Ok, we’re getting pretty good at this international traveler thing – guess we’re used to it by now. Yesterday was a late wake up day – largely due to jet lag and being up from 1-4 am and then falling back asleep. I set my watch for 8 am, bad thing about an alarm clock on your wrist is it takes about 1 second to turn it off, and when it’s off, it’s off… So we slept in, had breakfast late and then ended up at the Victoria and Albert museum, seeing a photograph collection from Elton John & his partner.

We then got to spend an exciting couple of hours working remotely from the hotel – funny listening to Cindy’s work calls – which inside a non-profit are very different than my calls for sure. I’d say the non-profit world is more “touchy feely” than e-commerce tech/travel but that might be an understatement.

We were able to go meet and have dinner with Nick’s (brother in law via Tammy) brother and wife + son. We went to the Sky Garden Bar – 35th floor in downtown London. We were very impressed with ourselves in taking the subway to downtown from our hotel. Cindy was super-impressed with schooling me in the use of the subway turnstile and that we didn’t need to purchase a ticket and could in fact just use our credit card or phone directly on the machine to open our path to train victory. Sort of stinks when she schools me in “tech stuff.”

The view was simply amazing, we sat and watched the sunset and were able to see all around downtown London in a 360 degree view. It does require a reservation to get in, which was done by Cindy of course, and worked out perfectly.

This morning (after a great night of sleep I might add) we had an early breakfast at our hotel, then took the subway to Knights Cross train station, waited and got right onto our train to Edinburgh. I love Train travel as it’s just better and more relaxing than air travel for sure. Speaking of breakfast, the breakfast in our local hotel was really amazing. Last year in Portugal the breakfast was more buffet style (more European) – at our hotel it was tableside ordering/menu service but the food was fantastic. The one thing I really appreciate is that the food portions are not large – when you order a cappuccino it’s about 6 oz and reasonable. When I see people in the US with their 32 oz super large caffeine/sugar Starbuck Big Gulps and consider how much sugar and caffeine is there it’s truly mind blowing. Combine that with the number of people with diabetes and being overweight and well enough said on that.

We arrive around 3 pm – I’m sure there will be a walking expedition to the castle or some other fun adventure this afternoon. I’ve never been to Scotland (nor has Cindy) so this is a real treat – we can stumble through language translation together. A kilt is right out of the question…. I’m here to see cute sheep and fluffy cows as they make me laugh. I know there are other things here – history, castles, lore, art, etc. but they all pale in comparison to a fluffy highland cow. See future post on “pictures with a cow..” coming soon….

On a more serious note, a lot of the photos in the exhibit were a reminder of all of the difficult things the US has gone through in the last 50-70 years. Pictures of segregation, black panthers, 9/11, January 6th, etc. I didn’t take many photos of the exhibit, just a couple and thought they were interesting, and a reminder of all the things that have come before – and that with the upcoming election we’ll get through again.