Friday 8th August 2008

It was 11.00am before I finally woke up from my slumber and when I opened my eyes, I wished I hadn’t woken up.   The rain was still coming down.   Monika was sitting on the edge of the bed playing her Nintendo DS as if nothing was wrong but I was lying there, one eye open looking at the rain hitting the window.   Was this really August?   OK, it’s Scotland and it always rains in Scotland but come on!    Give me a break God!   I checked my mobile phone and I saw that a friend in Germany had sent me a SMS message.    It read: “it’s 30 degrees celsius over here!   Really sweating!   What’s the weather like over there?!  Ha! Ha!”.    I growl.   That friend isn’t getting any Scottish shortbread when I go back.

After doing my usual in the bathroom (having a nap on the toilet, having another nap in the shower), I went through to the kitchen and by some miracle, the rain had now actually stopped! (God heard my pleas!)    So while I was preparing a brunch for myself, my mother and Monika started debating where to go for the remainder of the day.    Our original intention was to go to Ayr to look at Rabbie Burns’ haunts but since we were so tired from the previous day and decided to sleep in, it was a bit late to go that far - so where to go now?    I decided to eat my food and let everyone else argue over the day’s plans.    I’m a kind of “follow everyone else and have a quiet life” kind of guy.    I leave the planning and the arguing to others.

It was finally decided to go to Hopetoun House which is nearby.    Have a spot of lunch, have a look around the stately manor then dash across to see my grandmother-in-law who lives not so far away.   Sounds like a plan.    If only the rain would stop long enough…..

I’ll leave it to Hopetoun House’s website to tell you the history of the place but it’s quite an impressive house.   Very full of history and I would be able to show you a lot more if they didn’t have such a strict ban on photography and video cameras.   Basically they only allowed cameras without a flash which was pretty useless because each room was in virtual darkness!

But the highlight of the visit was that they were filming a TV commercial in the gardens of Hopetoun House for Smirnoff Vodka!   From what I can gather, they paid the Earl of Hopetoun big bucks for the privacy of the garden because they didn’t want strangers wandering in and interrupting the shoot.    But it was fun to watch them from the windows!   Basically you had the guy in the gorilla outfit jumping out from the bushes and scaring everyone and you had other people running about in their swimsuits!    My mother and Monika thought the guys in their swimsuits were not “bad looking”!

When I got to the roof of the building, I got my video camera out and I was able to grab a very short piece of film of the gorilla but unfortunately not with his mask on :

After seeing the gorilla prowling about, we decided to test the Earl’s tea and scones. This is where we got a bit of a shock because he was charging a fortune!    Basically I decided to have a sandwich and so did Monika.    My mum and dad had a scone.   The four of us had a cup of tea.    The bill came to 20 pounds ($37)!    They almost had to resuscitate me with CPR when I got the bill!    The waiter just stood there and said cheerfully “well the Earl didn’t become an Earl without charging 20 pounds for tea and scones sir!”

After leaving the cafe with my wallet much lighter, we went to see my grandmother.   I’ll skip over this part because I don’t want to reveal too much about my family in the blog.     I haven’t got their permission to talk about them here so I can’t say too much.    But after my visit to see her, we went for dinner to a French bistro.    Now to me, French food is croissants, cheese and snails.   I know, terrible stereotypes but I just haven’t had enough experience with French food.    So my parents took Monika and I out for dinner which was really a belated birthday celebration for Monika.    I was making lots of jokes about Monika being German going into a French restaurant because she always says that she doesn’t like French people too much (it’s just a cultural / personality thing between the French and the Germans) and she would growl back “I like the food though!”.

The food was really good although I was surprised to see pizza on the menu!    I ended up with French sausages and mashed potatoes which were unbelievably delicious and I had some kind of a pizza-like starter that I forget the name of now.

I shouldn’t blog too much about food because now I’m dying to eat something!

To be continued…..

Related posts:

1. Back from Scotland!
2. Scotland - the ongoing mission
3. Arriving in Caledonia
4. German restaurant replaces waiters with serving tracks
5. Exchanging social network usernames is a smart idea