84 Cups of Tea

Hello everyone! Sorry for the delay between blog entries. I actually spent an hour describing the second half of our trip to Scotland including pictures and all (!) but the hostel computer decided that after hitting “post blog-entry”, I actually meant “delete blog entry irretrievably”. And so, alas, I write this next entry from Tanzania…

To sum it up, the second half of the Scotland trip was filled with family visits, and trying not to spread what we will now label “the California-summer-death-upper-respiratory virus” that has spread from Lynn, to Julie, to Danny, further. We left Edinburgh after renting a car and headed up to Dundee, where we did 4 relative visits in 2 days (read as- 84 cups of tea between us in 2 days). After the final cup of tea, we drove across the River Tay to St. Andrews which is famous for two things- golf and the university where Mary and Roger met (thus an entire town which can be blamed for creating Lynn, Clare and Julie). Danny chilled at the Museum of Golf, and then we walked around the cathedral and castle before having a very good fish supper (fish and chips), irn bru and an early bed.

Our last day in Scotland was spent driving through to Glasgow via Stirling, the home of Stirling Castle and the Wallace Monument. After checking out the Wallace Monument, including the stunning views over Old Stirling Bridge where the English army were defeated by a clever tactical move led by William Wallace in the 1290’s (a common theme in any Scottish history- “here is the site where we fought/killed/made-fun-of/embarrassed the English”- but always fun to hear about, nonetheless…).

So, we said goodbye to Scotland on Wednesday morning and arrived at Kilimanjaro airport in Tanzania 12 hours later. A classic introduction to Africa began with our inability to find our ride to Moshi amongst the 50 or so touts, taxi-drivers and legitimate drivers at the arrival hall in the airport. Kudos to Danny for finding a little sign, held by a little guy reading “Todd, pax 2”, which we clearly should have recognized as being for us…

And so, we are here. In Africa. In a crazy little cybercafé with slow internet. Weather is nice. Overcast. Not too hot. The climb up Kili begins tomorrow and seems to be looming over us both psychologically, and literally (it’s 19000ft height is impressive from our current position at it’s base). My friends Juli and Todd join us this evening, and then we are off tomorrow morning. So, no blogging for the next week- but will be in touch again on the flip side. Hope you are all well. Lynn

Drinking tour of Scotland

Hey everyone, we made it to our first destination, Scotland, yesterday and wasted no time getting around the capital of Edinburgh. Lynn booked us in the coolest hostel literally directly below Edinburgh Castle which you see in several pictures below. After touring the castle, we checked out the Royal mile and then ended up at a Scottish Ale Festival where we had 120 beers to choose from. From there we headed over to a bar to watch the Turkey/Croatia Euro 2008 soccer match where very drunk scottish folks were buying us beers to celebrate our marriage...good times. This morning I wandered around while the girls slept off their jet lag and then we met up with Lynn's Uncle and his family and did a short hike which let us look down on the entire city. We finished our visit with them over a beer at the oldest pub in Scotland opened in 1360. Very similar to Joe's, but 600 years older! We're having fun but not sure the drinking is preparing us properly for Kilimanjaro...oh well.

Off we go: Africa part 1.

So... the pseudo-honeymoon begins today. The adventure begins with  a few days in Scotland to visit family and to give my grandmother an obscenely large wedding photo album, followed by a flight to Tanzania with an attempt(!) at climbing Mount Kilimanjaro with friends Juli and Todd and finally a lovely week in Lamu, Kenya to celebrate Alice's 30th, Julie Nis' 26th and Sally's 60th birthdays. 

Rather than filling everyone's mailboxes with mass emails, we'll be updating this page every few days with the latest news (and pictures if we can figure out how!).  We'll also be checking our email regularly, so please keep in touch.

Last piece of news to report today is that we found out today that we'll be heading to Portland for Lynn's fellowship in infectious disease when we return from Uganda in the summer of 2009- so if you can't make it to Uganda next year, start looking into flights to Portland!