The Millski's return to blogging: The Millar's in the Lowlands

The Millar mode of travel is often quite intense. Growing up, a common refrain in the Millar house after returning from a trip is that we “need a vacation from our vacation”. Despite all of us being 20 years older, we seem to have made no change to travel habits during our week together in Scotland. Though I don’t remember drinking quite so many pints and whiskey drams as a 10 year old…

The result is that Gabi and I were quite tired sitting in the Glasgow airport awaiting our flight to Islay and never got past a few paragraphs for this blog post. Then a combination of rapid Nordic city hoping, and a healthy does of excuse making meant delaying our return to blogging until now at the tail end of our time in Europe, sitting in our friend's apartment in Tromsø on a grey drizzly day.

This post will cover the start of the Scottish travels Gabi and I shared with my parents, brother and sister-in-law. I'll break the post up by day, starting where we left off on the train from London to Edinburgh, or more accurately, the beautiful city were ended our train ride in, Edinburgh.

July 10th

Walking through these streets and taking in the old stone buildings the air seems to fill with magic, it’s no wonder JK Rowling began writing Harry Potter in this city.

Immediately upon leaving the station you're confronted with the grandeur of Old town Edinburgh.

After shaking of the awe of how beautiful the city of Edinburgh is on a sunny day, we kicked off our time in Scotland kicked off with a traditional Sunday roast at the Queens Arms, if you find yourself in Edinburgh on a Sunday it's an absolute must. We worked off all gravy and Yorkshire Pudding with a walk down the Royal Mile from Edinburgh Castle to the Queen's residence at Holyrood Palace. 

The Queen wasn't welcoming the likes of us in, so we could only look at Holyrood through the gates.

July 11th

The following day Gabi and I work up to a phone call from Ben, at 11:40 am... I suppose we were still a bit jet lagged. No worries as it was just in time for Ben, Dave & Karen to come back from a morning at the Open at St. Andrews and pick us up for a day in Edinburgh including a sprint through the National Museum (highly recommended and free!) as well as a tour through Edinburgh Castle which is very literally created by fire and ice (It's on a volcanic plug which was ten carved by glaciers during the last ice age). 


Pure Magic

View of old town from on top of the national Museum, ft. Dan's eyes almost being open...

Edinburgh Castle and two lovely ladies

We closed out the evening with a short scotch tasting crawl through the local watering holes in the neighborhood of our AirBnb including the long storied Canny Man (established 1871). 


July 12th

The next day brought us to the nominal reason for being in Scotland - The Tuesday practice round of the 150th Open Championship on the legendary Old Course of St. Andrew's. We were treated to a beautifully warm day and highly variable levels of engagement with crowd from the best golfers in the world. The eventual winner Cam Smith was fully focused on his game, to the extend of ignoring the pleas of young kids looking for an autograph. Scottie Scheffler was far more cordial, but ended up in 21st...

The Royal and Ancient looking on as the eventual Champion approaches the first tee. Note the resemblance to Statler and Waldorf on the balcony...


The closest we've ever been to a Tiger!!

After Gabi and I absorbed all we could from the pros we tried our hand, I think we were quiet successful.



Lunch time found us at the historic Jigger Inn, located in perfect view of where the pros try to land their tee shots on golf's hardest hole. Followed by an afternoon exploring the town of St. Andrews. Including the ruins of the original seat of power of the Catholic Church in Scotland, and an equally important alley at the University of St. Andrews

Most important alley in all of Scotland

July 13th

On our final morning in Edinburgh we played the Bruntsfield links. A location which has golf played on it at least since the 1680's and possibly as early as the 1450's if the neighboring tavern is to be believed. 






Following the round on these historic grounds we headed off into the highlands, to the ancestral home of the Millar's on the shores of Loch Lomond, but that will have to be a blog post for another day.

-Dan


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