Our last day in London turns out to be somewhat anticlimactic because we have not fully planned our trip to Scotland: what to see and where to eat and how, exactly, to get to each place during the remainder of our trip to Glasgow, Skye, Cairngorms and Edinburgh.

Soooo, David stays “home” to construct our three days in Skye while Cynthia goes to our home-away-from-home, the good ol’ V&A, for a bit o’ culture. In the evening, we revisit another of our favorite restaurants, the Brindisa, a Spanish tapas-esque place a short walk from our hotel. We guzzle a superb 2014 Remelluri Reserva tempranillo, return to our hotel, pack, and mentally prepare for a radical change in spoken English.

Our tubing to Euston Street Station for the Avanti West Coast train to Glasgow goes without a hitch and we ensconce ourselves in seats H13 and H14: window seats with a table between us for the five-hour chug north. The scenery is bucolic and beautiful as we roll beside a canal with occasional houseboats, through rolling hills green with Spring crops, yellow with gorse, and brown with bald rock in the distance, sometimes dotted with sheep or Aberdeen cattle.