Scotland/Halloween

We have thoroughly enjoyed our time in Scotland... we are so fortunate to have come in October/November because the foliage and scenery is breathtaking... It is verrrry cold here though. I went for a run yesterday along the sea and it was a breeze heading one way, but when I turned around I felt as I was doing resistance training and may have well been dragging a tire behind me. An old man laughed at me at one point because the wind was blowing so hard it took everything I had to run forward and looked like I was in slow motion. I saw a pretty rainbow, though, and it was a very peaceful morning.. I only saw 2 other people during the hour I was out. Burghead, where my cousin Rachel lives, is a very quiet village tucked between the forest and the sea. We loved it there.

Here is my aunt Celia, Rachel, and me in the forest that backs up to Rachel's street. You could walk around here for hours. There was another hiking place we went called "Randolph's Leap", aptly named for a guy who was running from a mob and jumped across a river between the 2 banks. There are apparently 2 versions of this story, and the other is that he was chasing the mob... I guess we will never really know which is real..

Here's the spot where he leapt. I took the picture from above, so it doesn't look too daring, but when you get close it's a pretty wide gap.

Amelia had a fun time hiking. She's got an adventurers spirit.

Christmas tree!

There are tons and tons of distilleries in Scotland. I think the scots love whisky because it's so cold out and scotch whisky warms you from the inside. We went to the Glenfiddich distillery which is close to Rachel's house. We took a tour to learn the history of the company and how their whisky is made, and the tour ended with a tasting of 12, 15, and 18 year old whisky. It was interesting to learn the history of the family run company and all the different steps to making it, but I do not have a taste for whisky. My uncle Ian is sort of a whisky expert and loves the stuff. I think it tastes like burnt lighter fluid, if I could imagine what that tastes like. I can say that I have now been to a whisky tasting and can probably tell you the family history of the Grant's who started the company. It was great way to spend a cold rainy afternoon.

This is a £15000 bottle of whisky for sale in the gift shop..

Rachel, Celia and I were most impressed with the restrooms. Ron Burgandy would have liked it because he could have his scotchy scotch scotch and sit by the fire in leather chairs...and it smelled of mahogany.

Later on we had Halloween festivities prepared. I never realized that the Brits got into Halloween as much as we so. I noticed most of the costumes available were ghosts, skeletons, witches, etc. I didn't see many others in the stores. From what I could tell it was more traditional than what our Halloween has evolved to be. There wasn't any Halloween costume warehouses from what I could tell, and forget being a risqué  ______fill in the blank (cat, monster, nurse, cop, bottle of ketchup, mouse, etc). This holiday is for the kids and as they say in Mean Girls, not an excuse to be a youknowwhat. They have "fancy dress" parties throughout the year where you can do that.

Rachel had made a delicious curry for us to eat, and we went out and bought witches hats so we could pretend the bubbling crock pot was our cauldron. We also had "witches brew" and plopped chocolate eyeballs in...we had fun being silly. The funniest thing was we all had our hats on and had made a date to FaceTime with my mom. When she picked up on the other end, she had her witch hat on too.. So there were 5 of us looking funny and she had hers on too.. We had a laugh.

After dinner Rachel surprised us and brought out a bucket and a bag of apples... We all had a turn bobbing for apples and I felt like I was 8 years old again... It was fun! I guess Halloween fun is global, or at least has made its way across the pond. I think we had more fun than the kids, since there were no kids trick or treating on her street. I'm sure there were some out and about though. I was tempted to buy the Halloween fun size Cadbury chocolate because we don't get that, but I haven't yet. Maybe I can get it for cheap now :)