6/2/07 Day Ten - Saturday

6/2/07 Day Ten. Saturday.

I'm up early trying to catch this up from the hotel in Inverness. It's 5:30 and I've been up for a while. Terry's already up and out, wanting to walk a bit along the river Ness and snap a few pictures before we have to go. From what we can see of the city from here, Inverness is an absolutely beautiful city. We both wish we could spend more time here. Perhaps next time.

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Later that morning:
We're on the train to Alnmouth. I've been trying to establish a wifi connection, as I wanted to log in to aol and make a "favorite" for Mom, so she could get to the blog.. but alas.. No Christmas :(

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Later:

Arrived at Alnmouth and made a call for a taxi to take us to our new home. As luck would have it, the taxi driver we called was the father of the woman who runs our cottage. That turned out to be quite lucky, as when we arrived here, at first we couldn't find our landlady. He knew right where the cottage was, though, and brought us over here, where we found Laura still working on getting the cottage ready for us. We were early, and she wasn't ready for us, so Derek (the driver) was a real sweetie, and he gave us a mini tour of Alnwick (pronounce Annick) then dropped us at a nice place for lunch. We made arrangements for him to pick us up in a couple more hours at the market up the street. After leisurely enjoying our hamburgers and cokes we made our way up the street to the grocery. Alnwick looks like a lovely town, and I'm really looking forward to exploring it some more. It was "market day" and there was a farmer's market going on, and tourists were walking the streets browsing the shops and going in and out of the many restaurants, shops and pubs that line the charming streets. We picked up a couple of days worth of food at the grocery, then rode back to the cottage, Derek talking all the way and pointing out sights along the road. Once the food was stored and our bags were haulted up to our rooms, I was exhausted.

We three women stayed home and lounged, but Terry still had some energy so he went back out for a walk. He came home in a great mood, having walked back to the town and seen all sorts of interesting things for us to go see during the week. One is the used book store here, the largest in Great Britain. I'm looking forward to spending an afternoon or two browsing through that.

Gretchen and I tippled a few drams of Jura, which is strangely quite a bit less expensive in England that it was in Scotland where it is made, then I toddled off to bed early. My back was aching from hauling our bags all over the continent, and our big four poster bed looked just too inviting.