What do you expect when visiting Scotland?(2)

[ASinclair]

At that time of the year the red Deer are usually----not always--- on the high-tops out of the way of the midges. Spotting them is a knack, as they could be well over a mile away. Once you get used to spotting the distant brown specs (most people expect to see Monarch of the Glen sized beast) ---------well they will see them, but as wee specs. Bring some good binoculars, they will help.

Here are some for you to enjoy! I know it sounds obvious, but they don't look this big at a mile distance, uphill and amongst the rocks.

Jock, is that Big Eric in the center?

[argyle24]

Well, I'm hoping and dreaming of going in August 2017. I hope to meet up with friends who live in Glasgow, I do want to do the touristy landmark-and-castle type activities (The Royal Mile, Edinburgh Castle, Wallace Monument...), I want to explore the beautiful scenery (Loch Ness, the Fairy Pools, Glencoe...). If I'm able to make the trip, I'll be competing at Cowal and a couple much smaller Games as this trip is meant to be my 'last hurrah' as a competitive dancer before I hang up the ghillies.

[Vlad]

As for me, my priority are mountains!. And national features of course.

[unixken]

Unfortunately I was a victim of a company lay-off at the start of the year, so the first thing to suffer were the funds I'd been setting aside for a trip. With that said, I still hope to get there one day.

A couple years ago I began researching my paternal grandfather's family (he emmigrated to the U.S. with my great grandparents, from Aberdeen, in 1904). Searching online through various geneology and records sites, I was fortunate to come across my grandfather's birth records, my great grandparents' wedding records, several census records for them, and so on. Where an address was given, I'd check it out with Google Earth's Street View. Most of the buildings/addresses have obviously been replaced, but the theater where my great grandparents were married is still there (it was a social hall of some kind before being converted to a theater), and so on. I'd really love to walk through their old neighborhood and take photos for the family.

Beyond that, I'd love to explore, sans a specific time-constrained itinerary. The people... The highlands, the pubs, the castles... Sites of Pictish, Celtic, and Viking importance... Sites of historic note... The tartan mills of the borders... Some whisky distilleries. To explore at my own pace, not to be at any specific place at any specific time.

[John_Carrick]

I was not a frequent visitor to Scotland prior to 2008 and as someone who had spent a lot of time in Ireland since I was a child and had lived here from 2003, my perception was that Scotland was rather similar.

The first time I drove into the Highlands I was completely bowled over by the expansive beauty of Scotland that just goes on and on for hundreds of miles. Ireland has more contained areas of beauty, linked by often long and boring roads. Half an hour North of Glasgow and you are surrounded by lochs and majestic mountains, that just don't seem to end.

However the craic in Irish pubs tends to be better!

[ctbuchanan]

I expect to visit not often seen family, share a dram and accept their friendly harassment at our Colonial ways. I expect to see friends I've made on the net (some on this site) who I also don't see often enough.

But most of all, I expect my eyes to leak when I feel like this....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOO5qRjVFLw

And they always do because every time I return I feel the pride this woman instilled in us every day of her nearly 100 years on this earth. Born in Glasgow in 1914 and moved with my father to the USA after WWII she never once forgot where she came from, and never once let us forget.

[MacKenzie]

Castle Leod, Eilean Donan, Portree, Gairloch.

Along the way... Father Bill saved me some typing...

Beyond that, I want to meet friends and others, and do a mix of touristy things around Scotland (castles and so on) and just lifting a glass in a bunch of quiet pubs where we can see and hear what's important to people who live there, perhaps meet some folks and make some friendships.

Edinburgh and Glasgow are beautiful, but not necessarily at the top of our lists. ...mostly I want to get off the more beaten paths and see... Scotland.

... and some distilleries.

[OC Richard]

"What would you expect to see when visiting Scotland?"

Or, if you have already visited: "What did you expect to see in Scotland and didn't /did?"

Very interesting Jock because this is pretty much the same question I've asked hundreds of times!

I work at Disneyland and I meet people from all over the world every day. I don't know why, but it's the Australians I always end up chatting with. After some general chat, I always ask them:

"What's the strangest thing you've seen since you've arrived? Or have you seen anything that you didn't expect to see?"

I always word it the same. I've got a wide variety of very interesting answers over the years. These responses have much to say about the differences between our cultures.

So for Jock to flip it around, and put ME in the position of the outsider-tourist, made me really pause for thought.

I first visited Scotland in 1986 and I didn't have much in the way of expectations, beyond knowing that it was my first visit to a foreign country, and I expected things to be different than home. I didn't have any romantic notions because I hadn't read any of the Scottish romantic literature. I was very involved in things Scottish at the time: Scottish Country Dancing, the Pipe Band thing, and a Strathspey & Reel Society. These fields put me in regular contact with Scottish people. So my perception of Scotland was of a current place that many friends of mine had come from, not some ancient historical fanciful place. Also I had taken Scottish Gaelic at university, and the teacher spent considerable time familiarizing us with the current situation in the Highlands. All this is to say that I had no expectations of castles and mist and Brigadoon.

My Father was the world's biggest Anglophile, and I was raised with things like the Battle Of Hastings and the War Of The Roses and various ancient Royal intrigues being ordinary table conversation. When I asked my Father why he expressed no interest in visiting Britain he said "the Britain I know is gone." So I certainly didn't expect to see the Britain of history on my visit.

To answer the question I ask Australians, I saw many strange things, things I didn't expect. The most strange perhaps was the lack of ice. We Californians drink iced tea and soft drinks with ice all day, and ice was NOT to be found in the Britain of the 1980s.

I didn't expect to find Indian food all over Britain, and I sure didn't expect that my trip to Britain would make me a lifetime lover of that cuisine.

I was impressed over and over by the very foreignness of Britain: the strange-looking towns and roads and cars, the driving on the other side of the road, the inexplicable road-signs, the oddly worded signs on shops.

Well... I did indeed see castles and standing stones and deer! We drove on a twisting narrow road through majestic mountains in a driving rain only to see a magnificent valley open up before us, with a lovely lake, and in the middle of the lake a picturesque castle! We drove around Arran and saw, up on a mist-shrouded hill, a proud stag! We walked through a castle, surrounded by elderly people speaking Gaelic! We passed a small village with a stone circle in a field of grass on the edge of town! And many other wonderful sights.

On our next visit, many years later in 2004, we were amazed by how Americanised Britain had become. "Ironmonger" had become "hardware". "Chemist" had become "Pharmacy". We rented a car- in 1986 we had hired one. There were Starbucks and Burger Kings and KFCs and Pizza Huts everywhere. Sad to see, really.

It's not just Britain. On my regular trips back to West Virginia I've seen it change from an isolated alien place to a place not all that different from my adopted home of California.

[Kanati]

My newest grandchild born last week in Edinburgh. My wife will get there in a few days and I will in the next two weeks. I plan on going full paparazzi on the little cutie.

As time permits, I will go to the castle and the museum again. Soak in the architecture and just hang. I also plan on hitting some of the charity/antique shops my daughter took me too the last time I was in town.

We also have tickets to the Virgin Money Street of Lights. I think it is music and decorations on the Royal Mile

[416 Rigby]

A sporting trip would be an adventure of a lifetime. A visit is out of reach for us, but if we came into some money, I'd love to see Big Eric in my crosshairs, salmon on the end of my fly line, grouse over the heather, and some good food and a pint by the fire to finish it off.

How's that for dreaming?