Last Pre-Violet Party!

We decided to have a last party at home before Violet decided to show up. This was sort of our equivalent of a baby shower, but we wanted to have something that was both guy and gal friendly.

Main course was just a "seafood bake" (really more of a "seafood steam"). Mussels, clams, shrimp, crab legs, onions, red potatoes, and fingerling potatoes steamed with white wine and fresh thyme.

Savannah

It was kind of a cloudy, dreary, rainy day. We first wandered over to Paula Deen's restaurant, but the lines were crazy long, so we decided that we'd just have to survive our trip to Savannah without consuming three pounds of butter each.

Nearby kitchen shop with a murderous knife stand.








Pecan pie.

Georgia State Fair and Savannah

This was the last road trip/vacation prior to the arrival of our munchkin. We wanted to keep it simple and local, so we spent the afternoon at the Georgia State Fair and then drove out to the sea.

Mandatory BBQ stop along the way.

Brunswick stew, pork sandwich, corn bread.

State fair had a neat rabbit show that we didn't see last year.

This rabbit is bigger than a lot of dogs.

Couldn't quite tell how large this one was.

The alpaca contest. In this section, they had fans blowing so you could more easily show off the coat on your alpaca.

Hooking up the milking machine.

This thing was sucking out milk at an impressive rate.

Mmm... meat.

Dole whip. Yum!

They always have these arts and crafts contests where they award blue ribbons for various categories. This entry was among other flower basket presentations, and I would have loved to have given this a blue ribbon! LOL!

No need to comment.

The south is well known for its frying skillz.

Various antique tractors and other farm equipment.


Peach cobbler a la mode.

Fresh squeeze lemonade, corn dog.

Youth livestock show.

Budweiser?

Then it was off to Savannah. It was raining pretty hard when we got in, so we just went to some restaurant/bar across the street from the hotel and got some dinner.

Sue's crabcakes.

My mussels.

Edinburgh back to Atlanta

Get up early, check out, catch the shuttle bus back to the airport.

Nice sunrise coming up over the North Bridge.

Front seat in the top of the double-decker bus.

Frenchie sandwich in CDG.

Edinburgh (Day 3)

Another day of playing tourist. First order of business, hunt down the local farmer's market.

Hunted!

Produce.

Oh deer!

Double entrende.

Cheese.

Fresh breads.

Fresh quail? I don't know my game birds as well as I should.

Sausage.

Seacritters.

More produce.

Time to eat! I ordered myself a "bacon buttie." What's that you ask?

It's basically a bacon sandwich. Bread + bacon.

Add a little mustard and a little brown sauce, what's not to like? (Also, the bacon is cut differently than the usual strips us Yanks are used to.)

More breads.

Scotch eggs. (huh?)

Hard boiled egg, wrapped in meat, breaded and deep fried. Genius!

National museum of Scotland. Really nice free museum. Wandered around for some a while, but I wish I had more time to see all of the exhibits.

They don't like Scientologists o'er there, either.

Lunch time. Edinburgh is right on the water, and as such they have a good supply of fresh seafood. Oysters!

A half-kilo pot of mussels. Mustard and chive flavored. Yum.

Kids being kids and just playing in the park.

Walked over to the train station.

Taxi pickup/drop off round-about.


I thought that this was interesting. Basically a performance report showing percentage of time trains were on time, late within a certain margin, etc. Imagine how ludicrous this would look for any of the train/subway systems in the US? (0%, 0%, 2%, 0%, 1%, ...)

The city observatory. They used to drop a ball from the top of the tower at 1pm so that ships in the harbor could watch and set their clocks (important for old-school naval navigation... sextants and all that jazz). That's also why they fire the cannon at the same time each day in case the weather was too poor for the ships to see the tower. Perhaps this is also where we get the wacky "ball drop" traditions for New Years...

View from a top the observatory over toward Holyrood and Arthur's Seat.

The Romans were here.

View the other direction back toward the castle.

On my way to hike up to Arthur's Seat, the bicycle racks by the parliament building. Looks like random shapes perhaps...

Until you get them all lined up and then they form the shape of a bike.

Slightly muddy in places.

It was actually nice that it wasn't sunny otherwise it would've been too warm.

I don't always choose the wisest/easiest paths to hike.

Up on top!





Made it back down. Time for a refreshing drink. Irn Bru is a Scottish soda that actually rivals Coca Cola here in Scotland. I think this is one of the few non-global products to challenge Coke reasonably well anywhere in the world.

Back over to the castle where they had fire outside the gate now.

Why back to the castle?

This is why. (I was too hungover the previous day to have ice cream as the first thing in my stomach.)

Really good, creamy, old-skool ice cream. Well worth the walk back.

I then made a stop in the cheesy "Scotch Whisky Heritage Center". They had some funny quotes on this cloth. I liked: "Gentleman, I have just met with the most wonderful adventure that ever befell a human being. As I was walking along the Grassmarket, all of a sudden, the street rose up and struck me in the face." -- Lord Rockville, 1877.

Scotch samples included with price of admission.

Cheesy Mr. Rogers-looking model of a Scotch distillery.



Ok, time to eat again. I was hankerin' for some bangers and mash, so that's what I got.

Suds.

Bangers and mash.

There was something on the menu called "mushy peas." I was curious, so I ordered it, and lo-and-behold, it was a big ol' bowl of ... you guessed it, mushy peas. Unfortunately, it didn't have all that much flavor.


Why are potato chip flavors in the US so boring?