Dundee to Pitlochry

Warning: Lots of pictures ahead!

I feel as if I've been here for weeks instead of days, because I am definitely fulfilling my obligation (to myself) of having as many new adventures as possible! After an impossibly gorgeous day in St Andrews on Thursday, and a lovely 1.5 hr walk around the town, Em & I trundled off to Dundee on Friday for a bit of shopping and exploring. We were hoping for sunshine, since we'd planned an afternoon at the Camperdown Country Park, but the drizzly and gray weather turned out to be a blessing, because it meant that we only had to share the wildlife centre with one other couple.

  field in St Andrews

The Dundee wildlife centre was very cool. It felt a bit like someone had plunked down a few rusty, maybe-not-so-sturdy fences around a few animals and thought, "lets charge people for this!" Even with the rainy weather, we managed to see all of the animals, including 4 adorable otters and two European brown bears. We must have spent 25 minutes in front of their cage. The park itself was huge as well, and we'll probably go back for a visit. 

 Entrance to wildlife centre

Today we traveled to Pitlochry, in Perthshire, for the Highland Games! It was, as is appropos for Scotland, raining, making the field impossibly muddy, but Pitlochry has only canceled the games for World War II, so a little weather meant nothing. Kudos to all of the runners and bikers who someone managed to not wipe out on the muddy track. Did I mention the field was all grass as well? We saw traditional events as well as Scottish events like throwing the caper and the hammer throw, all done with men in kilts. There were bagpipe competitions, dancing, and booths of sweets and games. And an incredibly muddy field. I had an awesome day, despite the traveling conditions. If you waited for sun in Scotland, you would never manage to travel anywhere. Both Emily & I loved Pitlochry- it's such a charming little town. 

 This is one of the bagpipers. Everyone else had traditional shoes/socks on, but she was rocking the wellies.

He's throwing a hammer- you can see it just above the left net.

 The clock in the train station at Perth- which is pronounced like PEAR-TH.

 This is us with Armon. He was amazing, and we got to use props in our photo! Ferdinand from Germany took an excellent picture for us :)

 A view of the River Tummel, from the dam and fish ladder. 

 My extremely muddy feet and shoes. I'm pretty sure some of that mud will stay with me for the rest of my life.

 Oh, and I won a bottle of whiskey at one of the booths. You could buy 5 tickets for a pound to support the high school, and one of mine matched up with the whiskey. I have no idea what I'll do with it, but I'm so pleased to win such a quintessentially Scottish thing at the Highland Games.

A jump into the North Sea is in order tomorrow, and then off to Edinburgh and Geneva all of next week!