Holidays 3

Monday - this is the 1st day (I think) that your holiday starts to feel like a *proper* holiday. No work, no hassle! Yesterday we had spotted the cute little station tea rooms which is in the old Ballater station building alongside the tourist information (it's a little museum with statues of Queen Vic herself getting off the train which she used to do on her way to Balmoral). So at 10 am sharp we were up and about ready for the big Scottish brekkie promised on the menu. When we got to the door there was NO sign of life! How disappointing. We concluded it must have only been Sunday morning that they did brekkie. So, we wandered round the village again (5 minutes) bought some bread and cheese from the posh little deli, got dominoes, a map and some cards from the paper shop and wandered back home to make our own brekkie. I looked at my watch, 10:35. Hmmmm, I wonder? I said to D, 'I'm just popping out to see if they open at 10:30'....and right enough the door was open! 'Wahoooo', I said as I walked back in 'what's that mean?', 'It's open' I said. 'Lets go'. it's a good job we went as quickly as we did, as we got the 2nd to last table in the place. During the time we were there they must have turned away 8 tables! I'm not surprised, the smoked salmon scrambled egg was DELICIOUS and at £4.25 amazing value for money as they seemed to have dropped at least a tenner's worth of smoked salmon on it! Really delicious!
After brekkie we came back to the cottage and lit the fire. D is getting pretty good at this now. He sat and read whilst I wrote a couple of letters. What bliss, it's such a luxury to hand write notes to people - I just never get the time normally! We decided to go out and post the letters then, as the post office is less athan 100 yards from the house. Continuing the stroll round the village, we popped into the The Glenaden Arms for a swift pint of G. Dan was very impressed by the Dyson hand dryers in the loos! We continued round the village and I bought a camera USB cable from the internet shop, and then some jogging pants for lounging around the house in (I've forgotten to bring PJs). After that strenuous day, we had to come back to the house for some of Dan's mum's apple pie, freshly made for us on Saturday morning. YUMMEEEEEEEE! Needless to say, I needed a nap after all that, so retired to bed for half an hour.
When I got up, Dan was...reading the paper in front of the fire. It's all getting very relaxed round here. We planned some TV to watch (a couple of documentaries we wanted to see) and made a nice tea from the leftovers and lovely fresh bread and cheese!
It's such a hard life being on hols.