The next day, after a very short visit in Scotland, we drove back towards Edinburgh, to the suburb of Leith. Stephen was told of a bakery, Mimi's Bakehouse, that we wanted to pick up some pastries at. The selections were all very tempting. We got a giant pavlova and a few other things. I picked a jammy dodger slice, which I had no idea what it was, but it looked good. Turns out 'jammy dodger' is what the English call sandwich cookies. While Mei was settling up, I took the kids outside (the restaurant was very cramped) and we found there were swans in the river, including a mama with some babies! There were also two swans in the distance doing some kind of spinning dance. Turns out they were males doing a territorial display. Leave it to swans to turn fights into a dance!
We headed out a ways on the road before pulling over to eat our treats. They were all ridiculously good, and the pavlova may have been one of the best I've had. We all really liked the jammy dodger slice too!
We crossed back into England shortly after, taking a detour to get our pictures taken with the signs. Our first stop in England is Alnwick Castle, pronounced 'ah-nick'. This castle is the home of the 12th Duke of Northumberland, who still lives here in winter. It is also the site of filming for the broomstick training scenes for Harry Potter and played Brancaster Castle in Downton Abbey! We didn't have nearly enough time to explore the castle, and had to skip the gardens entirely. They had a whole lot of activities on site, including several HP themed events (broomstick training, owls), several medieval themed (pillories, knights activities, dragon quest, archery) in addition to seeing the palace rooms where the family actually lives. Their artwork included paintings of the children (now adults) and their main sitting room is a library with very old books but also a flat screen TV and a foozball table! I'd been wanting to visit a lived in castle so this fulfilled my final check list for this trip. We all had a great time, and I hope to some day come back to visit the gardens.
We continued our drive south passing by English countryside that looked like it hadn't changed in hundreds of years, if you ignore the power lines and the modern windmills. We saw mostly rolling hills, lots of sheep, stone walls, no modern buildings. Our stop for the evening is in Nottingham. The main entry to the hotel were guarded by a flock of Canada geese, so we had to gingerly step around goose droppings. We found a local pub, The Nuthall, for a nice dinner.
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