Snow, glorious Snow!

We did a few hours in the Aberdeen Family Heritage Society yesterday morning. Stan is looking for more on William Craig, immigrated to PA, then NC from Sotland in early 1700's. Was hoping he'd find specifics about wife Margaret since she is thought to have been born in Aberdeen, but nothing specific came up, just a few interesting tidbits that aren't proof of anything.
As we walked to bus stop, a Scottish Episcopal priest was standing at the door of St Andrew's, inviting folks to come in to the Saturday noontime music concert; as we chatted, I was more intrigued, so we decided to stay and listen. Turns out Joseph Kennedy visited the church in 1938, and a cornerstone is in the chancel marking his visit. The North side ceiling has crests of the States of the US that were part of the Union in 1784, when the church honored their Scottish priest who emigrated to US to become the first Episcopal Bishop in America: Samuel Seaburg. The priest allowed us to take photos, and gave us further tour of enhanced chancel area, done in 1930's with help from US, though the Stockmarket Crash interfered with the fund raising.
The soprano was a worker in the oil industry (very important in Aberdeen) and a choir member. Her program was lively, Bach to 20th century. We thought we'd had the "icing" on our day.
Collected our luggage from hotel, quick taxi ride, had 12 minutes to buy ticket to Aviemore through Inverness and board. Since no lunch, we bought drinks from the train cart hostess.. I'm getting to like my tea with milk.
The countryside was less hilly, huge fields with sheep, often black faced. Much of the way to Inverness had the North Sea on our right, less than 100 yards. There were homes in that space, as well as golf courses with hooded folks, there were crop fields and small pasture fields. Very efficient use. Young man across from us confirmed that the yellow fields were rape; one of the papers this week had an article and recipes using rape seed oil, so that made sense.
We realized after sweets on the station, waiting the final ten minutes to board for second leg of the journey, that we'd left a package in the overhead; Stan got a train staff and she took him to the train, thankfully still in the station, where the package still lay. After that bit of adrenalin, the remainder of the trip was calm.
We got off at Aviemore, a small place with old bridge crossing the track..strong Stan toted our now 30 kg luggage up the stairs and over to the developed side of the tracks. Any concern I had for him dissipated as we saw the fresh snow on the hills nearby. WOW! The town is very small, as befits a vacation destination in a National Park. It reminds me of ski resorts, out of ski season. As soon as we dropped the luggage in the timeshare unit (more step) we walked back to the main street to find some food, see lots of rabbits and look at the snowy mountain.
Stan settled on chalet looking building with the dubious name of Papa Rock, and Biker logo on all the signs. But inside there were normal folk, even families with children acting sane, so we ordered dinner. Our table was in the midst of three large tables with balloons and yellow tape "Warning! Hen Party in Progress!". Hen party here means a girls' night out, often before the wedding. The bride-to-be wears a net veil, her mates usually have ribbons or boas or both draped over them...looking like a good time will be had. The third table was a family celebration of a very attractive 40year old. We essentially had front row seats to great entertainment! One bridal party really interacted with a table of guys nearby, taking pictures, getting souvenir undies, one of the guys delivering the dessert to their table shirtless, etc. Lots os laughter and cameras. The 40year old brought us some of her cake (a flaming baked Alaska) saying we'd had to put up with them. HA! Then the maid of honor at the "wild" hen party brought us pieces of their chocolate cake.. And talked a long time about her friend and how hard it had been to surprise her. There was a custom of getting any man to pose with the bride wearing this ugly shirt, so they asked Stan to do that, then they brought over one of the pink boas for me to wear so I'd be included in the festivities. There was a card each was to fill out, doing silly things like give their phone number to five guys, so both the bride and the maid of honor came to give Stan their number.. And the chatty friend also introduced herself....Claire Tosh. With all the noise I was sure I'd heard wrong. Turns out she says TOSH is common name here, derived from Macintosh..her dad is Aberdeen coach, her grandad is big in genealogy, we traded more info and I'll be the one going home with relatives in Scotland!
Who knew?!?