Scone Palace Scones

Alright, let’s jump to right to what truly matters here. We did it! Saturday, we discovered, purchased, and consumed, a delicious scone, in Scone. In the very palace of Scone actually!

For the other, less important details: we biked about 15 miles, round-trip. We found a sidewalk hidden in the grass along the death highway to Scone, which made us feel quite silly. We met a friendly horse in a pasture on the way to Scone, who was quite large and intimidating, but found us interesting enough to mosey over to our resting spot by the fence to meet us.

We saw grain-bale-laden hills which were magnificently beautiful despite the cliché. Chelsea’s been practicing her photography skills under my tutelage, and I must say she’s doing quite well (note that all the photos on the blog so far are from Chelsea’s camera, and mostly taken by her. For anyone who cares, I’m shooting on my camera in RAW, as I intend to use some of the pictures for my portfolio in hopes of one day actually making some money off of photography. But all you really need to know is that I can’t edit or post my pictures from the RAW format until we’re reunited with my bigger, faster laptop, which we mailed on ahead to my mom’s friend Sunday, who has been a huge help to us and who we’ll be meeting up with around the start of September).

The palace itself was very grandiose and interesting, though every time a tour guide tried to make conversation with us, we subconsciously attempted to politely ignore them or at worst, reply with only a friendly chuckle or one word answers, because, sadly, we were ashamed of our accents and didn’t want them to know we weren’t Scottish (we flatter ourselves that we’ve gotten quite good at blending in, so long as we don’t have to speak. Later, while I was buying groceries and Chelsea sat outside on a bench guarding the bicycles, an older couple stopped to ask Chelsea where to find public parking. That’s right, totally mistook her for a local. Of course, once they heard her speak, all bets were off. But luckily she’d been sitting there long enough to have figured out the street parking, and was still able to help them).

Inside the palace, we saw all kinds of old stuff, as we’ve learned to expect from these sorts of places.



I particularly enjoyed seeing that famous painting of King George-I had no idea it was on display there. The palace also features the longest room in Scotland, which is a strange title to hold, and in reality is less dramatic than it sounds. We also watched a wicked video tour complete with reenactments and a host wearing a kilt, the best part of which was the chance to sit down for twenty minutes.

Finally, we finished up our tour of the palace and popped down (see that? I’m becoming more British by the second) to the coffee shop, where we finally found the legendary scone of Scone. With cream and jam.

Outside the palace, we saw the Stone of Scone, aka the Stone of Destiny (a replica, not the real one, which was stolen by a king to London for 700 years, stolen back by some university students for a few weeks, taken back to London, and then finally willingly given back to Scotland, at which point it was put in...Edinburgh Castle...(I’m going crazy with the parentheses today, aren’t I?)). But the stone is where a whole bunch of kings of Scotland were crowned, including Macbeth, James I, and Robert the Bruce. So that makes the Scone Palace a pretty important place, and Scone is even the very last word in Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

There was also an awesome hedge maze, which we totally conquered.

In other news, Frosties, aka Frosted Flakes, are apparently the most hated cereal in Scotland, or otherwise very difficult to sell. In every grocery store we’ve been in so far, they’re on sale for 1 pound. Every other cereal in every store costs at least 2.50. I have yet to discover the reason for this pricing discrepancy, but we have indeed bought two boxes of Frosties, with hopes of purchasing more soon.

And in closing, they have “Cheese burger in batter” here. Yes. It’s exactly what it sounds like. Two hamburger patties, with cheese in the middle, deep fried in batter, served over chips (we’ve also learned that making any menu item a “supper” means serving it over chips). I got one. It was delicious, and probably enough calories to last me through the winter. It was incredible. It should be illegal to consume that amount of grease in one sitting. Seriously, it should be, because I then had to bike the remaining five miles up hill with a backpack full of groceries. Bad idea.