Edinburgh to Perth

What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is a clear case of Too Many Photos, with a sub-case of I Have No Idea What I'm Doing.

Above and below (and all around, really) are pictures of Stirling Castle. It was interesting, but unfortunately not quite as fun as Edinburgh Castle (or some of the subsequent ones). Nonetheless, memorable.

These are random photographs I thought were pretty. The road we took to Perth was really very nice. Very lush: it was very much like driving in B.C.


Nooo idea what I'm doing. Anyway, here's Castle Menzies. That's the clan seat of my other ancestors. It was fascinating to track some of the Menzies who may or may not be distantly related to us.

From here on, I gave up on format experimentations, in case you couldn't tell. At any rate, Menzies. I can't remember how old the piano was, unfortunately. As with several castles we visited, a "Victorian wing" had been erected in the aforementioned era, but had to be torn down. The reason for this one wasn't stated, but with the other, the wing was demolished because the damp had been sealed in and was causing structural problems. There were several staircases that had either been sealed off or led nowhere.

Because the castle was a residence until the early twentieth century, and was in various hands until 1957, there were quite a few "updated" (or not so much) portions: several rooms had been plastered poorly, some quite a bit better. One hall was painted an admittedly awful shade of pink, but it made up for it by having numerous remarkable paintings of Menzies through the ages. (I refrain from including that picture, you'll note: my excuse is that it was the devil to format.) Another had a beautiful plaster ceiling - my terminology is vastly incorrect, but there were panels all across the room, each with its own design. Apparently, said ceiling was restored from the older design: in another room, we discovered fragments of the older ceiling as well as casts from the original molds.

One of the things that sticks out is that in one display, there was a corroded old claidh morh believed to have been used in 1314. It was literally as tall as I was. Literally as in, the length of the sword was noted in the front of the display and it was as tall as I was. Unfortunately, I couldn't take pictures because of the glare, but I got a picture of the card. How did you think I remembered these things? By writing them down?




And finally, we have a picture of Perth. That's about as much as we saw of it, actually. We arrived at our hotel, expecting it to be cheap, and found it was actually the old hotel - across from the train station - which had been really grand in its day. It was still lovely. We wandered down the street for quite a while to find something to eat, but didn't otherwise explore much of Perth.

Hey, with the way this formatted, it almost looks like I knew what I was doing.

Almost.

Apologies to anyone who read this before 6:30 here-time: the preview option tends to mess with my photos, so I have to publish to see what I'm doing. At least, until I figure this out, which may take a while.

So, Edinburgh-Stirling Castle-Castle Menzies-Perth. Given the overload of pictures/information (and the time-consuming process), further sojourns will await another day.

Oh, but one interesting thing from Edinburgh: a lot of the shops were the tacky tartan standard, although some were better than others, and many had bagpipe or otherwise Celtic music in the background. At one point I burst out laughing to hear Clocks - yes, the one by Coldplay - played with bagpipes. Actually, it was a remarkable arrangement, and my laughter was inspired as much by delight as astonishment. But it was fun.

Ta.