Jute, Abbeys, and Coasts

It was misting with rain on Saturday so we decided to take a tour of the local Verdant Works museum in Dundee. Dundee is famous for three j's: journalism, jam, and jute. The Verdant Works museum covers the jute part.

Have you ever wondered what jute is? How it's made? What things are made from it? Well, Nick and I are pretty much jute experts now so ask away. It actually was an interesting museum because it went into the history of Dundee so even though I'm being sarcastic about all the knowledge we have on jute now, it was an enjoyable afternoon. Again, there were more wax figures and some of them told us stories! However, a couple of the recordings were impossible to understand because they told them in a thick Scottish accent (which means it's authentic, I suppose).

When we woke up Sunday morning, the sun was shining so we took the 20 minute train ride from Dundee to Arbroath and spent the day walking around the old abbey and along the coastal cliffs. When we were buying our tickets to go out there, I had my first encounter of not being understood. The ticket salesman asked me where we wanted to go and I said "Arr-bro-ath" and he gave me a puzzled look. I then proceeded to try to say it in several different ways (and when I think back, I probably was repeating it over and over, only slower) and I was about to spell it out when he figured out I wanted to go to "Arr-broth" (rhymes with 'oath'). I have a feeling this will be the first of many mispronunciations of Scottish cities.

Nick is going to put up more pictures on the Picasa page soon but here is one of the pictures from our coastal cliff walk. It's a little difficult to see, but in the center there are rock climbers (if you click on the picture, you'll be able to see them). I think Nick was longing to be friends with them.