Weekend exploration and photos

This weekend I did a little more exploring in the city of Aberdeen. I was in city centre by 10:00 saturday morning, taking lots of pictures. After a brief trip to Asda (Walmart), Jason and Erin and I took the bus to Duthie Park and walked around the winter garden. It's a big greenhouse with several different rooms including a room full of cacti. They even had a stone sign of Texas - made me feel right at home! Here are a few pics of the winter garden.


After the gardens we walked around the park and strolled by the River Dee (one of the two rivers in Aberdeen) for a little while, then visited the Provost Skene house, a medieval house right in the middle of the city (with offices and stores surrounding it). The house was cool, with a lot of antique furniture, and even a room where the ceiling is painted with scenes from Christ's life. We stopped for a snack in the restaurant of the Provost Skene house. I had a traditional Scottish dessert called Sticky Toffee Pudding. It's not really pudding - they use that word as a generic word meaning "dessert". It was a very moist cake with raisins in it, covered in a toffee sauce and with whipped cream on the side. It was the most pleasant Scottish dish I've had, by far! I actually enjoyed it.


Today I ventured out to church on my own. I went to a Church of Scotland church. It was definitely different. The service was more liturgical, and there was nobody leading the music. The pastor would introduce the hymns, and the words were on a screen in the front. The instrumentalists (piano, organ, violin, oboe, flute, etc.) played the introduction, and then everyone stood and sang along. But nobody led! It was odd to me not to have a worship leader. The message was good though, and very evangelistic. In generally I find the churches here very sad. Many of the church buildings are vacant or being used for other things now, because they don't have enough people to use them as churches. One of the prettiest churches in the city, the Kirk of St. Nicolas, is being excavated right now, and they're planning to build a coffee house/teen meeting place inside it. Many other churches have been turned into pubs or restaurants. It's a shame, but it reinforces that in many ways Christianity is a dying religion in this country. The buildings and the architecture are beautiful though. Here are some pictures of the churches I've seen around town so far. The first one is the church I went to this morning.



Lastly, I'll just share a few of my favorite random pictures from around town this weekend (including the giant seagulls playing in the graveyard of St. Nicolas' Kirk). I hope to get out to visit some castles soon, so I'll have some new things to shoot. Until then, enjoy these.