The Wright Place At The Wright Time

Friday, September 22, 2017

DAY 11: SCOTTISH COUNTRYSIDE AND FERRY TO IRELAND!

September 3, 2017

We woke up early to get on the bus and we would be driving out of SCOTLAND and we would be taking a FERRY (Our whole bus would be getting on the FERRY!) over to IRELAND! I have been anticipating IRELAND for so long. I am super excited!

This is what I wrote for our morning ROLL CALL on the bus:
We are leaving Scotland and the busy Royal Mile
But on to Ireland in true Fun For Less style.
We'll ride the coach for many hours and take a ferry too
Then in the Emerald Isle we'll wish good luck to you!

When driving out of SCOTLAND we saw Greyfriar's Bobby. This little statue of a dog is pretty special. You can touch his tongue for good luck. You can read about this adorable story right here:
http://scotlandwelcomesyou.com/greyfriars-bobby/

This is blurry cuz it was taken from the bus.

One of these windows up there is where J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter

We the SCOTTISH COUNTRYSIDE:

It's so green and beautiful here!

Then we got to where we would take the FERRY over to IRELAND:

Our bus would drive us onto this big ferry. We would get off and sit for an hour or two until we got to Ireland. You could walk around outside, which we did for a bit, or go inside where they have restaurants, shops, and couches to sit on that you could see outside.

Lots of trucks, cars and buses were loaded on this ferry. I couldn't believe it!

Goodbye SCOTLAND. We love you!!

When we got to IRELAND and back on the bus, this is what I wrote for ROLL CALL:
We crossed the water by ferry boat
It was a fun thing to do.
Now we are in Ireland
So happy to see it all with you!

We drove to BELFAST, IRELAND to our hotel and the hotel had our dinner waiting for us:

So we spent days and days with our bus drivers and the other bus driver in our group has been asking a lot of questions about our church after hearing all of the stories our tour guide has been telling us along the way, and after stopping at all of the Church History Sites, he has become very interested in what we believe. So the people from that bus is going to give him a Book Of Mormon.

Our tour guide asked us if our bus would like to give our bus drive a BOOK OF MORMON as well because he too is very interested in our church. We definitely did want to give him one. Fortunately, one of the passengers on our bus brought an extra one to give away so we decided we'd write a quick note to him in the back with our testimony, or a favorite scripture, etc... Well, I have not been feeling so good on this trip. Well I've felt ok but I have had the most horrible cough since Day 2 of this trip. And tonight I was not feeling well at all. In fact, I just wanted to go straight to bed and I was thinking of missing the tour tomorrow to just sleep. But then I thought, gee! I'm finally in Ireland and I don't want to miss a thing. But I couldn't wait to get to sleep!

Well, the passenger that had the extra BOOK OF MORMON came up to me at dinner and said they had been thinking about it and he thought it was appropriate if I would write a little poem and then me, being the one to give the BOOK OF MORMON to our BUS DRIVER.

I told him I would be honored to do that but deep down I was freaking out because I would have to write the poem tonight and it was already 7:00 and we hadn't eaten dinner yet and I did not feel good! But as soon as we got done with dinner I immediately got to work writing the poem. I didn't want it be too preachy but I wanted him to know how much the book means to us. I was to give it to him tomorrow. He could only drive for 10 days and be off for a few before working again. Well tomorrow would be our last day with him so we would give it to him before he left us. We will miss him!

This is what I came up with:
Dear Dan,
We are so sad to see you part.
You've been so amazing from the start.

We've thoroughly enjoyed your knowledge of the things
you've shared with us.
Your comments, your jokes, your beautiful voice
that filled this Big Blue Bus.

Because you've become so dear to us, there's something we want to do
We'd like to share this book with you, what's in it is so true.

It's another witness of Jesus Christ. It's changed our lives indeed.
We promise it will do the same for you, if you will choose to read.

We've left little messages in the back of this sacred book,
So when you get a chance, go ahead and take a look.

Our paths will probably never cross again between you and me,
but that's OK because we have such great memories.

May God bless you all along your way,
Farewell our friend, in our hearts you'll always stay.

I'll tell you his response to this on our next day of the trip after I read it to him.

This was a relaxing travel day but I can't believe I am really in IRELAND!!

DAY 10: EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND!

September 2, 2017

Today was a super fun day! We stayed in EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND all day! I was so excited to see the EDINBURGH CASTLE and then SHOP all day down the ROYAL MILE. I love that we are staying right on the ROYAL MILE and its so convenient to everything.

One thing I have to mention is that we had a great bus driver, DAN. I tell ya, the buses, which they call, COACHES, would get in some really tight squeezes and would come so close to each other we would all hold our breaths. I was so shocked we never got in a wreck. So today I thought for ROLL CALL I would write a poem for him:
Dan the coach driver has been the best!
He's driven us through England, Scotland, North, South, East and West.
He's driven through winding roads and really tight spots it's true
But has always kept us safe, so Dan, WE LOVE YOU!

Dan, our Romanian COACH DRIVER from Ireland!

The man in the kilt was our city tour guide and he walked us up to the castle and then we were on our own.

As we were leaving, we saw the road blocked off and all of these bikes. We found out it was the Tour of Britain! Kind of cool as I had just watched the Tour of Utah a few weeks ago!

The road blocked off for the bike race. Notice the streets and how they are paved? It's like this all over the place and it's hard for me to walk on!

They have really cool building like this all over the place here. It's kind of blurry because it's taken through my bus window!

Remember when we were in London and I told you the Queen was in Scotland? Well the second ship is her ship and that's what she rode on to get to Scotland! We stopped to see it!

I snapped a photo of Mom and the Scottish Tour Guide

Then we made a quick stop to see one of the summer homes of the Queen. Queen Mary loved it here!

They wouldn't let us in so we had to take photos through this beautiful gate!

When we were driving around we saw really cool buildings, and where J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter, and we saw where some famous people lived and it was interesting.

I just took a photo of this cuz it said Paisley. I love my Paisley!

Where this red door is, is where Robert Louis Stevenson was born.

We learned that people used to white out or board up their windows because they got taxed on how much sunlight came in through their windows. Can you believe that? That is insane!

Here are few things we saw as we walked up the street to see EDINBURGH CASTLE!

Not quite sure how they did this balancing act!

We saw lots of cool buildings like these.

And we are here! This is EDINBURGH CASTLE!

I don't know why I keep putting photos of the walkways but I just couldn't get over them. They are so bumpy!

This was called the Great Hall and they still use it today for dinners and fancy shindigs!

Just a few things inside the castle:

This fireplace was huge!

These pictures were humongous!

We walked through this War Memorial and it was really neat.

We can't take pics of the CROWN JEWELS but we did see this crown and sword

You know the King James who translated the Bible? Well we saw the little room he was born in:

This was the room King James was born in.

The very small window from the room he was born in.

We saw lots of cool stuff in the castle but I'm not going to put tons of pics on here but I thought this one was cool. It's a room in the very dark, cold DUNGEON. I could see how it could have rats, freezing cold conditions, and I could see how a prisoner could get so sick in this living condition. Sad!

Just a few awesome views from the castle.

This little patch of green is a PET CEMETERY at the castle.

This Cannon, Mon Meg is still in working condition. The stones below are what was made to go in the cannon. It can hold a stone weighing 330 lbs.

This was Queen Mary's sanctuary.

I loved seeing everything in the castle. We were not on a tour in the castle, we just went wherever we wanted and we could stay as long as we wanted too because for the rest of the day we got free time. We shopped all day and went to dinner. It was a fun day!

Here's some of what we saw walking down the ROYAL MILE from the castle: