Saturday morning (Aug 13) …. everyone slept in and I started to get antsy.
Not only are Andrew and I both naturally morning people (I think he was sleeping 5 -6 hours each night the whole week), but when we are visiting a place (like Scotland!!), I would much rather be tired for a few days than miss out on seeing stuff …
– I DO love those tourist attractions! –
Since we hadn’t gone grocery shopping the night before…. everyone was at least eager to go seek out food once they were up. I think we finally got out of the house around 11a or so.
The initial plan was to drive (2 cars) down to Aberfeldy for lunch, and then head on to Pitlochry and maybe Cairngorms National Park. But it turns out ….
- Aberfeldy is REALLY close to our resort
- Aberfeldy is REALLY small. Seems silly to try to find 2 parking spaces, when we could have just walked there…
So, instead, we opted to go on to the 20 or 30 minute away town of Pitlochry for lunch and return to Aberfeldy Saturday night….
Kevin and Dad drove that first day …. and again Dad was white-knuckled at the steering wheel.
My initial impression of Pitlochry was that it was fairly well set up for tourists : easy-to-find public parking, well signed town center and all …. (but as the week went by, I realized that ALL of Scotland appears to be like that)
We found the public parking … just block or so away from the center of town, just down the hill from the train station …. and directly across the street from a house where a couple girls were outside painting the fence, to the sound of awful 90s power ballads LOUDLY playing on the stereo.
And I mean LOUDLY!
Parking in Scotland always involved emptying our pockets for coin – which I suppose is a good way to get rid of the 1-pound couns we got as change everywhere….
So we parked in the 90s-pop-ballad-infused parking lot and found our way to the main street in Pitlochry – Atholl Road.
Now the hunt for lunch.
Our cell phones weren’t set up for international data – so we couldn’t Yelp! anything…. and Rick Steves only mentions a couple places in his book….
So the 6 of us wandered down the street, jay-walking from one side to the other in the drizzling rain … peering at the menus posted outside the doors for options that looked both appetizing and affordable.
I don’t remember the name of the little cafe we settled on, but it appeared to to have rooms to stay in on the second floor, and a second restaurant room on the below-street-level floor.
Sandwiches all around – plus Andrew and Kevin started trying some local ciders or ales or sometime.
Unfortunately, Saturday lunch was when I started to feel sick. I don’t know if it was the heat inside or food or way-thrown-off sleeping schedule … but I took a bite of my sandwich (BLT with mayo) and couldn’t eat any more.
The below-street-level restaurant room actually had a back door/windows/rear entrance opening to a street at the bottom of the hill …. so I spent most of that lunch sitting out back, fanning myself and drinking water…
After lunch, the boys wanted to go on a “Whisky Walk” described in Rick Steves’ book…. And I totally would have gone if I didn’t feel sick.
photo by Nancy Hann
While the boys and Chelsea went on their walk (which gets its own blog post) …. my mom and I walked the other way into town.
We stopped at Victoria’s – so mom could have some tea. I think she tried mint … I love that they brought out a little personal teapot with the tea leaves brewing on a little personal serving tray with her teacup. It was VERY cute.
Unfortunately, I still wasn’t feeling well, so I elected to go lay in the car and mom went shopping.
You can read all about her shopping and Pitlochry adventures here. … She came back quite excited about her cheese purchases!
And in the mean time… the boys+Chelsea were hiking through the mud!