Highlights from the Highlands

Just to tease you a bit, here are some highlights from the week thus far:

*Learning to live life without a flat iron...and allowing the photo's to prove it.

*Picking up pedestrians, shaking them, then smacking them back down on the street.

*Meeting a man in a tartan turban that matched his tartan tie. And his tartan trousers.

*Realizing that sightseeing alone means asking complete, non-English speaking strangers if they will take my picture here...or there...with that in the background...

*In five days, I can take over 600 pictures.

*Edinburgh was built on seven hills, but when one uses walking as a primary means of transportation one comes to believe it is built on seven THOUSAND hills.

*If your feet are wet enough long enough, you cease to feel them.

*In Scotland, even tourists are covered under the National Health. Wonder how Americans would feel if non-citizens were covered under a tax-payer funded national health scheme?

*Scotspeak rules, and I fully intend to return home speaking in Scottish, peppering my speech with words like "wee" , "car park", "haggis", and "bagpipe". I may also feel a compulsive need to refer to elevators as lifts.

*No matter how you prepare for it, when you see your great grandparent's handwritten signatures for the first time, registering their marriage to each other, you just might start to cry. You may also impulsively jump up and hug the man handing you that information.

*You may also feel inclined to hug the gravestone of your great great grandparents when you miraculously stumble upon it, amidst thousands, in a fog covered, hilltop cemetery.

*It's easy to get jaded when everything around you holds so much history...this can cause you to see a marker for something and go "Oh, that's no big deal, it's only 200 years old..."

*St. Mungo's Museum of Religious Life, in Glasgow, is an absolute MUST SEE, regardless of your religious beliefs or religious nonbeliefs. Simply spectacular.

*The best way to see any of it is with your very best friend.