Transitioning from Scotland to France

Daffodils in Scotland (photo for Judy Haselhoef)

Before I offer any observations and pearls of wisdom about the last 24 hours, I want to note that I made a mistake in my last post.  I originally said that there were ten Catholic churches in Scotland when I meant that there were ten Catholic churches in Coatbridge, quite a few for a city of 40,000. This is due in large part to all the Irish who traveled to Scotland to find work. 

Until recently, there was a lot of what our hosts called sectarianism--major and sometimes violent competition between Catholics and Protestants. The Church of Scotland is Presbyterian. According to Wikipedia,  in Glasgow, the sectarianism has been reinforced through the rivalry of two football (soccer) clubs, the Catholic Celtics and the Protestant Rangers. Coincidentally, these two teams were playing this past Sunday. The heavily favored Celtics were defeated by the Rangers. Think I will choose not to read too much into this.

We have been recipients of wonderful and humbling hospitality on our trip. Our friends in Scotland took good care of us and we enjoyed hanging out with them. Below is the view from the picture window in their kitchen. 

The funny-looking tree in the middle is called a Monkey Puzzler. It's a very hardy pine tree.

They had chickens. Luke enjoyed feeding them and. . .

. . . collecting their eggs.

Our main purpose in traveling to France is to visit the beaches in Normandy, where John's dad was during World War II. But we have a little more time there then we need for this visit and we were trying to figure out what else to do. As the theme of this trip is pilgrimage, we were thinking about going to see the Cathedral in Chartres. This has been a site for pilgrims for centuries, and I've always wanted to see it.

When we mentioned to our Scottish hosts that we were thinking about going to Chartres, they told us they had made a pilgrimage to the Cathedral there. It was a true pilgrimage as they walked 50 miles from Paris to Chartres. This sealed the deal.

So we boarded our easyJet flight from Edenborough to Paris.

They line up (queue) differently in Scotland. Here we are waiting in tunnels.

Doesn't easyJet sound like the name of a made up airline company?

Everything went well. The biggest challenge of the day was negotiating rush hour traffic in Paris in a stickshift Citreon. My clutch skills were a little rusty. Did you know that more than 12 million people live in the Paris metro area? It is the biggest city in Europe, aside from London.

It was a relief to arrive in the calmer town of Chartres. While we were driving around town, not exactly lost (can you be lost when you're not sure where you want to wind up?), we got an up close view of one of the most Gothic Cathedrals in Europe.

We are looking forward to seeing more of it!