For the Fourth Time

 I have approximately 40 gazillion things I could/should be doing instead.  And another 40 gazillion  things I should blog about before this, but, to be totally honest, I'm deeply tired.    And today is not going to be one that gets noted in the annals of exceptional productivity.  

So, I'm just going to post this collage  of me visiting the same statue in Brienz, Switzerland for the fourth time in my life.

1975:  my Dad was stationed in the Army in Germany and this was taken on a little  roadtrip my parents went on
1987:  I was 14 and this was the first trip overseas (besides when we'd lived there).  We camped and drove through Europe
2016:   the first time we brought our family to Europe
2025:  a C family reunion in the Alps

   
Never mind the cutoff numbers on a couple of the years in the collage.  I'm too tired to care, and if you think  I've been alive since 987, then YAY to me for figuring out this whole long-livedness thing.   I look pretty average for a 50-something year old, but I look dang amazing for someone who's over 1000 years old!  

I note with a touch of sadness, that my Dad would have been the biggest fan of this collage!   I did not grow up in a wealthy home, but my Dad knocked his socks off to make sure us kids were exposed to other cultures.   That meant that he saved his frequent flyer miles from his business trips for many years to save up enough points to take us overseas when I was 14, where we camped the whole way through Europe.  He was so excited to recreate that photo in 1987 and he still remembered exactly where the statue was.   When we took our family for our first overseas trip in 2016 (besides Spence's Make-a-Wish trip the year before), he very excitedly explained to us exactly where to find the statue again.   It was one of my brothers who noticed we would be close to Brienz on our most recent trip....thereby making this a perfectly squared collage.  

See here for my 2016 blogpost about it and stay tuned for the other 40 gazillion things I need to blog about...

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A Scottish Adventure

In 1987, when I was just 14-years-old, our family took a trip to Europe.  It was the oldest five of us kids, two friends, and my parents.  We didn't have a lot of money, but my Dad traveled a lot for work and saved his frequent flier miles for a long time  to make that trip happen.  It was frankly a somewhat miserable trip with long days crowded into a utilitarian van traipsing and tent-camping all over Europe, which was having one of the rainiest summers in European history.   But, it was during that trip that our eyes were open to a wider world than we ever had known before and I think I can say, without any hyperbole whatsoever, that  that trip literally changed all of our lives.   And my Dad knew that it would.   

I married someone who came from a family who pretty much never traveled, except for the occasional roadtrip to the family cabin in Idaho or for a beach trip out East (where both of his parents had grown up and still had a lot of family living out that way), but plane rides were not a thing.  Frankly, they weren't much of a thing in my upbringing either;  except for that one international trip, we always road-tripped wherever we were going.  And when our kids were young, we were the same,  zig-zagging all over the country in the car to visit family and explore new destinations on our annual summer vacation.  We always talked about taking an international trip with our kids, but always had a good excuse as to why it couldn't happen... we were too busy, travel was too expensive, the kids were too young, and on and on.   

Then Spencer got sick.   That sounds unrelated to all this, but it wasn't.   Spencer's leukemia was absolutely earth shattering to us and we came out of that time of our lives as fundamentally different people.   There's nothing like being told that your 16-year-old kid has a less than 50% chance of survival to help you realize that waiting for some elusive future perfect day to do something is a risky proposition.   If we wanted our kids to have certain experiences, we needed to stop putting them off and make them happen.    I consider his illness as the impetus for 1. homeschooling the kids, 2. finally remodeling our 1960's kitchen, 3. starting to travel internationally with our family.   Yes, we still had the same budget and time restraints that we'd had before, but we realized that we didn't want to look back with regrets and it was worth the sacrifice and belt-tightening it took to make these things happen.    

Since then, we've made travel a regular part of our lives.   Once again, this prioritization of travel does not come without sacrifice.  We still have to budget and cut back on other expenses to make this happen, but we have decided that the memories and exposure to other cultures that we gain in the process is worth that expense.  

So, all this introductory information is to bring me to this post about the trip we just returned from.   Glen served his mission in England and we'd always wanted to explore the rest of the British Isles (namely Scotland, Ireland, and Northern Ireland), but had never done it before.  We'd been watching for good ticket prices to pop up for this route for forever and finally several weeks ago, a good deal popped up for the end of February and we jumped on it!   We were a little hesitant about traveling in the wintertime, but it was honestly great to be out of the crowds of the high season and I felt like we got better prices on tours and hotels this time of year as well. 

We flew into Edinburgh, Scotland (my 39th country)...

And then  walked straight out of the airport and hopped on a bus to Glasgow, where we stayed the night.   After checking into our hotel and  dropping off our luggage, we decided to explore Glasgow for a few hours.  Here are some random scenes from around Glasgow.   

We basically walked from our centrally located hotel (Motel One) up to the Glasgow Cathedral and Necropolis by walking along this Street Art Mural Trail that we found online.   We only had a few hours of daylight, so we didn’t hit them all, but saw enough that we got a good flavor of the art and style!

The area around the Glasgow Cathedral had more of the cute European vibe to it than the sections of the city we had walked through, so I was enchanted.   The cathedral was not open for visitors at the time, so we just walked around for a bit.  

But what I was most enchanted by in Glasgow was the cemetery behind the Glasgow Cathedral—called the Necropolis.   It was lovely to see from afar and even lovelier to see while walking around!  WE enjoyed the views from atop the hill and loved looking at the old headstones.   

After exploring, we headed to dinner where I was excited to hear the restaurant offered free tap water to drink.  While commonplace in the USA, in Europe, we usually pay outrageously for bottled water in restaurants, unless we happened to have refilled our water bottles recently.  

We only laughed a little when the water came out to us in tequila bottles!   haha!  We were so thirsty by this point, that we didn’t care about appearances and guzzled three of them!    Other than the free water, the Mexican restaurant we picked was a bust.  Their food was too spicy and not that great, even beyond the spiciness level.   

We woke up early the next morning and took the West Highland train from Glasgow to Fort William.  That particular train route into the Scottish Highlands is supposed to be one of the most scenic train routes in the world and we were a little sad that it was  rainy on the first part of our journey.  We still got a good enough glimpse to realize that it was stunningly gorgeous, but it was hard to capture it in photos.  

We stored our luggage and walked around Fort William...

And we laughed that the towns in the Scottish Highlands lie on a geologic fault called the Great Glen Fault, which meant that there were references to the Great Glen all over the place!  Glen, of course, loved that and  posed for a few goofy photos!  

After a few hours of walking around Fort William, we caught an evening bus to Inverness, where we spent the night.  The next morning we joined a tour and visited  Eilean Donan Castle...

Looked for Nessie along the shores of Loch Ness...

Saw lots of Highland cows and gorgeous scenery...

And went out to the Isle of Skye.   

The Scottish Highlands surpassed our expectations and I highly recommend visiting if you get the chance. 

After our tour, we stayed one more night in Inverness and then took the bus back to Edinburgh where we stayed for a couple days.   Here are some sights from around Edinburgh... Greyfriar's Abbey and Victoria Street were two iconic Scottish places to visit and we loved the bagpipers that set up all over town.  JK Rowling wrote her Harry Potter books while living in Edinburgh and many people think that Diagon Alley is based on Victoria Street (the brightly colored shops below)...

We visited the Scotland National Gallery of Art.  Here are a few of the pics we admired or that made us laugh a bit!  

We visited the Botanic Gardens and just enjoyed the old and stunning architecture around town...The statue of the dog is Greyfriar's Bobby (found at the Greyfriar's Abbey) and has a sweet story to go with it. 

All in all, we loved Scotland.   Glasgow was okay, but we really enjoyed the Highlands and Edinburgh.  

It was a fabulous first leg to our journey.   Stay tuned for more....

Adventure in Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands

Glen had a few days off of work as he transitioned from one job to another and we decided to go on an adventure.   We found some great last-minute deals and ended up in Ecuador--our very first time in South America!  It's hard to capture in a blogpost how amazing our trip was, but here are a few highlights.

1. The epic birdwatching in the Galapagos and outside of Quito!   We visited the nesting grounds of waved albatrosses and the blue and red footed boobies,  fed hummingbirds from our hands, and saw an incredibly diverse array of tropical bird species (including flamingos).
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   The blue and red footed boobies were among our favorites! 
   
   
   We also really enjoyed watching the waved albatrosses. 
   

   

   
   We found this hawk feather and wish we could have taken it home for Adam, but we weren't allowed to take ANYTHING natural from the Galapagos, so I had to leave it behind.
   
   
2. Seeing so much native wildlife in the Galapagos.  For how dry and scrubby the Galápagos Islands mostly are, it’s crazy that they have the variety of wildlife they do and how different the variety is from island to island.   We explored by hiking, snorkeling, and kayaking.    I look forward to reading a book more about Charles Darwin's travels there. 
   
    
   
   
   
   
    
   
   
   
3. Meeting Elder Rasband (a modern day apostle) in the lobby of our hotel in Quito.  He was in the middle of a 4 country South American tour and was on his way to play pickleball when we ran into him!  He was kind and easy to talk to.
   
   
4. Visiting the equator and getting to stand in the northern and southern hemispheres at the same time.   I get surprisingly geeky about this type of thing!   We also enjoyed the science experiments they demonstrated at the equator.
   
   
   
   
5. Ecuadorean chocolate!  I had no idea Ecuador (one of the smallest countries in South America) supplies 50% of the world’s chocolate!  We enjoyed sampling different varieties!
   
   
   

   
   

   
6. The Ecuadorean food in general.  I was able to find good authentic Ecuadorean food that was also gluten free.  Yay!
   
   
   
7. The people we met!  We loved our native tour guides, the people we interacted with around town, and the interesting array of  people on our cruise. 
   
   
   
8. The whole city of Quito is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and we loved learning about the culture.  The architecture is a cool mix of European and indigenous style and visiting a museum featuring pre-columbian art was one of our favorites!   The following were scenes we found wandering around Quito.
   
   
   
   
   
    
   
   
    
    
9. Sending postcards from a country with no postal service!  I literally dropped them in a barrel on a deserted island in the Galapagos and future visitors will pick up postcards addressed to people who live close to them and hand deliver them.  It’s a tradition going back to the 1700’s and I am totally geeking out about it!  I took the only two addressed to people in Utah and I’m excited to deliver them in the next few weeks!
   
   
   
10. We love how open people are about religion here.  We had some great conversations with a few different Ecuadorean natives who clearly love Jesus too!   This photo is of the Virgin Mary at the top of El Panecillo Hill right in the middle of Quito.
    
    
11. Doing a session at  the Quito temple!  We had hoped to get to the temple while we were here, but the weekday hours were too limited and we gave up on being able to go.  Then….our flight home was canceled and we got a bonus day.  It was too perfect!    The temple has been open since November 2022 and it's clear that non-Spanish speaking tourists doing sessions is a rarity.  We wore the headphones and loved seeing that temple filled with locals! 
    
    
12. The stargazing on the cruise was epic.   I took this picture with my i-phone from a moving boat! 
    

13.  The views!   Quito is situated at 9300 feet above sea level and the surrounding mountains tower to 15,000+ feet.   We took a gondola up to Telerifico (about 13,500 feet).  We took a hike around there and ended up at this epic swing overlooking the city of Quito!    The alpacas (I think) were also hanging around up there at Telerifico. 

14.  The hiking in general!   One of the days, we went into the Cloud Forest near Mindo and did some hiking there.   Nambillo Waterfall certainly wasn't the most exciting waterfall we'd ever seen, but it was a pretty beautiful hike, so we enjoyed it anyway! 

Pretty much the whole trip was a HUGE bucket list item crossed off our list and we loved every second of it.     Here are a few more random photos to finish up....

Now, we're back home to reality, struggling with jetlag after spending a night on an airplane,  trying to get the house put back together, and daydreaming about our next adventure!