I will start by answering the question everyone has weighing down their thoughts. Yes, I did see mario on the streets of Aberdeen. Now that that question is answered, onto your regularly scheduled update.
This week consisted of more travels throughout the week than normal. Tuesday consisted of nearly 9 hours of travel time, stopping in 7 different towns/cities. For those who homeschool or just enjoy maps, feel free to use this as an opportunity to practice reading maps & tracking my journey. It started like most of my travels, with a bus from Newmilns west to Kilmarnock & another north-east to Glasgow. From there I caught a train down south-east to Lancaster England then another up north to Carnforth. Here I had my first encounter with friends from Colorado. I met up with Brian & Christa for a brief exploration of the town & lunch. It was very nice to catch up a bit & discuss the differences between the UK & USA. I wish I had timed things better when I planned the trip to allow more time with them, but alas I had to catch my next train part way into the meal.
Train three out of four for Tuesday brought me south-east to the city of Leeds. With a little more than an hour to kill, I walked around a bit & started to miss my Scottish cities. The main thing I saw there were shopping malls & I stopped into a place to do a bit of 10 pin bowling. This was not my favorite since there were no bowling shoes, the only weight of balls were 8lbs & 10lbs, & each time I touched the ball it was like grabbing a stick of butter. Needless to say, I did not play well. After a little more wondering, I went & got my next train north-east to Scarborough. This little city had a cool 1950’s style theatre, shops, & a lot of people at the bus stop going to the same place I was, up north to Whitby. This is when I learned Whitby was more of a tourist place than I thought. A majority of the people waiting for the bus had English accents but obviously had not had much experience with buses based on the questions they were asking. This led me to realize that many of them were going on holiday & thought driving to Whitby was too long so they took the train/bus instead.
Once I got to my destination in Whitby, I was very much ready to eat & go to bed. So I found a nice place for dinner off of the water, then went & got some sleep before day 2 of heavy travel. The day started with an early morning walk, since I have learned that is when it is best to get a mental map due to lack of people. It was at this time that I stumbled upon the reason I came to Whitby. As I approached the top of some stairs I looked up & saw it, Caedmon’s Cross. This cross is the memorial of a monk who, in the late 7th century, was miraculously given the ability to compose poetry. This same man is who I was named after. So I did a photo shoot with more photos than I need, but when else am I going to get the opportunity to see my name carved into a stone cross?
Once I was done with taking photos with very messy hair (I forgot my hairbrush in Newmlins), I made my way to a cafe for breakfast then some more exploration. However, I did have to get on with my day since I had to check out of my hotel & go see Whitby Abbey. This spectacular monastery ruin is where I developed a rivalry with the count himself, Dracula. It started with me reading the signs about the area, which included mentions of Caedmon repeatedly. But what also was mentioned was how the book Dracula takes place there as well. I was hopeful that there may be merch with Caedmon on it, but I was greatly disappointed since almost all of the gift shop was Dracula themed. Hence why I now have a rivalry with Dracula.
Once I got over the fact that I would not be able to purchase anything with my name on it, I made my way to the first bus of the day. North along the coast I went to Saltburn-by-the-Sea. It was a cute little town, but I didn’t get to spend much time there before I took my train west to Darlington to get my connecting train north to Edinburgh. I would have liked to have had a little time here to see the city again, but my train ran late & I had approximately 3 minutes to navigate the train station to catch my train west to Glasgow. Then was my standard trip ending of a bus south to Kilmarnock then east to Newmilns.
The days following did not contain nearly as many buses & trains. I did my normal routines of walks & work. This brings us to Saturday, where I decided to go to a city no one suggested for me to go to, but has been mentioned a lot so I wanted to say I’ve been there, Aberdeen on the northern east coast. Known as the Granite City, I could definitely tell why. Everywhere you look, it’s grey. The architecture was cool, but something about it felt incomplete for some reason. Like you put a base coat of primmer on everything & never came back to add color. I spent a couple hours here exploring. I went to a cafe & walked up to Aberdeen University where I spotted some color in the form of veins that had turned red growing on a building. It was near there that I spotted another red thing, a man dressed in a Mario outfit. That’s all the information I can give you, I don’t know what he was doing or why.
Aberdeen overall was largely shopping areas & college students. I’m glad I checked it off my list but understand why no one had suggested going there. I made my way home to eat & play Magic with the guys before going to bed. Which brings us to today, pretty standard Sunday except that there was lunch after morning service so I got to spend a little more time talking with people. I also wrote this during my afternoon instead of waiting till after evening church so that I don’t have to stay up tonight.
