Similar to the States "Historic Hotels" program, the hotel here is a member of what it called, “Connois
seur Hotels”. If you are an employee at one of these hotels, you can receive a discounted rate at any other participating hotel (based on availability). As it turns out there are about fifteen participating hotels in Scotland. We are hoping to get to as many of them as possible during our time here. Since it was the weekend after Valentines Day we figured availability might be limited. We submitted requests to three different hotels, one way up north by Aberdeen, one in the south near Edinburgh, and one just an hour north of here. After being turned down by the first two we finally received confirmation that we could stay at the Castleton House Hotel (www.castletonglamis.co.uk)This “hotel” is located about an hour north of St. Andrews near the small town of Glamis (pronounces Gloms). The hotel is actually more of a manor house. There are six guestrooms, two formal dining rooms and a couple of sitting areas. We arrived about 6:00, got settled into our room and relaxed until we headed down to dinner at 7:30. At dinner we soon realized that we were the only guests in the hotel for the evening. It was kind of nice to have the place to ourselves after a long week. But I have to admit that I felt bad that they had a full staff on for the night just to wait on us. Dinner was nice, but nothing particularly memorable. We decided to have our dessert next to the fireplace in one of the sitting rooms. The rest of the night was spent reading by the fire. No worries, Graig's reputation remains in tact. He read a magazine whilst Rebekah enjoyed a good mystery.
After enjoying our breakfast in the second dining room we headed o
ut for the day. We started out by heading into Glamis. The main (only) attraction in Glamis is the Glamis Castle. This is considered to be the childhood home of the Queen Mother. Unfortunately for us the castle was closed for the season, and would not be opening until March. Since it is only an hour away, we look forward to going back to tour the castle later this summer when we have some visitors.From Glamis we headed down the road to another small town called Kirriemuir. Kirriemuir is best know as the home of J M Barrie - author of the great book "Peter Pan.” It is also the birthplace of the drummer for the 80s rock band AC/DC. The town itself is built on the side of a large hill and consists of a few small shops and restaurants. After wandering through the shops we took a little hike to the top of the hill. It ended up being quite a workout as the top of the hill always seemed to be “just around the corner". Once we finally
made it to the top we were rewarded with beautiful scenery in every direction. 
Our final destination for the day was Dunkeld. This was another small town located along the River Tay. There were a number of antique and craft shops, cafes and restaurants. There was also a garden area where a number of locals each had their own plots to plant and maintain. Being the middle of the winter, there was not much to look at, but again we can’t wait to bring visitors there later this summer. The whole town had a feeling similar to Stillwater, MN on a smaller scale. Down the end of one of the streets was the cathedral building where a wedding was just concluding. The wedding party was climbing into an old fashion Rolls Royce limousine while the bride and groom were having a few last pictures taken by the river.
The cathedral it self was quite unique. At first glance it appears as if there had been a fire that burned the roof off of half of the church. The back end of the current church shares a common wall with the front wall of the ruins of the previous church. 
After a full day we decided to head back to the hotel before heading out for dinner. Since dinner the night before was quite fancy we had decided that we wanted something informal like a burger and fries. We saw a nice looking restaurant in Kirriemuir that we thought would fit the bill. When we got there we were greeted and asked if we had a reservation. This seemed a bit odd to us considering it was about 6:00 and the restaurant was less than a quarter full. The hostess looked up and down her list a couple of times and told us that they were not going to be able to fit us in. We asked where else she would recommend for some “pub grub.” She said that she didn’t know of anywhere that would serve that kind of food at that time of night. We then proceed to the restaurant next door. The menu was a bit more upscale than we were looking for so we thought we would try a third place that we were told was “just up the road”. After walking for ten minutes we finally asked a local man that we passed on the sidewalk. He replied by saying that the only place he knew of was four blocks in the other direction, but he also didn’t think we would be able to get anything “at this time of night.” We got into the car and headed for another slightly larger town five miles down the road. To our amazement it was more of the same. We did find one place that served the kind of food that we were looking for….but they stopped serving at 7:00 and it was now ten minutes after. Again the response was “I don’t know where you will be able to get that kind of food at this time of the night”. Eventually we settled on some fish and chips at a restaurant on the second story of a hotel. There was one server for a restaurant full of people and we were seated at a table full of crumbs. The fish was huge and pretty good. We decided to head back the fireplace at the hotel to relax with some ice cream, and more reading.
This whole frustrating experience left us scratching our heads about a couple of questions.
1) If you can’t get food in a pub between 6:00 and 7:00, when can you?
2) What is the point of having twenty tables in a restaurant when you can't serve more than five at a time?
This whole frustrating experience left us scratching our heads about a couple of questions.
1) If you can’t get food in a pub between 6:00 and 7:00, when can you?
2) What is the point of having twenty tables in a restaurant when you can't serve more than five at a time?
Charlie's Angels they aren't, but they are a darn good HR team. and Pauline the Twinkle, Left to Right: Gail the Reindeer, Sandra the Snowflake
