Scotland the brave and the cold

This Easter just gone, (or more truthfully, weeks ago) we upped and flew off to Glasgow, or Glesgow as the locals say it: Home of our friends Dr.Sabeena, Dr.Toby and the ever-gorgeous Dr.Who...
Without a doubt, the safest place on planet Earth, if not the whole Universe.
And of course.... Glasgow is not far at all from our two recently-aquired properties in Western Scotland.
We had a wonderful stay, the weather was really good, and we had a relaxed gander at ‘Scotland with Style’. The highlights of the stay included Toby discovering his softer, gentler side and the ability to share a joke with the flower bed.









The gardens in central Glasgow are truly delightful and there is a really strong Kelvin, (as in Lord – the temperature dude), theme running through them. An example is shown below, the statue should be not be confused with the Kelvin Gardens, Kelvin Bridge, The River Kelvin, The Kelvin way, Kelvingrove, Kelvinhall, Kelvin Walk, and of course, Kelvin’s Organ. NB: Born William Thomson and took Kelvin after the river of the city to whose University he was appointed the Chair of Natural Philosophy at the ripe age of 22.

L-R: Ivan and Kelvin : the world's greatest minds come together, Glasgow's Big Brother watching our every move

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L-R: Glasgow uni, Kelingrove museum...

L-R: All the big dead exctint animals (including Giant Irish deer in background), the not so exctint big animals and lastly one of the littlest and cutest animals alive today (not up for discussion)

On the Sunday we mounted up in Toby’s trusty chariot and took a ferry from Gourock to Dunoon. We found the roads were really quite narrow with these peculiar bulges every so often. The reason for these soon became apparent.

After breathing again we drove onto inspect our Colintraive estate, the first of our Scottish properties.

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L-R: Our bit is somewhere around here: (not neccesarily with that lovely view of the lake, but without ever finding the exact spot of land, hope does spring eternal)
Here, some scottish furry rocks - just for Sabeena :)

We departed from Colintraive and drove about 15 km north to the new family home: The Laird’s Retreat,. (much less ellusive than the other).

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L-R: Pointing out where our property must lie, The party seeks out the property..

Property found! Our modest property can be seen here, it’s in the black ellipse, 1” x 1” – thank-you very much to the Cope/Steel Family for the lovely wedding presents.

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The castle itself is being rebuilt after being burnt out in 2001 and the property is being restored to it former glory. For more information see http://lairdofdunanscastle.com/.

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Dr. Toby himself, whose very own brother is now also a Laird at Dunan's castle and our own neighbour! We have it on very good opinion that this brother, Laird Ben, is indeed a gentleman with perfect manners and looks, not at all like the scruffy yet excellent Dr. Toby.

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L-R: The whole party at Dunan's castle (renovator's delight).

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Some very much alive species we saw on the road... so cute!

We’re quite jealous of the lovely apartment which Sabeena has found, with high ceilings and a massive front room. They have their own local, private, park – or will have when they pay the annual access fee!

L-R: The street where they live, alongside the private park (key access only): Excuse me!

In short we rather liked Glasgow and we should be able to get back to Scotland for another visit to kilt-country and visit Stirling Castle

Check out the excellent Dr Toby's musings at http://aturgidaffair.blogspot.com/

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.by IW with unwanted commentry and asides from EF

Here comes the bride....

The happy wedding of Maria and Nano.
Last week we dashed off to Spain for the weekend to go to Elena's Cousin's wedding...
A great night, with superb food and lots of dancing... wrapping up around 6am in true Spanish style.

It was such a brief visit there's not much more to say so here are some pics.
As millions of photos will soon arrive from the many many digital cameras present on the night, this blog may grow somewhat over the next week or so.. Hopefully with some nice proper shots of the bride and groom together...(we only have this one above)

L-R: With Aunts and Uncles, With Blanqui and Abuela, Paty, Cris y Adriana









Ivan and Nacho (new best friends?), Javi y Laura, Cousins table 3




Javi and some drunk, The Boys (Jorge, Emilio, Pablo, Jesus),
With Emilio, Javi y Alfonso, With Maria
The beautiful bride having fun, Maria y Ivan,

Emilio, With Jesus, Alex and Jorge
Roberto's ok, 'Born in the USA' dance (the new wedding tradition?),

Jesus and Emilio let loose, Tango Alfonso,

and.... we need catch the plane home in a few hours!

St Patricks Day

Today was St Patricks Day... so, as nubies to Dublin, we headed in to the city to see the St Pat's day parade... it was a "warmish" sunny day with thousands upon thousands of happy green people in the streets of dublin. Sadly, only one of us actually saw anything of the parade but took photos
as evidence to show the other... like an almost real-time slideshow of the action... proving that there was something out there after all. Not entirely true.. she did actually catch a glimpse of the more enormous floats as they went past, like the enormous gold pig (see below)...which was particularly hard to miss.

This year's parade theme - The sky's the limit

The masses gather and thicken









This nerdy scientist float claimed "will do science for food", fantastic bird (by far the best in show), fun caterpillar and snail and an enormous gold flying pig for some reason.
We decided to leave St Pat's night in Dublin to the Irish.... and headed home with the families...

The night looked like it was going to start early..

left over snow photos...

More snow, better snow...
We wanted to share these snow pics with you, though they were taken weeks ago and the snow has completely gone for good now..
but we just loved the snow when it was here... and can't help but add these few more pics to the blog.
We are now into decidedly warmer sunnier days... which is nice :)

The local sorroundings in snow..

In the last days of the snow, we went for a drive in Co. Wicklow though the mountains to catch the best snow we could, while it lasted... and it was well worth it..


Checking out Russborough House
Driving through the Wicklow Gap.

stuff...

brief update... too slack or busy to update blog recently and not all that much happening anyway

most recently:
- not snowing anymore
- weather warming bit by bit, we even have some really lovely sunny days (though not today)
- minding Leonora the cat for a few days
- finished knitting Ivan's scarf last night

mmm, that might be about it.
even on the other side of the world, life isn't all travel and exotic tales.

catch you soon!