Thursday night after I arrived my friend Alicia picked me up from the airport and we headed to an American expat dinner at Aperetivo, an Italian tapas-style restaurant. I made a healthy selection of french fries, calamari, and some sort of fried risotto ball. It was delicious! I enjoyed getting to visit with Alicia and Kirsten and meet some of their fellow expat friends.
Friday I slept in before heading to the ConocoPhillips office. Alicia showed me around and then printed maps for me of a few tourist sights around Aberdeen that the girls had been to many times before. I borrowed Alicia's car and braved driving a manual on the left side of the road at a ghastly speed of 60 mph (unheard of in Norway where the highway speed limit is a modest 55 mph).
My first stop was Drum Castle. Since it's still winter none of the castles were open for touring, but I enjoyed walking around the grounds and taking advantage of the beautiful sunny weather (a rarity for Aberdeen).
The next stop was Crathes Castle. It was also beautiful and there were a few paths through the woods around the castle that I enjoyed walking.
I headed down Slug Road and enjoyed the amazing scenery around me! (I mean come on, the road has to have a beautiful scenery with a name like slug.) That led me to my final stop of the day, Dunnator Castle. Unfortunately I arrived just as they were closing, but I was still able to walk down to the coast and castle and get some good pictures.
I headed back into Aberdeen before it got dark and met Alicia at the apartment. We headed to meet some of our ConocoPhillips girlfriends and a few other gals at a delicious Indian restaurant.
Afterwards Alicia, Kirsten, Emily, Emily and I headed out to do some sightseeing. We drove a loop just north of Aberdeen and stopped first at the Stone Circle. We had the luck of running into one of the brothers who owns the land which the stones are on. He gave us a brief history lesson about the stones (including the fact that there are over 90 spread throughout Scotland!) and took a group shot of us.
I also took my Week 22 picture while we were there. :-)
Our final stop was Cruden Bay. In the distance we could see Slains Castle (also known as Dracula's castle!) It started to get pretty windy and cold so we quickly walked out to see the arch and castle from a distance before driving along the coast back to Aberdeen.
We made an impromptu stop at the new Donald Trump golf course to see how it looked. It's a pretty impressive sight and I bet unbelievable to play!
I said goodbye to Kirsten and Alicia and stayed with my friend Emily the rest of the trip. We headed to dinner with our friend Liz and met my friends Charlotte and Kevin there as well. Char and Kevin had just arrived from the States earlier that afternoon so I'm very glad that they were able to join us!
Charlotte also surprised me with American icing and a couple other American favorites from her trip. Mmmm, icing. :-)
On Saturday I found out my flight back to Stavanger had been cancelled and they'd re-booked me on a flight two hours earlier than anticipated. Emily and I had a lazy Sunday morning of visiting and packing my suitcase full of meats, cheeses, and other snack foods I'd collected over the weekend (including a ham especially for Jason!)
It was a wonderful weekend and I enjoyed getting to see all of my friends while I was there! Alicia and Emily were gracious hosts when I stayed the night with them and I loved seeing Liz, Charlotte & Kevin, Kirsten, and Cheryl as well as meeting some of their friends!