abernethy, scotland

so, stop #2 was edinburgh.  we took the train there from london - a 5 hour train ride, with beautiful sights along the way, and the tracks got relatively close to the north sea at the end of the journey, which was a cool sight.  on our first full day in scotland, andy rented a car and we all drove to abernethy, about an hour outside of edinburgh, where andy's ancestors are from.  even though it was scary, andy did a great job of driving on the righthand side of the car and the righthand side of the road.  traffic roundabouts were particularly scary, but we tried to stay quiet in the back seat. this is andy on the wrong side of the car.

abernethy was beautiful. andy's grandparents had gone to abernethy 25 years ago, so we went to several of the same places in order to recreate photos, but let's be honest - abernethy was tiny and we kind of couldn't miss the highlights. one was this tower - the "abernethy round tower":


the sign on the tower said that historians believe it was built in the late 11th century, and it is "possible" that william the conquerer met there in 1072. holy crap - stuff in scotland is old. the tower was right next to an old graveyard that was beautiful/sad (as all graveyards are) to look around.


a sign on the tower said you could get the key from the inn next door, which we did, and climbed up to the top to look at the surrounding countryside. it was beautiful...here are two pictures from the top.

not much to see other than the beautiful view and the fact that it was nice to wander around a quiet little town in the late morning of a weekday when almost no one was around.  a nice break from the cities we'd visited so far.  and just when my nausea had subsided, it was back in the car for another kind of scary ride back to edinburgh.