09.26.04 | Vectoring In On Haggis

Day Three: The plan was to wrap up our two-city tour and head north to the central part of Scotland. (In the earlier planning stages, I decided that, with our limited time, the Highlands were too far to visit on this trip.) I had booked us in the Kenmore Hotel, which is conveniently located in the little town of Kenmore.

Claudine had arranged for a rental car so we waited at our Glasgow hotel in the morning to be picked up. And waited some more. Apparently, there were some problems at the branch renting us the car. A driver finally came by an hour late. Didn't these people know they were dealing with VIPs?

I had requested a new Vauxhall Astra. Vauxhall has a similar image in the U.K. to Chevrolet: the cars are kinda boring but generally OK for rental fleets or if you're getting one as a company car. The new Astra, however, is supposed to be a pretty decent drive.

Alas, the branch was out of Astras. So we were upgraded to a Vectra, which is a family-size saloon (a.k.a. sedan) as compared to the Civic-size Astra. I did manage to wrangle the SRi trim, which is the sport version. Generally, pretty nice. And with the slow-going roads of Scotland, I hardly ever noticed that our car had the base 1.8L four with about 120 horsepower. There are motorcycles out these days with more horsepower than that.

I felt more comfortable on this trip with the whole RHD (right-hand drive) thing. Last year, I don't think I would have felt confident driving hard on a curvy road but I could have done it this time, had Claudine not been in the car and the purpose been something other than vacation.

While driving through Aberfeldy, Claudine and I spotted a sign that cracked us up. It was a 'crossing warning' sign, similar to something you would see for children or deer. But this was for elderly people, complete with a pictogram of two hunched-over people with canes crossing the street. How the town of Aberfeldy decided that this exact spot warranted a warning sign I have no idea.

So, anyway, we made it to Kenmore a few hours later than hoped. Kenmore sits along the edge of Loch Tay and is quite picturesque. We walked around the town a bit then spent a couple hours driving around. It's really quite pretty with rolling green hills, tiny quaint villages with funny names and sheep. Lots of sheep.

At one point, we took a diversion to see Europe's oldest tree in Fortingall. Five thousand years old, we were told. Hard to say, really. It just looks like a tree.

At least Fortingall didn't put up a 'Danger! Elderly Tree Crossing!!!' sign.

For dinner, we ate at the hotel. There wasn't much in terms of vegetarian fare (Claudine actually had to make a special request to the chef for something veggie) so I had planned on getting the salmon until I spotted that it was stuffed with haggis.

Haggis, if you're not familiar with it, is the finely chopped liver, heart and lungs of a sheep, mixed with oatmeal and onion and stuffed into a sheep's stomach bag. The word on the street is that it actually tastes pretty good. But I was a wuss and requested that the fish be made without. Alas, the restaurant couldn't comply, for whatever reason.

The Scots are also quite fond of deep-frying things. During our trip, we commonly saw deep-fried pizza ("crispy pizza") and I've heard of deep-fried Mars (Milky Way) bars. I didn't try these, either.

Nor did I have any whiskey (though Claudine and I got pretty tanked on wine during the dinner at the hotel's restaurant, should you care to know...). So from a food and drink perspective of exploring Scotland's heritage, I suppose I completely missed out.