Scotland – Road Trips – The Haber Report

Dear Readers,

Did you miss me yesterday? I decided to take a day off from writing.

At the moment I am totally bummed out. This morning I wrote up yesterday and just now I deleted it by accident!! Grrr…

If you were wondering: Marty got his bagel. I had one too. No, it wasn’t as good as a NY bagel, but then we weren’t in NY. But the Scottish salmon was excellent. As we left breakfast, we were asked if we wanted bagels again today; we declined.

Here’s what we did yesterday. We picked up our rental car so that we could explore other parts of Scotland. Between driving on the wrong (i.e.,left) side and a manual transmission, it was quite an adventure. Marty says he loved it.

Our first stop yesterday (& our primary one of the day) was Rosslyn Chapel. The chapel is outstanding for the quality and variety of the stone carvings inside. Covering almost every square inch of stonework are human figures, animals & plants. Unfortunately, no photography was allowed inside. However, I bought a postcard with 2 of the sculptures so you could at least get an idea. Also, Ira covered this chapel extensively in his travelogue; he included pictures from the Internet so I copied one of those.

(Ira: the guide we had covered many of the stories you included in your lengthly description.)

From there we went to Newtongrange to the National Mining Museum. My guide book made it sound like it would be fun. Not! Our guide had been a miner. He needs to retire! He was not only boring, but had such a thick Scottish accent that it was almost impossible to understand him. Ah well.

Last on my agenda for the day was the town of Haddington. My guidebook said it was “one of the best preserved medieval street plans in the country”. I didn’t even take any photos. And we tried to get a small bite to eat & that didn’t work out either.

So we drove back to Edinburgh. In the evening we went to a small neighborhood Italian restaurant. The food was mediocre! It wasn’t the best day!

Today was better, but with a few hiccups. We left Edinburgh to go to Glascow with some stops along the way. Our first stop was the town of Dunfermline which was once the world center for the production of damask linen. Today the town is better known as the birthplace of Andrew Carnegie. We went to the cottage where he was born on November 25, 1835.

Carnegie’s father was a weaver of fine linens. Here’s the Jacquard loom he used.

The family lived above the workshop. Carnegie’s mother would drop bobbins filled with flax thread down a trap door to the loom-shop below. See if you can find the hole in the photo. (Hint: back right side.)

Also in Dunfermline is the Dunfermline Abbey and Palace which was founded by Queen Margaret around 1050. Robert the Bruce is buried there. Dunfermline was the seat of the royal court of Scotland until the end of the 11th century. Dumfermline Abbey has been an active place of worship for 1000 years.