Top 25/12/99
My roommates are Catholics, and I went along with them to midnight mass. It was very strange, but at least I got to hear the Christmas story from Luke 2. It loses something in modern English, though, as compared to the English used in the KJV. And I got to sing Christmas carols. After, I read the account from 3 Nephi and went to sleep. When we woke up in the morning, we had a new roommate, Tamara, and there were stockings hanging from the bunks, with candy & oranges in them. There was also another sock stuffed inside, but mine were mismatched! Then I had to go find an ATM so I could pay for Christmas dinner at the hostel. It took a while, though, cause I couldn't get at the one in the train station, and hadn't bothered to locate another one beforehand. There was still a couple of hours before dinner, so I went for a walk to kill time. I tried to make it down to the Firth of Forth, but it's farther than it looks and I didn't make it. Dinner consisted of potato soup, a choice of either turkey & ham or a vegetarian dish, and a choice of pudding or pie for dessert. It kind of seemed like being in an orphanage, so many young people crowded in one room. I had the vegetarian dish, which was kind of like a cheese tortilla, and the pie. It is called banofie pie, and is kind of like a banana cream pie with caramel. In between each course, a guy played Christmas carols on bagpipes and we sang along and made a lot of noise with the noisemakers. At my table were Laura and Erin from Africa, and Sam and Zane from Scotland.

Top 26/12/99
This morning I got up early to catch the first train from Edinburgh to Aberdeen, but the train stations was still closed. So I went looking for the bus station and found it just as some workers were arriving. There was a bus to Aberdeen in the morning and several in the afternoon, so I figured I might be able to make it to church after all. I called the church, but there was no answer, & since I had no idea how to get there on my own, I went ahead and took the first bus. To get to Aberdeen, I had to change busses in Perth, and for most of the way after that I could see the ocean. It seems I have been missing the ocean almost as much as I have been missing real mountains! Once I reached Aberdeen, I called the chapel there, but again, no answer, so I headed for the hostel. The directions I got weren't very good, so I found a phone book, and got better directions which involved taking a bus. In the process, I found out that if I had kept going, I would have found it anyways! Once I got settled, I wanted to go see something, so I checked the info-guide and found out the the art museum was open on Sundays, & was free, so I headed there. Turned out, it was closed for the holidays, so I headed back to the hostel. On the way, I discovered an ice skating rink that was just opening (they were waiting for it to get cold enough & the ice solid enough!). So I skated for a couple of hours. It was fun, but this was the first time I really wished I had someone with me to share the experience with. The rink was in Bon Accord Park, and Aberdeen is called the City of Bon Accord. By the time I left off skating, it was getting late, so I went back to the hostel, and hung out in the kitchen for a while to meet some more people. There was more people from Australia who had also come from Edinburgh today, and people from Oregon, and of course more people from Scotland.

Top 27/12/99
Today breakfast was included in the price of the room at the hostel, so after eating, I walked down to the shore. It was very pretty, especially with the sun just up. I think people swim in the ocean in summer. Off on the horizon, there was a white thing that was either a ship or an oil rig. And on the other side were two light houses. Those were tricky to get a picture of because the sun was just barely up and practically right behind one of them. I hope it turns out okay. Then I went looking for things to see, but everything was closed for the holidays. I made it back to the hostel just in time to check out, so I was able to go on to Inverness, and was able to make reservations for the hostels both there and in Glasgow.

The bus ride to Inverness was frustrating because it seemed like every 30 minutes or so I saw a sign for something that I really wanted to see. Usually it was a castle, for there is a castle route that starts in Aberdeen. Too bad I didn't find out about it till after I left. But now I know what to do when I come back, & I am definately coming back to Scotland at some point when I can take my time and see everything.

After reaching Inverness, I gathered the information I would need over the next couple of days- what tours were available, where to rent a bike, etc. I got dinner from a fish-&-chips take-away shop, some kind of chicken and mushroom pie that was quite good. Afterwards, I went on a "terror tour" of the city led by an authentic 18th century ghost. I was joined by two girls from New Zealand, and we tormented the ghost almost as much as he was trying to scare us. Inverness is supposedly the most haunted city in the British Isles, what with all the torture and stuff that has happened there. The true story on which "Jekyll and Hyde" is based occurred here, and I guy from Inverness once was kidnapped in Aberdeen, taken to America, scalped, and returned to make a lot of money off it. And of course there were the witch hunts & rebellions & wars.

28/12/99
Today I rented a bike and rode out to Culloden Moor. The location of the last battle between the Jacobites and the British government, it is about 6 miles from Inverness- a nice little bike ride. Especially since it is uphill on the way out and downhill on the way back. It took place in 1746, and I thought it quite funny that it was the very tactics that allowed the British government troops to win this battle got them slaughtered some 30 years later in the American Revolution. I did not know it was a civil & religious war, with the Lowland Scotts (Protestants) fighting the Catholic Highlanders. The stupid thing about it was that the Highlanders chose the battleground, and their best tactic was of no use on it!

It's no wonder the British were so confident in the superiority of their tactics when the Americans rebelled!

One interesting thing was that the commander of the British government troops trained his men to strike not at the person in front of them, but the one to the right, where they were not sheilded by their targe.

One of the displays was a small hut called a fermtoune with a mock-up of what a battle-field surgeons operating theatre was like at the time. It was very crude- a soldier was lucky to just lose a limb. The battlefield itself is just a bunch of bushes with yellow flags marking the line of the British government troops and red flags marking the line of the Jacobites.

With several hours of daylight left, I didn't want to just return to town, so I asked one of the workers what was nearby. The Clava cairns were about a mile and a half away, in the bottem of a river valley. So I rode down to them and took some pictures. They were quite interesting. Cairns are what stone-age people buried their dead in, and these one were rings, some with passages leading out from the center. When I came back up the hill, I was quite cold, so I stopped back at the Culloden visitor's center and got some tomato and pepper soup. Yum! I browsed the bookstore for a while and found a cookbook of Scottish recipes and some orange chocolates & some mint chocolates.

I made it back to Inverness just in time to return the bike, then did some shopping. At first I just window shopped to find out where scarfs and ties in the various tartans were available and how much they cost. Then I called home to find out what everybody wanted. They were pretty much as my mom and I had figured, so I went back to the store and picked them up. The results of this, and resons for them, can mostly be found on my Tartans page. For Deanne, though, I got the Millenium Tartan. This is a special tartan designed by James Pringle's Weavers to commemerate the new millenium. And for myself I got a sweater and a kilted skirt. Then I had to repack my bags so everything would fit, and found out that once again my roommate, Clair, was from Australia!

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