Honeymoon Part 1

Hey all,

So J.P. and I got married last Saturday, and had the best wedding ever (in my un-biased opinion). We had a really nice ceremony at St. Mary's, a delicious dinner at my mom's house, a surprise dance routine, followed by dancing to my brother's band. The best.

We hung out for a couple of days after the wedding in Michigan, and on Tuesday night we left for Scotland by way of London. At the airport we told the people at the counter we were on our honeymoon, and they bumped us up to the most amazing first class seats ever. It was an overnight flight that had a three course dinner, seats that reclined to 180 degrees, and breakfast. Again, the best. JP and I could barely sleep we were so excited about the plane ride.

When we got into London we went into this weird "Yotel" in the airport, which was basically a ship cabin, to use the wireless and figure out how to get to our hotel. It turns out our hotel was on the opposite side of London. It was so far that it wasn't on any of our London maps in the guidebook. We took the subway up and got off at the stop the hotel's website described as being a "10 minute walk from the hotel". An hour later we were still dragging our suitcases around the neighborhood completely lost. Finally we found a bus map which was close enough that it had the streets we needed, and we schlepped our way up to the hotel. At this point we were totally exhausted, and as soon as we got into the room we fell asleep for 3 hours.

When we woke up we took the subway over to Islington, where Lucy used to live, and we happened to walk by her old apartment. We also had a beer in a pub I had been to before. Basically we went to all of the places in London I had already seen, but they were just as nice the second time around.

The next morning we took a train into Edinburgh from King's Cross Station. Obviously, being JP and I, we were really excited because we wanted to take pictures of us running through Platform 9 3/4 (from Harry Potter- if you don't know that I am surprised you read my blog). Unfortunately there was "construction", although we suspected the construction was a clever rouse to keep idiots from running into the walls of the platform. Apparently there is a fake platform outside, and JP took a picture of a random fellow-idiot running into the platform. On the way back we will be getting pictures of our own. Unfortunately King's Cross doesn't provide owls; I guess it's a BYOO type of tourist attraction.

When we got into Edinburgh we were amazed. London is nice, but Edinburgh is amazing. It is one of the most beautiful cities I have ever seen. We wandered around for a long time and ate steak pie and fish and chips. We had specifically booked a hotel near the bus station after the ordeal in London, and ended up staying in a super nice place right in the middle of town. We went on a ghost walk tour, which takes you into underground vaults and a graveyard, and that was shockingly fun (pun). This morning we wandered around again and had a Scottish breakfast- haggis included, and then got on the train again and came to Pitlochry, where we will be staying for the next 4 days. Our tour starts here. We were on the train and I looked out the window and elbowed JP to look at the beautiful scenery and buildings and over the speaker the conductor said, "We are now stopping in Pitlochry." Best. It is gorgeous. I will take lots of photos and upload them when I can. Anyway, this evening our tour starts and tomorrow we will do our first day on the tandem. Wish us luck!