Knittinggarden

After Iceland, we flew to Glasgow to start the main portion of the trip. We had intended to spend two nights in Glasgow and take a day trip into the western highlands but I messed up the dates and we only had one day there. We took a cab from the airport and the driver kindly gave us an overview of driving in Britain. This would prove helpful later. 😊.  We were able to check into our hotel early and then headed out for food and to do a hop on hop off bus tour. Buying the tickets online proved to be a mistake since the bus company needed a printed copy and we wasted a bunch of time finding a way to print them. But once we got going, we got a nice overview of the city without much trouble.  Glasgow is a pretty big city with a lot of interesting architecture. It was very walking friendly and pretty easy to find our way around in. Our hotel was right next to the Central train station which made getting to Edinburgh the next day an easy prospect.  We came across a women's dre...

We'll finish up Iceland now. We've done so many things that I've gotten behind on my chronicle. If you're following along on Instagram, you're up to date (@lboatsman).  We went on a Golden Circle tour our second day in Reykjavik. We were picked up at our hotel by the Troll Tours small bus, which luckily had room for us since the hotel clerk had reserved for the next day by mistake. Our driver was a perky and entertaining young woman who drove rather exuberantly and nicely didn't talk constantly the whole day. She likes to do the tour in reverse so as to avoid some of the crowds. It was a cold, rainy day.  Our first stop wasn't one of the main attractions but was a mall in a small town with an unpronounceable name. She stopped there to show us where, when the mall was being built, a crack was discovered that was actually the edges of the North American and European tectonic plates. We would see much more of these rock walls on a later stop today.  There was a...

After doing the great adventure post one, I noticed I had neglected to chronicle the other family visits this summer. The Princess came! For almost a week! We had the pleasure of her company without Prince Charming, who visited after she left. He was in Seattle for work and stayed one night; fixing one of the tv stands was a great contribution.  Anyway, the Princess helped us cook, assisted with some arts and crafts, hung out on the raft and in the yard, went to a Mariners game, and enjoyed a larger family gathering, which included cousins from California and more local relatives. We also took a drive to Mt St Helens, which happened on a beautiful  day and was so interesting. The time, of course, went by much too quickly.  Great visits, great memories. Can't wait for more. 

If you've been following along here, you know that prior to the kidney transplant, we were tied to a dialysis center for about three years. The only travel we did was by car and if it was for more than a couple of days, Pat had to schedule dialysis along the way. The transplant meant we were free to roam and we began to make plans in June. Despite some low white count issues and some viruses popping up, Pat was cleared to leave the country. We left on Monday afternoon, Sept. 18, and arrived at our first stop in Iceland early the next morning.  Our first glimpse of Iceland from the air showed how barren it is.  We tried to stay up all day and only ended up taking a couple of short, inadvertent naps. We were lucky and got to check into our hotel room when we got there at 9 am so had a home base. We first walked back to a little deli we had seen from the bus and had a couple of pastries and coffee. Then we walked down to the waterfront to a statue called Sun Voyager, which may re...