British Isles Trip, Day 3

Greetings from the Internet lounge on the cruise ship Minerva II, currently in port at Greenock, Scotland. Greenock -- pronounced GREEN-uck -- is the birthplace of the engineer James Watt and the pirate Billy the Kidd. It's on the west coast of Scotland, and once we push off tonight, it's just a hop, skip, and a jump (84 nautical miles, to be precise) to Belfast, Northern Ireland, which is our port of call tomorrow.

We finished up our visit to Edinburgh this morning with some free time. A number of people went to Edinburgh Castle, while others just strolled around or took advantage of the chance to catch a little extra sleep in their hotel rooms. I went to Edinburgh Zoo, where the attractions included a new baby zebra, dozens of penguins, and some comical and agile ring-tailed lemurs. In the afternoon we boarded buses for the trip to Greenock, and along the way we had a pleasant surprise -- an unscheduled drive through Glasgow, on the river Clyde. Glasgow is larger than Edinburgh and not quite as charismatic, as it has been rebuilt several times over the centuries while Edinburgh still has many medieval buildings. But we're told that Glasgow has excellent shopping, second best in the U.K. (London of course being the best).

Our guide on the bus told us all kinds of interesting trivia along the ride, from the arcane (Edinburgh is the birthplace of John Napier, who invented the decimal point) to the sobering (Scotland lost fully one-third of its male population in World War II).

Tomorrow morning we'll arrive in Belfast, and travelers have a number of possible excursions from which to choose. I'll be joining some other Penn Staters on a tour of the city in the morning, and in the afternoon we'll head up the Antrim Coast through the glens to Glenariff Forest -- a very scenic trip, I'm told.