Trips Outside Dundee

Other than visiting RRS Discovery and the jute museum in Dundee, we also visited a local museum briefly introduces the history of Dundee. Then we began our tours outside Dundee, to explore some different aspects of this post-industrial world.

The first place we visited was Glamis Castle. I strongly encouraged people to go there because it was a really nice place and the guide did the perfect job. However, Sunday is definitely a better day to visit there because you will then have a bus go straightly to the castle. If you don’t mind transferring, I still recommend you to check the length of layover.

Actually, this was the biggest mistake we ever made over this trip. We hopped off the bus at a place called Newtyle and we were supposed to get to bus number 125. However, we found that we had to wait for about three hours, under the condition that we had no idea where this place was, or where to go. We couldn't even find a cafe around the bus stop. So we decided to walk to the castle, to save the time from waiting and doing nothing at Newtyle. Yes, we walked. It was about a 7 miles long walk and it took us for about three hours. We were so exhausted and almost about to give up. The road to glamis seemed endless.

An endless road to Glamis

Photo credited to Yi-Wei Lee

Glamis Castle

Photo credited to Yi-Wei Lee

The most frustrating thing was we actually arrived at the front door of the castle at the same time as the bus did. Not sure whether we were supposed to be happy or not. Anyway, at least we made it. The tour was so nice that I didn’t feel tired anymore. The guide told a few haunted stories and left you a lot of time to walk around and take a look at the rooms in the castle yourself. We also learned some interesting fact. For example, people didn’t lie in the bed for sleeping. They actually sat on the bed instead, because they believed only dead people would lie down.

We also gained some train traveling experiences. Pitlochry, a beautiful place with so many flowers and tourists. The restaurants there were a little more expensive than those in Dundee. But the city center was great, with a lot of small shops. The reason we visited there was the dam and fish ladder. Since we were studying the clean energy and discussing some new technology, we actually visited this place and got to learn how it works to produce electricity. The dam was a little bit strange to me. It had these two sides of completely different scenery and a bridge just like a dividing line of these two. One was so peaceful and I was amazed because it looked like a scene that you will see in movies. The other, however, was not as beautiful as the other side was, but we could actually visually study how whole energy thing works out.

Just like a movie scene

Photo credited to Yi-Wei Lee

We spent the weekend in London. We headed straight to London the day after the Pitlochry trip. Also traveling by train. And one of the most interesting thing I had seen over the weekend was this small protest at Harrod's. Around 3 or 4 P.M., we happened to see a bunch of people all gathering outside the department store. They were all yelling something likes “shame, shame, shame on you.” We were curious, so I took a flyer from a young lady. It looked like they were claiming that a luxury brand’s designer stole a symbol or something as his own trade mark. I never had a chance to see a protest before, so this was kind of a freshly new thing to me. We stayed for a while watching them, although I still don’t know what they claimed were true or not.