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I loved Stockholm. Very vibrant, busy city, full of museums, galleries, restaurants, and cafes. Socializing with your friends seems to be everyone’s second job there. And of course everyone speaks perfect English. So handy.

The Vasa Museum was particularly interesting – the Vasa was a warship that sank on its maiden voyage (hell, it was still in the harbour when a gust of wind caused it to keel over and swamp, so maybe not a very good warship) in 1628. It was salvaged over 300 years later in excellent condition, still full of artifacts and the remains of over a dozen people. The exhibits were fascinating.

And I really liked the Moderna Museet — right up my alley. I spent a lot longer there than I had intended, and nearly missed my lunch reservation (God forbid). One exhibit by Rashid Johnson was so interesting that after going through the museum once, I turned back to Seven Rooms and a Garden and went through it again.

Weather was perfect for walking everywhere – between 2° and -4° with no wind each day. And in the evenings I went and checked out all the hockey set-up in the Kungstradgarden – the park looked beautiful and everyone was having a blast.

Even tho I don’t like shopping, I noticed that their stores looked different from ours, so on my last afternoon I window shopped — not to buy, but to see what their stores looked like, particularly housewares and decor. And much like the Simpsons’ window displays in Toronto when I was little, going and looking at the Christmas windows of the NK department store is clearly a Sunday activity for families this time of year.

What a fantastic city.

I flew from Edinburgh to Stockholm on Norwegian Air and was a little surprised at how many Maple Leafs logos I was seeing. Finally I asked someone and it seems the NHL (well, at least a few teams) has landed in Sweden. So, the very weekend I’m here exploring a foreign country, I’m surrounded by hosers, and toques, and a lot of ‘sorries’. Hunh.

it was dark when I arrived (6pm), but what a vibrant, busy city! I decided on dinner in the hotel, but can’t wait to check out the sites in the morning.

** Edit: on the plane ride home I got talking to the young couple beside me and it turns out they were the same couple I had stopped four days earlier in the Stockholm underground to ask what was going on with all the Leafs paraphernalia. Small world.

Continuing to take Lindsay’s ‘Do NOT treat your last two months as a wind-down – treat it as more of your holiday’ advice, my cousin and I went to see the Grayson Perry: Smash Hits exhibit.

Sir Grayson Perry is a very unusual Englishman. He is a TV presenter, a transvestite, and an artist who works primarily in ceramics and tapestries. I have often seen him interviewed on UK TV and I had seen a photographic portrait of him, his wife, and their daughter in the National Portrait Gallery, but I had never seen any of his work. Wow. This man is NOT a minimalist. His work is amazing. The tour of the exhibit (which was huge) comes as quite the onslaught to the senses. There is an audio tour as an accompaniment, and it is Grayson narrating – this made the exhibit 100 times better than it already was (and it already was great).

His work is often autobiographical, usually social commentary on England of the last 50 years, and sometimes both at the same time. It was fascinating, and mesmerizing, and off-putting, and compelling – but I will admit that after 90 minutes I needed to step away – it was definitely sensory overload. When you think that my favourite artist is Mark Rothko, you can see why I found the pieces below overwhelming (and there were over 80 works on display).

So glad I went.

I decided to take a slightly different route home from Skye. I still had to cross the island and drive along the River Shiel, but I thought that for something different, I would then follow the Spean Valley across the highlands to the A9 (yet again) and take the motorway home. A couple of reasons for that: at least some of the trip would be through a part of the country I’d never seen before; it would give Scout & me one last visit to our favourite hike/ scenery/ shopping/ food spot, The House of Bruar (the Harrods of the Highlands); and I would be arriving home at twilight (5pm these days) and a familiar motorway is far less stressful that strange backroads (local construction means many roads are re-routed at the moment).

As always with me, the words of Rabbie Burns applied: ‘the best laid plans aft gang a’gley’. My friends had warned me over and over again about the potholes on Skye, so I had driven oh so carefully across the island. Then it was smooth sailing all the way past Eilean Donan, through the mountains and past more stunning scenery. It had been raining, so just outside Invergarry I passed through what looked like a shallow puddle, but turned out to be a pothole that could have eaten a Volvo. I could feel my front left tyre withering away as I limped into the village. People make fun of my love of (read: obsession with) maps, but in this case, having poured over the route several times both on Google Maps and on the Rand McNally Road Atlas in my car, I remembered that there was a petrol station less than a kilometre away.

Last summer, when asked if I wanted to renew my Roadside Assistance plan, of course I said, no, why bother. Sigh. That’ll larn me. Fortunately the petrol station attendant knew of a Tyre Specialist in the next village over, so what could have been an overnighter in the middle of nowhere turned into a 2-hour setback in my trip. I was back on the road, and made it to The House of Bruar in time for a late lunch (one last mince and onion pie) and a shortened walk for the dog. (Who is a conehead these days – slight cut she won’t stop scratching means she looks a right daftie.)

Still a stressful last 20 minutes home as the cars behind me seemed to feel there was no need to slow down on darkened country lanes and let me know it more than once, but all in all, a great last road trip in Scotland!

My heart is definitely in Orkney – if for some reason I ever had to move back to the UK, I would definitely go back to Kirkwall. It’s beautiful, I loved the wind and the weather and the sea and the towns. But I can now confirm it’s not the most beautiful island in Scotland. Skye is. Skye really is.

I noticed this last time – for such a small island it has the most remarkable changing landscapes. It is the 2nd largest island in the UK, but still, it’s less than 2/3 the size of Manitoulin. And yet it has arable land, rounded mountains, jagged pinnacles, gigantic cliffs, and sandy beaches, all in under 1,700 sq km.

It is much more rugged than Orkney, with a much smaller population (although I am assured that in the summer it is a madhouse of tourists and Sassenachs, annoying English who have moved up and built summer homes — my friend Lindsay does not pull punches with her opinions). But I was blown away by its beauty. I know I need to update my gallery (a good project once the packing is all done), and I know my photographic skills do Skye no justice at all, but still, here are a couple of views of the scenery from last week’s trip.

Interrupting my chronological travel stories to talk about today’s news. As of this posting, the 2,000+ earthquakes per day that southwest Iceland has been experiencing have slowed. That is not as good as it sounds, as in the past, a lessening of earthquakes has meant that a volcanic eruption is imminent. They say the amount of potential magma is much greater than past eruptions, making this a particularly significant eruption. One town has been evacuated, and the country just waits.

The reason I’m mentioning this volcano in my blog (apart from the fact that it is a desperately frightening story) is that I am scheduled to fly to Stockholm on Thursday, returning Sunday. If my trip has to be cancelled due to an ash cloud like the one that grounded European flights for a week back in 2010, well, that’s fine – I can always book a last minute train trip to London or a car trip to East Anglia or wherever. But what if I get there and then I’m trapped in Stockholm? Yes, I realise this is waaaay up the first-world-problems ladder. And any other time this wouldn’t be the huge worry that it currently is. My concern is that I leave for Canada two weeks today. I kinda need to be back here packing and if I can’t fly back to Scotland, I guess I will have to look at a two-day train trip from Stockholm through Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Holland, Belgium, and England. But I feel guilty thinking about this, given what the Icelandic people are facing. The waiting must be terrible.

So back to the people of Grindavik and southwest Iceland – our thoughts are with them.

From Braidwood to their cottage on Skye is about 6 1/2 hours without stops. I decided to take the windier, more western route (really, I have done the A9 more times than 90% of the Scottish population – time for a change). I’ve driven the Great Glen & Glencoe several times before, but that was in the days when I could not take my eyes off the road for even a nano-second and usually in overcast or even rainy weather.

Well, that drive was spectacular. I marvel at the number of Scots I meet who have never been up the West Highlands (Benidorm has sunshine, beaches, and all-inclusive resorts, I guess). As I started up Loch Lomond, I wanted to stop at every single passing place and take photos, but I had to accept that that wasn’t feasible and, apart from one or two stops, I would have to rely on my memories of this day instead. I was able to slow down quite a bit and enjoys the views, as it was a Sunday morning and I was almost the only car on the roads.

The sun on the changing trees and bright blue water was almost blinding. There are those who talk about feeling the somber atmosphere and sense of gloom at Glencoe (not nice things happened there, but now is no time to get into a three-hundred year old betrayal), but all I felt was wonder and elation that I was getting to see this part of Scotland in all its glory just before my return home. We picnicked at the Commando Memorial, overlooking Ben Nevis. I’ve seen Ben Nevis many times, but this was the first time I actually saw its peak (usually shrouded in fog or mist). The sun stayed with me the whole way north, with only the slightest mist once we reached the Isle of Skye. A perfect driving day.

The trip home four days later was completely different and upon reflection, deserves its own story.

Over 20 years ago my sister & I did a road trip through Scotland and one of our goals was the Isle of Skye. We drove to Mallaig, and got on the ferry. This would have been the 1st time I’d driven in Scotland in over 15 years, so I found the winding roads of the west highlands and getting on and off the ferry extremely stressful. And to make matters worse, I was first off the ferry, so all the locals were behind me, frustrated that I was doing half the speed limit at best. So I just drove. We didn’t see anywhere with a tourist info bureau, and the road was straight, so I kept driving. We came to a crossroads and I saw a small lay-by, so we pulled in there and had a snack. Then we were pointing east, so I just kept driving. Next thing I knew, we were on the bridge that takes you off Skye and back to the mainland. We’d done the most beautiful island in the British Isles in just under two hours. Doh.

Last year I did a little better. LL & I built some time in Skye into our highland road trip. Only one problem: there was not a single dog-friendly hotel to be found on the island (we later learned that Brexit had eliminated all the young people willing to do hospitality jobs on Skye) so we had to book a hotel back on the mainland, in Mallaig.

This meant one day on Skye. We left our hotel in Inverness at a ridiculously early hour, and were on Skye before 10am. We had booked the last ferry off the island, so we had less than seven hours to see the Fairy Pools, have a seafood lunch at the Oyster Shed, and make back to the terminal. Not ideal, but better than 2001’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it visit. It was lovely.

But last week I was invited to spend four days on Skye, staying at the cottage of friends from England. And they know how to do Skye. We hiked along the shore of Loch Bharcassaig and picnicked on Varkasaig Beach at Orbost. We shopped in Portree and Dunvegan. We toured the perimeter of Trotternish penisula and walked the Two Church walk through ancient forests and over highland moors at Duirinish. And we saw the Northern Lights from their cabin’s back lawn.

When I was in Ireland, I kept talking about all the things I was focussing on to get ready for my move and how bummed it was making me. Our friend Lindsay made an excellent point, ‘Stop thinking about the next eleven weeks as the end of your adventure. You still have 2 & 1/2 months of holiday left – treat it like that!’ And she was right.

I had been thinking that when I got back I’d start sorting items to pack, and make more trips to the charity shop, or the dump. But really, when you think about it, how long truly will it take me to pack? It’s not like I’m packing up the house. All my furniture is staying here, in this house. I don’t really have to clean out the cupboards or sell any of my stuff. Apart from a half dozen or so emails, taxi bookings, rabies certificates, etc, all I have to do is pack five suitcases. That shouldn’t take more than a day or two at most. So I started re-evaluating how to spend October & November.

I had the cruise booked for early October, and the only other thing I had booked was a weekend away in mid-November. The reason for that weekend was that my cousin needs me to get out of the house. Okay, that sounds wrong. I had originally told my cousin I was moving back to Canada in October, so she made plans to host her book club’s annual adventure here in Braidwood for the third weekend in November (last year was Paris – I do hope she’s managed their expectations for this year). I forgot to let her know that I had moved my departure to the end of November, so I felt kinda bad when she had to tell me that she had seven women coming to stay for four days and I had to vacate. I therefore decided to use this opportunity for what I thought would be one last trip before leaving Europe.

Lindsay’s words keep ringing in my ears. So, since getting back from Ireland, I have made a point of going into either Glasgow or Edinburgh once every week, I did a road trip up to Skye, I’ve gone farther afield when walking the dog, and on Thursday I leave for a 4-day weekend in Stockholm.

Thanks, Lindsay!

I have loved Athens every time I have visited, and that was true yet again. My only complaint this visit? Not enough time here.

Athens has changed. It is bigger, busier, and everything seems shinier than last time. There are certain sites that I just don’t imagine ever seeking out again – I’ve been to the Acropolis and the Agora, and I’m guessing that the only changes there would be the volume of visitors. But the museums are wonderful, and I would have liked at least a day or two just to explore the Plaka properly. We did wander through, and I was amazed at how modern it had become (which I did think was a bit of a pity as my memories were of quaint tavernas, tiny shops, and old men sitting at cafes drinking coffee and playing chess, instead of the wider lanes and newer buildings), but time was against us.

We did tour the Archaeological Museum and Miss Mayhew would be pleased to know just how much I remembered from high school, and from previous visits. I saw kouroi & korai, doric & ionic columns, Greek gods & Cycladic sculptures; and I remembered them all. I even asked a reasonably intelligent question about the statue of Poseidon (or maybe Zeus – they’re not sure). Clearly some of what I learned in high school stuck.

I can’t wait to come back.

11 October, 2023