Scotland Part II

St. Andrews Graveyard
A Scottish band plays
me & a man in kilt
boys mud slide in St. Andrews
A University sign
A local B&B
St. Andrews Castle
There goes my umbrella

Inside the Chapel
Part of a grave marker
Rosslyn Chapel Castle
Mike & Dave at the money shot
ta-da!

A Scottish Thistle
Rosslyn Chapel Side Door
No! David - Don't touch the chapel spire
The Chapel interior
Of course - my feet at Rosslyn!

Today we got to see our friend Mike again – what a sport! What a champ! Dear Mike drove all the way from his home (a little more than an hour) to where our ship docked to come and show us his Scotland. When he made the proposal to show us around Scotland we were very appreciative of his offer. First off – hands down we all agreed that Rosslyn Chapel would be our initial stop. If the name sounds familiar it is probably because part of the movie “The Di Vince Code” was filmed in the chapel. Apparently the building was sealed on the interior with some sort of paint to stop the mold and water from seeping into it – but because the paint worked as such a good blockade, it didn’t permit the chapel to actually breathe – so for the past few years there has been scaffolding around the entire chapel supporting a roof / umbrella of sorts in attempts to dry out the chapel – which will be removed in about one year because it has worked well in drying out the chapel. Before going into the chapel, we did walk up a rather wet and slippery metal scaffold stairway up to the rooftop (even though the scaffolding is an eyesore it does allow visitors to have walking access right along the roofline – awesome – bird’s-eye view.) The top spires were blackened with dirt and were still moldy, but I loved every minute of it. It was really cold up there, nothing to block the Scottish wind – my nose was getting numb and starting to run. We climbed down and would now go into the chapel – Mike wanted us to go in through the door that Tom Hanks made his entry through but unfortunately it was locked … so we had to go in via the main door. I really don’t know how to describe the interior to you – there was just so much stone carving – the ceiling was arched and had four separate relief carvings – one for each season – the pillars had carvings, the walls and window arches had carvings on them – it was everywhere. There were no photos allowed, but my law abiding husband did snap off a few. The lecture guide used a red laser pointer to explain some of the work inside of the chapel to us – it was very interesting, old and beautiful. Next we stopped in the chapel café for a pot of hot tea and a cookie - always a good thing - and as I found out, a necessary pre warming for our bodies - because we did more outdoor walking – we went down a path to the castle (or what’s left of it) to have a look for ourselves. Mike told us that when they filmed the movie “Hollywood” put in a small pond next to the castle wall – it never existed in “real life” and when “Hollywood” left, so did the pond. I took some photos of the castle wall the gorgeous thistles and of the Scottish countryside.
Mike really surprised us with the next stop – we thought we were going to St. Andrews to have a look at the golf course (did I mention Mike loves to golf?) and a walk around the town – by now it was really raining hard. We drove towards St. Andrews and just when I thought we were there he pulled into a residential neighborhood on a golf course – and took us to his home. Carol was out of town and he thought it would be good laugh to have a photo of us on their front porch. We went to his house, posed for the photo then Mike made us a cup of tea with milk and we raided the homemade cookies that Carol had left for him – not really, we had one each, okay the guys had two – then we drove a short distance to St. Andrews. After parking we walked towards the golf course – I could hear the excitement in Mike’s voice as he explained what we were looking at - his eyes were wide with excitement. We stood in the pouring rain taking snapshots of each other with the St. Andrews golf course as our backdrop. There were people actually playing golf in this crazy wet weather – I guess if you pay to golf there, come rain or sun – you are going to golf! We wondered down the street past building for the St. Andrews University where Prince William attended. We walked past a castle and into an old graveyard. Have I mentioned yet that the one essential item that I forgot to pack was a raincoat? My wool coat was now just too wet to even worry about – it’s just rain water right? After the graveyard we walked down the main street of the town and back to Mike’s car. We drove back to the ship and reminisced about our day - the only unfortunate part of our day was that his wife Carol could not join us for the adventure. Thanks Mike!