than I can describe. I think you may recognize Frank as I am pretty sure when he was a lot younger, he played Dobby the house elf in the Harry Potter films ?. He was stupendous as was his castle. Topped the tour off with lunch and a bus ride back and then packing. We have a 8:00 am train to York tomorrow morning where we will be picked up by the amazing Paul and Gail, our Martini Mates. We are staying with them at Castle Howard and touring what Paul calls, God’s Country—Yorkshire. Can’t wait.
One last thing before I throw in the photos. We are finishing up this trip a week from today in Dublin where we will meet up with my brother Steve, his wife Jamie, our niece Cassie, her cousin Analee and Jamie’s sister and her husband Pam and Dave. And two more special people, our buddies Bob and Holly who are enroute to Dublin as I write this. I mention this as Bob does a blog as well and he blogs as he travels. I want to recommend it as he always takes great pics and sometimes movies. You can find it by clicking here. It’s always a fun read so try it out.
Don’t forget you can always see the pics as a slide show and as soon as Flickr gets their act together and fixes their uploader, I will have more pics in my Flickr feed (see the column at right.)
All the steps I climbed to start the day. It’s called Jacob’s Ladder
This cracked me up. This gull stood there yelling at the light.
This building is the seat of Scottish government
On top of Calton Hill
On top of Calton Hill
On top of Calton Hill
On top of Calton Hill
On top of Calton Hill
Kelpies!
Kelpies!
Kelpies!
Kelpies! Next to the Scottish Canal
The lush green Scottish countryside
Sir Robert Bruce
This is our tour guide Frank
Seriously, Dobby, the house elf?
More Robert Bruce
An incredible (but creepy) ceiling in the castle
Live guides explain the Castle
Tapestries everywhere
Live guides explain the Castle
In the Castle kitchens
A panorama shot from the parapets
Cannon shot in the side of…
…this building
I have rarely if ever found anyone out of whom I could not extract amusement or edification. —Sir Walter Scott (seen in the Waverly Rail station while walking today)
by Jim Bellomo | May 23, 2019 | Uncategorized
My walking day
Kathleen’s walking day
Don’t you love trying to get back on schedule after you change a bunch of time zones. I do…NOT! Awake this morning at 1:00 am, laid in bed until 2:00 and then gave up and came in the living room (I love AirBnBs for this very reason…we have a living room) and posted and did some other stuff before noticing the sun was going to come up at 4:44. So I was dressed and out walking at 4:30. I love taking early morning golden light photos and I was thrilled to get some great ones. Walked a little over five miles all over Edinburgh’s new and old towns. And as you can see, by the end of the day, I had walked even further.
I want to take a moment here to brag about Kathleen and her walking yesterday. She did more than 7.3 miles and more than 16,688 steps. WOW! I walk miles and miles each week but this is really something for her. Those are our respective walking tallies for yesterday above. Hopefully we wore off some of the food we ate.
I have to admit to you faithful readers that I started this post last night at 9:00 pm or so when we came back from our food tour. Between the long day and the great food and drink, I fell asleep right at the end of the first paragraph. It’s now almost 7:00 am on Thursday and I have already climbed Arthur’s Seat (more about that tomorrow) and I am working on this before I go get breakfast.
After my early morning walk, we had planned to go down and tour Holyrood Palace. On both our previous trips we had skipped the Palace for some reason. But when I had walked there on my pre-dawn photowalk, I discovered the the Lord High Commissioner of some such was in residence until Sunday and that the Palace was closed to tours. Damn! Guess we will just have to come back to Edinburgh again.
So after a quick breakfast, we walked up the Royal Mile and grabbed our Saturday rail tickets at Waverly Station and did a quick “Rick Steve’s Wee Tour of New Town.” It’s a tour from his Edinburgh Highlights book. We could have skipped where we ended up going on the “Wee Tour” as we wound up walking much of the same route on the food tour later but we had a nice morning. Made it back to the Canonsgate area in time to grab lunch at the Tollbooth Tavern where we had eaten three years ago. Still great food and great beers. It ought to be for a place founded in 1820. You would think they would have their act together by now. ?
Then it was back to home for a short nap before our 5:00 pm food tour. We had booked this through a company called Eat Walk Tours and we met our guide Anastaziya (Scottish of Russian heritage) at our first restaurant at the base of the castle in the Grassmarket area. Anastaziya was AWESOME! It was her first tour (she had been on a bunch but this was her first one as a guide) and aside from having to check her notes from time to time, she was wonderful. Our tour was called the Old/New Town Tour and it did just that. Took us through the Old Town, around the Royal Mile and then over to Princes Street and the New Town. Along the way we stopped for five bites and three drinks and had a lot of splendid conversation. We were amazed that we were the only people on the tour, which I guess is a big benefit of booking on a weekday, so we got very special treatment.
The food and drink started with smoked salmon (farm-raised Atlantic, no further comment needed) and our next tastes included mash potatoes with some braised beef and blood sausage (good) that was accompanied by some outstanding raspberry gin and Prosecco (great). Then on to the Scotch Malt Whisky Society where we sampled a private label Scotch along with the haggis we had been expecting all day long, served with neeps and tatties. It was surprisingly good. Then on to what looked like from the outside to be a faux-Tudor cheesy, bar. Once inside it became a gorgeous and classy wine bar and quickly became my favorite stop of the day. The food included a plate of cheese, cured meats, carmelized onions accompanied by oatcakes and some wonderful bread. All that washed down with a super good Scottish lager. We finished at a very stylish place for dessert where we enjoyed an upscale version of a traditional Scottish desert—Cranachan. It’s raspberries, whipped cream and chocolate. Wonderful.
That’s our first full day and it was full. Weather was outstanding as it looks to be today. More tomorrow. Here’s some pics but there will be a lot more on my Flickr account linked at right. And just in case you didn’t realize it, you can click any individual picture in the collage and it becomes a slide show.
Part of my early morning walk
Kathleen and our guide Anastaziya
Kathleen and I in front of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society
Kathleen ready to sample the scotch
Wine bar cheese and meats
Part of my early morning walk
Remains of my Haggis, nips and tatties
Part of my early morning walk
Looking up at the Castle
Part of my early morning walk
My last shot of a superb photography day
Our scotch
Part of my early morning walk
In the Grassmarket section. Diagon Alley was patterned after this street
Gin and Processo
Third floor tasting room
Our first bite, smoked salmon
The Malt Whisky Society is a private club and very swanky
Eating good food is my favourite thing in the whole world. Nothing is more blissful. —Justine Larbalestier
by Jim Bellomo | May 19, 2019 | Uncategorized
This is a picture I took yesterday because I found these (photo above) when I was looking for something else that I wanted to take with us tomorrow when we fly to Edinburgh. What you are seeing is the SeaPass card (combo room key and onboard credit card for you non-cruisers) from every cruise we have ever taken (except the one on Carnival we don’t tell anyone about). Starting in the upper left with our first Alaskan cruise on the old Holland America Westerdam in 2000 all the way through out Fall Foliage cruise last October on Celebrity’s Summit. Those SeaPass cards represent a lot of great times with a lot of great people.
The trip we leave on tomorrow will include our 26th cruise. Not as many as many of our friends (including our buddy Seth who has taken more than 65 cruises) but we think it’s pretty good. This time we will be adding a SeaPass card from Celebrity’s Reflection headed from Dublin to Belfast, on to two ports in Iceland and then back to Cork and Dublin Ireland before we fly home. Before we ever get to the cruise we will be staying five nights in Edinburgh, six nights with our fellow Martini Mates, Paul and Gail in the Yorkshire region of England and then three nights pre-cruise in Dublin,. Lots of travel and that’s just how we like it.
We invite you to join us as I will try my best to (and since I won’t spend my entire days driving like I did in Arizona) post some pics and notes every day we are on the road. So come back here often and let us know what you think by commenting.
Enthusiasm is excitement with inspiration, motivation, and a pinch of creativity.
—Bo Bennett
by Jim Bellomo | May 6, 2019 | Uncategorized
If you haven’t seen last Saturday’s Saturday Night Live and you love to travel as much as we do, you will love this sketch. It is just so true. If you have a few minutes, you can watch it on YouTube by clicking here. Let me know if you don’t nod your head over and over again saying, “Wow, that’s so true.” And you laugh.
by Jim Bellomo | Apr 1, 2019 | Uncategorized
Viking almost catastrophe follow up
Tonight just two quick things I want to share. The first is an awesome story about Viking Cruise Line’s ship that ran into trouble last week off Norway. If you missed it, I wrote about it late last week. Their crew and the whole company stepped up big time. You can click here to read the article. Worth the few minutes. Warning thought, it is a harrowing account. I would not have wanted to be on that ship. But I would have been thrilled by the way the crew onboard handled things.
Watching a big ship sail down a tiny canal
All through 2008 we were anxiously waiting the building and launching of Celebrity Cruise Line’s Solstice. This was not just a new ship, this was an entirely new class of ship. We (Kathleen and I) along with our Martini Mates were booked on Solstice’s 8th cruise in early March. So leading up to the launch we watched her being built at the Meyer-Werft shipyard in Papenburg, Germany. They had web cams all over her and we checked every day to see the progress. We would try to figure out where our staterooms were and how the rest of the ship was coming together. Finally, after waiting for months, they had the “roll out.”
They call it a roll out because the ship literally has to roll to the sea though some pretty tight places. We watched that journey on webcams and from people posting photos taken along the way. When ships roll out from Meyer-Werft they are quite a ways from the open ocean. It is really quite a site to see a GIANT cruise ship in a tiny little canal floating through farm lands. I bring this up because it happened again this week. It wasn’t a Celebrity ship but a Royal Caribbean ship. Their new behemoth, Spectrum of the Seas, is really something to see. And she was captured in a really cool YouTube video being towed out to sea. You can watch it all by clicking here. It’s one of those things that I find fascinating and you might too. It’s only a little over a minute.
We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend. — Robert Louis Stevenson