a lotta history

if yesterday was walking walking walking, then today was roustabouts roustabouts roustabouts. and all of them..... left handed. we rented a Toyota Corolla today that is BRAND NEW from HErtz, and they let me drive it off the lot without asking important questions like....... "ever driven on the wrong side of the road, mr White?".

all kidding aside, I did fine, other than the roustabouts. they pretty well dont make stop signs in Scotland, or at least, dont use them. nope, just make a big circle and a free for all in the middle, wish everyone luck - thats a roustabout. I missed my targeted turn 4 (four) times today, which put us on the wrong path. other things we saw, included tons of really cool Scottish history. our first step after renting the car was Dumferline. We stumbled onto an abbey that turned out to house the remains of Robert the Bruce.

that thing was pretty cool, and it was also the birthplace of many previous Scottish/english kings, including Charles I, which was the guy who pretty well declared war on protestants in the early 1600's, running my kinfolk out of the country.

After that, we had a steak pie and lentil soup for lunch. After that, we were off to Culross (pronounced coo-ris), which was a small village next to the ocean that also had a cool old Abbey.

This one had the remains of yet another Blair family member in it, no clue how, or if we're related.

After Culross, we headed to Stirling and had the my favorite event of the trip thus far. the William Wallace Monument is high on a hill overlooking his famous battle victory at Stirling.

based on shape and orientation, it should have been called Phallus Memorial. very manly. I had no clue this monument existed, but it was mentioned to me by David Peterson, a fellow in our Life Group, and it was awesome. the monument stands about 170' tall and is climbable from the the inside via a spiral staircase of ~284 steps. On the 1st of 4 "floors" is William Wallaces actual sword! that thing is about 6' long and looks crazy heavy. Must have been one helluva man.

in the parking lot, there was a van with a "make love not war" sticker on it. the irony of this sticker at William Wallaces monument was not lost on me. I guess Europe has hippies too.

After Stirling, we passed thru PErth in a rush to get to Pitlochery, which was a really need little town. after checking in, we headed downtown only to be greated with a bagpipe & drum parade of sorts, which they do every Monday night.

dinner was a comparatively boring pizza, but still plenty good. our room doesnt have a fridge, so I'm storing the lefovers outside on the roof to keep it "Cool"