General Travelogue - A Long Weekend In Aberdeen - Friday and Saturday

Friday

So, the train from York to Aberdeen (with a changeover in Edinburgh) takes roughly six hours. I'm good with long trips (the 550 mile run to Willow Hill on a yearly or bi-yearly basis has been good for that) but I'm still getting used to this train travel thing. I haven't gotten my head around everything, though; I still have the urge to bolt madly across to the next platform despite being reassured that seven minutes (or ten, or four) is enough time to get there. I still think that ten minutes or less is *not* a good amount of time, it's being practically late. Anyway, the trip was good, and there was a lot of cool scenery, especially when the train got nearer to the coast. There were a lot of cool horse farms, which of course got my immediate notice, and lots of dairy and sheep farms as well. I saw a seal hauled out on a rock just off the coast, and we both saw a four-point roe buck in a meadow, but I didn't get a picture of either of them, sorry.
I mentioned being good on long trips, right? Well, long trips in a car, certainly. Long trips in a train, however, are new, and having to stand for roughly an hour and a half of it didn't help. Apparently I can manage about five hours on a train before I start feeling off, and that extra hour did some interesting things. Luckily I'm not prone to bouts of tossing my cookies, but I did feel extremely hung over by the time we got to Aberdeen, which the resulting few minutes' walk to the hotel didn't quite banish. The hotel itself was very nice, and our room was large and faced the street, which was both interesting and kind of loud. It was still light enough that we theoretically could of done some sightseeing, but I was fairly dopey and not tracking at all. So we checked in, ate some dinner in the hotel restauraunt, and curled up to watch a couple hours' worth of the Simpsons before calling it a day.

Saturday

Felt much better after a long sleep, so we grabbed breakfast at the hotel (cereal, toast [in a toast rack! #laughs#] and tea) and headed out to see the city. Aberdeen is a pretty big place, and most of the buildings in the center of town are tall and imposing and either made of granite or faced with it, which gives it a very distinctive look. We were lucky enough to have gorgeous weather that day, so we could see the mica in the granite sparkling in the sunshine, which made it look even prettier. The main drag is called Union Street, and it cuts right through town down to the coast, so we were able to follow it the whole way down to the beach, noting on the way places that we wanted to visit later. This included a few pubs, and a random German Fish Festival right in the middle of town, complete with sausages, mead, and a giant fake pirate ship that served as a bar. No, I don't know either, but it did look cool #grins#
The first beach we came to was closed, as they are apparently trying to rebuild the coastline by putting in large chevron-shaped breakers to help reduce the loss of sand. We stood and watched giant backhoes moving four-ton rocks around in the sand- I bet they had to run a raffle to decide who got that job, as it looked way fun. We walked down further and found an open beach and spent some time taking pictures and trying to avoid getting splashed by the tide (I wasn't too good at that; my jeans got soaked to the knees #grins#) Apparently people surf in Scotland; who knew? It seemed abit cold for that, but they had dry suits on, so they were probably pretty cozy. Far less understandable were the half-dozen college kids who showed up and went swimming; I admit to being tempted but I don't think even I could have put up with that much cold for that long.
We walked back up to the center of town for lunch and tried out the first pub, a historical one called "Old Blackfriars." They had a big page of traditional Scottish fare, and on the recommendations of our waiter (nice guy, but so new he hadn't had the shiny rubbed off yet) I had something called "stovies, " which turned out to be a sort of mix of ground beef, mashed potatoes, and stuffing. It was extremely excellent, and just the sort of thing for cold winter nights, so I've looked up the recipe for later usage. The waiter seemed a bit surprised that I ordered it, actually; I got the feeling that most tourists weren't brave enough to try something they were unfamiliar with. But they're in another country, for the gods' sake; you don't go to another country in order to have everything the same as it is at home. Well, I don't, anyway. I suppose there are a certain amount of people who do, and fairly often too if Eddie Izzard has gotten around to writing a bit about it. But I digress.
At any rate, we dropped into the hotel briefly so I could get some socks (I've been wandering around the UK in my Crocs) and headed back down the street to the local ice rink for the afternoon public skating session. We rented skates and joined the throng and had a great time. We ended up with hockey skates, as I didn't think to request figure skates for myself, but I had skated a bit in hockey skates before so I got the hang of it again after a while. I did almost fall a couple of times digging for a toe pick that wasn't there, though. And Austin can skate! Both of us were a little shaky at first, but we soon warmed up and were zooming around quite respectably, although of course being left far behind by several small children who raced around with alarming speed. There were no major spills or crashes, though, and we didn't fall even once, which surprised us a bit. The skate stewards were nice; I talked to one for a bit. I mentioned that it must be a pretty cool job, and he said that he was just glad when it was quiet like this ("this" being about fifty or sixty people crammed into one hockey arena) and not busy as when it was busy it tended to involve fighting and blood. I was horrified, but he said it could be fairly common when things got crowded. A boy turned up during the conversation and obviously he and the steward knew each other quite well; when the steward mentioned fighting he grinning and grabbed the steward by the collar and did some fake punches. The steward laughed and chased him halfway around the arena kicking ice at him, I think mainly to be a bit of a show-off #grins# I still can't skate backwards, but I was managing to almost get back to my old trim and did a little showoff-ing myself, with a few sharp turns and skating on one foot (which is less showing off and more giving my ankles a break #grins#) We managed to skate the whole hour and a half with only a few rests, which is not bad considering neither of us had been on the ice for at least six years. And it was nice ice, too; I've been skating on lakes and ponds my whole life, so even as chewed up as this stuff got with fifty people of varying skill levels skating on it, it was still miles more slick and responsive than anything I'd ever skated on before.
Tired now, we gave our skates back and watched the zamboni for a bit before hiking back up the long road to the hotel for some tea and a bit of a rest before dinner at a teriffic curry place. We then went back to the hotel and watched the last half of Kubrick's version of the Shining, which is skillfully done but differs from the book in several respects. And I still can't be bothered by Jack Nicholson. Worth the watch, though. I can't believe I hadn't seen it before now.
We had originally planned to leave on Sunday, but we decided to stay another day, which I'll get to in the next entry.