man a month past oh fuck nearly two months lol…and i finally get around to posting about my trip to scotland. better late than never eh.  and i even decided to give the flickr slideshow a whirl.  i don’t know why i never used it for my past trips.  has it always been there?  mysteries…

the thoroughness of this recollection of the trip is suspect at best, given it’s based purely on the photos taken.  i didn’t bother jotting notes of my trip, since most days were taken up with drinking.  lots of drinking.  fuck, so much drinking.  i have a newfound fear of drinking with glaswegians now.

GLASGOW
i arrived wednesday morning.  max came by the airport to pick me up…him and patsy had been in scotland for a while already sorting out wedding details and concurrently having their work visas get fucked.  that’s another story tho…and not even mine to tell.  so moving on…i dropped my luggage off at the hotel before we roamed glasgow.  this was my fourth time in the uk, but my first time in scotland.  the other three times were based solely in london (and a side trip to the english countryside).  we grabbed lunch with one of max’s friend who works for the company both max and i used to work for (it was a scottish firm). after lunch, we went for my kilt fitting.  yea…kilt fitting.  word.  i’m in scotland for a wedding, fuck yea i’m wearing a kilt.  a nice one at that.  made of alot of wool…in the mild/warm scottish spring weather.  i would regret this later.  but for now, i just wanted a kilt.  we roamed some more afterwards, and most likely drank beer.  it’s sorta fuzzy.  i was most likely groggy and jetlagged and inhaling coffee later in the evening.  anyhoo…moving onto the next day.

EDINBURGH
max and patsy had wedding details to sort out, so i took a daytrip out to edinburgh.  there was something weird about glasgow as we were walking around the day before, and i figured it out when i got to edinburgh…no asian tourists!  actually, hardly any tourists at all in glasgow.  in edinburgh tho…yea, everywhere.  definite tourist city…and rightly so.  it’s very picturesque and touristy, with it’s royal mile, closes, and of course, edinburgh castle.  pretty place.  tho one aspect let me down.  i was hoping they’d play up more of the haunted aspects of the castle…which they didn’t.  at all.  sad.  i also decided to climb up arthur’s seat, this massive hill in holyrood park.  i don’t know what i was thinking…that was a bad idea.  i have enough things in my life to remind me that i’m out of shape…i didn’t need a vacation to remind me too.

i got back to glasgow in the evening and we went to a house party. more drinking ensued.

MAX AND PATSY’S WEDDING
we had lunch with max and patsy’s family before the wedding in the afternoon.  from there on out it was a brief wedding reception, then nonstop drinking til i don’t know what time.  3am?  4am?  i don’t remember.  and that wool kilt and ensemble?  yea, that was painful.  i stripped off the wool jacket shortly after the reception, but still had on the wool kilt and wool vest.  blargh.  on the flipside tho, the sporran was totally rockin’.  i kept my wallet and iphone in there.  handy.  it’s like a purse…but manlier.

POST-WEDDING
we had lunch with max’s family the day after, and then roamed glasgow.  we drank more at night.  yea.

AMSTERDAM
i planned a nice one day layover in amsterdam before heading back to nyc.  it’d been years since i saw lysha and alice, and i thought it’d be a nice place to (ironically) detox after scotland.  lysha lived out in ijburg, and we just laid on the beach in front of her apartment for most of the day.  we grabbed dinner in amsterdam, then roamed the canals for a bit.  <3 amsterdam.  i also really wanted to see the old neighborhood…the amsterdam branch of the company i worked for was shuttered months prior, and the old animation space was turned into an underwear shop.  how sad.

REMAINDERS
oh, i got my niece a mini-kilt and a clan pin from edinburgh, and my brother-in-law a bottle of bowmore whisky.  you’re welcome dave!