Day 24 - Edinburgh Redux and Departure

The Tourists boarded the coach at 11:00 to depart the Leonardo Hotel for a coach tour of Edinburgh. 


The tour of Edinburgh started with a visit to South Queensferry to view the three bridges.








Then a tour of New Town Edinburgh (started in the 1750s) and Old Town Edinburgh (founded in the 8th century).







The Tourists returned to Curl Edinburgh at Murrayfield for lunch and their final game in Scotland.  Having already won the Herries-Maxwell Trophy, this game was a fun exhibition match with the Royal Caledonian Curling Club including previous Tourists.  Fun was had be all and the Americans won all the games…and lost all the games. To improve the fellowship, this game featured 2 Scots and 2 Americans on each team with names drawn from a hat to pick the teams.  








Before the games, Tourist Steve Shaffer accidentally misplaced his broom.

The Tourists returned to the hotel to get dressed in their F-1s for the final time for the closing night reception.









Tour Couriers Bill Arnot and David McIntyre were invited up to address the Tourists about their time with the Tour.  Dave indicated that he learned a lot in the process and that his biggest takeaway was to never be the second Courier.  “Bill did this” and “Bill would have never done that” were frequent comments from the Tourists.



The Herries-Maxwell Trophy was officially presented to Tour Captain Leland Rich.


The Tourists were presented with a parting gift, a personalized whisky decanter and glasses.  It is an absolutely breathtaking gift but when the Tourists saw the large boxes, everyone of them said to themselves “How am I going to get that home?”  But in the end, they were all industrious and made it happen.


Additional pictures from the reception:










During the reception, Tourists Craig Fischer had the Saskatchewan provincials running on his phone because the daughter of Hazel Wood (a much-loved Scot sitting at his table) was playing third on Team Silvernagle in the finals.  Winning the match would mean she would be playing in the Scotties (the Canadian Women’s National Curling Championship).  Hazel wasn’t going to watch to be respectful of the Tourists but Craig insisted she watch this momentous event. Team Silvernagle was victorious!  So Hazel will be booking her flights to Kamloops today.  Hazel’s daughter, Kelly Schafer is second from left.


After the reception, the Tourists returned to their rooms to complete their packing.  

At 7:30 am, the Tourists said goodbye to their hosts and Couriers and boarded their coach for the bittersweet and Mike has a shirt on talk that’s a favor and  trip to the airport.







Haste we back Scotland!







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Introducing the Teams

Image
With less than a week until our departure for Scotland, excitement is building among the Tourists, our Scottish hosts and the friends & families of the Tourists. For the benefit of our Scottish hosts and for our friends & families, we would like to introduce the teams that will be representing the United States on the 2022 Scot Tour. As a reminder, the 2022 Scot Tour is a friendship tour through Scotland where the Tourists will be competing against our Scottish hosts for the coveted Herries-Maxwell Trophy.  The country that scores the most points over the 3-week tour will retain the Trophy until the Scots visit the United States in 4 years and we compete for the Trophy again.  That means winning games is not as important as scoring as many points as possible while simultaneously seeking to minimize your opponents points.  And for that reason the game strategies may be a little different than normal. Happy New Year to All!  We can't wait to cross the pond. Without further a
Read more

Day 13 - Greenock

Image
The Tourists departed at 8:30 am from the Doubletree by Hilton North Queensferry and bid a fond adieu to Tour Courier Bill Arnot.  They will meet up with Bill again at the closing night party on January 29th, until then the Tourists will miss him daily. In the meantime we are excited to get to know Tour Courier David McIntyre better.  We got some more pictures of the bridges on the way out of town, this time in the morning light.    The Tourists headed for Paisley Abbey.  On the way, they got a view of “The Kelpies”.  The Kelpies are 98 ft high horse-head sculptures depicting kelpies (shape-shifting water spirits). They also drove past a statue of “The Angel of the Nauld”, known locally as Arria.  We had another interesting sighting on the bus. I was not sure this was possible (for those that don’t know us, one of the Scots commented today the Doug seemed to be “six foot twenty”) Paisley Abbey Paisley Abbey was initially constructed in 1163 with ongoing construction and additions occur
Read more