Aberdeen

I know this will come as a surprise to everyone but not everything on the internet is true! Can you believe it? Yesterday Google told me Balmoral Castle was open for visitors but it turns out it is not because the Queen is in residence. So we went to a different castle instead.

Crathes Castle is a 16th century castle about 40 minutes from here. It was built by the Burnett family and they held it for almost 400 years before giving it to the Scotland National Trust in 1951. Compared to what we saw yesterday at Glamis Castle, this place was tiny but it was still a nice place to visit.

The thing this Castle is most known for is the painted ceilings. The next photo is of the High Hall which originally had the entire ceiling painted. Now the paintings are only found in a few of the corners.

In this last picture you can see a little bit of the stone spiral staircase. Peter made it up a couple of stories of regular stairs and one level of the stone stairs but the next couple of levels were way too steep and didn’t have a rail. Because the tour was a one-way “road” we found a steward to take us on a roundabout that eliminated the need to climb higher before going back down. Unfortunately we still had about 60 of these very steep stone stairs to get down. I walked in front of Peter and the steward walked behind him as he very slowly made his way to the ground level. After Friday’s disaster, my stomach was in a knot the entire way and I was very glad to get back to the bottom. I think we’re done with stone stairways.

After seeing the house, we spent a little time in the garden. It was a relatively small area but had some beautiful flowers.

I have no idea what kind of flowers these are but I thought they were pretty.

After leaving the Castle, we headed another 30 minutes east to Aberdeen. It’s the 3rd most populous city in the country after Edinburgh and Glasgow. We had planned to see the Cathedral and a couple of other buildings in the city but I couldn’t find anyplace to park. I followed a couple of parking arrows but either ran into dead ends or construction. We finally gave up and headed to the beach instead.

If you remember, two weeks ago we were crazy hot. Well, that’s not a problem anymore as our temps have dropped by 45 degrees. When we got to the beach it was cloudy, windy and only about 50 degrees. We ate our picnic lunch at the beach and then Peter had his ceremonial touching a new body of water. Instead of wading in, which he usually likes to do, he just touched it. It was way too cold to get wet.

Here’s the video but it’s weird because for some reason, I was holding the phone in portrait view rather than landscape. I have no idea what I was thinking but oh well. It’s less than 30 seconds long, though, so I guess that’s not too bad.

Then we headed home to our townhouse in Ballater. It’s a nice lodge but, unfortunately, has a set of curved stairs. We’re both pretty paranoid so Peter limits his trips up and down. Fortunately, the bathroom is on the ground floor along with the bedroom which is great. The living room, kitchen and large balcony are upstairs.

Tomorrow we’re going to stay a little closer to home to give me a break from driving. We were in the car for 3 hours today and have over 2 hours on Friday when we move up to Inverness. If the weather is good we may play golf or we might visit a distillery. After dinner tonight we went to the beautiful indoor pool and hot tub so we may do that again tomorrow. We’ll see what the day holds. Good night everyone.