Mom and Dad and a Little More Scotland

Mom and Dad saw quite a bit of London while we were in Scotland. They went to Westminster Abbey for services on two different days. The explored St. Paul's cathedral and trolled some of the London streets on a really cold day. They even hit a grocery store--which is always a little different in any foreign country. Dad, of course, has loved the leaves and the turning colors and has also enjoyed the architecture.

Yesterday we all went to see Wicked. Skip and Maddie and I saw it last May when we came for our relocation visit, but Maddie has been asking for six months when she could see it again. And it did not disappoint. It's fabulous.

A couple more things about Scotland. When we were in Glasgow, we noticed that a large number of churches had been turned into restaurants and bars. When I remarked how sad that was, our friend Greggo told us it wasn't as sad as we might think. Apparently, in the heyday of Glasgow when it was filled with wealthy merchants the way they made their mark was to build a church. So Glasgow got filled up with "vanity churches". So the fact that not all of them did not remain houses of worship is not all that surprising.

And then the highlight of our time in North Berwick on the coast was breakfast at Buttercup Cafe. It was a tiny place and everyone else there was locals. They asked where we were from and hoped we enjoyed Scotland. The cook in the back kept calling out when scones were out of the oven. "Cheese scones. We got hot cheese scones." A little old lady sitting at a corner table came over to tell us that her mother grew up in Inverness which is way up north in Scotland and when her mother was a girl, her mother would pour the leftover porridge in a drawer and let it harden. Then they would cut it up into bars and take it out to the men working in the factories and fields. We all decided these must have been the first granola bars.