May 20, 2015

Another cultural exchange:

Me: "I'd like my eggs over easy, please."

Waitress: "May I ask a silly question, Ma'am? What's 'over easy'?"

Here, they call it "no yolk." [In Ullapool, they call it "hard."]

While Tom and I were walking away from the ancient fishermen's huts (the huts are ancient; the fishermen are probably dead) at Marwick Head, we fell into conversation with a British woman. She said that a family of Crees (Native Canadians) had come to

Orkney to perform music a while ago, and the songs they shared were actually Scottish songs that had come down through the generations, learned from the Scots who had settled in Canada more than a century ago. -- I wonder how those songs changed over time.

Maishowe is a 5,000-year-old tomb not far from our hotel. The tour guide told us that in the 12th century, it was re-discovered by a couple of Vikings seeking shelter from a winter storm. She showed us grafitti in the form of Norse runes. One said something like "Ingfroed [or something similar] knows many men." Poor Ingfroed. What a way to be immortalized.

At the Brough of Birsay, Tom and I crossed a causeway (fortunately, the tide was out) to climb a hill to the lighthouse. Tom really wanted to see puffins, but we didn't. We learned that puffins bur

row into the ground to make their nests, and we saw plenty of puffin-holes (we assume), but no puffins. Still, the cliffs were breath-taking, albeit severe.

We have noticed that the lambs and calves are especially cute when they're scampering, I suggested to Tom that if we started scampering, people would think we were cute and want to take us home. "They'd take us to a home, anyway" he said.

We're getting up insanely early in the morning (5 a.m.) to get to the ferry, which will take us to Ullapool. Friday we'll take another ferry across to the Isle of Lewis, the site of Peter May's Lewis trilogy. We're hoping to attend a church service in Gaelic.