The First Week of Scotland

We made it! Last Monday we arrived in Kirkcaldy and got set up in our new apartment and we've been exploring our new town ever since. So far, we're loving Scotland and it's been so much fun to figure everything out: which grocery store we'll go to, where the best fish and chips are, where to get a good Scottish breakfast...

Here are a few pictures from our first week, if you'd like to see....

The apartment we're in right now is a temporary one until our real one is ready in the middle of September. Either way, they're both right down by the harbor which is great for long walks at low tide.

The downtown area of Kirkcaldy has lots of shops and restaurants so we've been wandering around there quite a bit. We've also found the library, the train station, the museum and a few really nice parks.

There's also a lake where you can rent a rowboat and go out fishing!

Many of the buildings look like this one and I love the roofs with all the chimneys:

Ryan's new team, the Fife Flyers, had two pre-season games this weekend....

The first was at home and it was fun to check out the new rink. The next day they went to Edinburgh to play, so I went along with another one of the girls and we spent the afternoon walking around the city.

The Fringe Festival was still going on, so the city was hopping!

But, we were lucky enough to score an outdoor table in the Grassmarket area of the city, where we ate lentil soup and steak pie at a pub called the Black Bull....complete with great people watching.

And, Edinburgh Castle looks out over the Grassmarket area, so we had a great view of that.

Edinburgh is only about 30 minutes from Kirkcaldy on the train, so it's fun to know that we can go back all the time.

We also did a quick trip to St. Andrew's - mostly to pick up our Visas, but of course we had to stop at the Old Course while we were there.

Surprisingly, the weather has been totally fine so far - mostly sunny, in fact! Sometimes it rains for a few minutes, but we've been lucky (although one of our first purchases when we arrived were two umbrellas for six pounds!).

Also, food - everyone told us we'd be taking a big step down from Italy, but so far we haven't had anything that we haven't liked! We've gotten into the fish and chips on several occasions...

....and we've also had some good lamb and salmon. We've been told to try a sausage roll, so that's next on the list. It's so much fun to have a new area to explore - does anyone have any tips about where to go or what to see?! We're ready for lots of suggestions!