I finally found Anna Shaw, but then she disappeared.

Anna Shaw’s life is such a mystery. She’s one of my Scottish ancestors, prominently featured in the family notes, until….. she simply disappears. And she doesn’t just disappear from my family tree. Anytime she shows up on someone else’s family tree, poof. Nothing, except her name. Dead end. She came from Scotland, I know that, but from where? How? Why? How can one person leave so faint a trace? 

I discovered a few clues after going down the Ancestry research rabbit hole with a free two-week membership. I love learning the where, how, and why of the ancestors, but Padre, not so much. He took one peek on Ancestry and backed away. It’s not for everyone, that rabbit hole, but I love the challenge of the rabbit holes, the mysteries, even when I get nowhere. 

So we’re on a rummage, as the Scots might say, headed to Scotland to track Anna down. We leave tomorrow for a month-long trip to Scotland, Norway, and London, and Anna’s story is not the only mystery we’re working on. 

We also want to see if the ghost of Mary Queen of Scot’s mother still haunts Linlithgow Palace, one of the filming locations for Outlander, which we’ve enjoyed watching, and whether or not Rosslyn Chapel, featured in The Da Vinci Code, houses aliens or the Holy Grail.  We want to know if the Loch Ness Monster lurks at the bottom of the Loch. To be honest, we’re more interested in checking out the massive wild boars near the Loch than the mythical monster, because the murderous boars supposedly run up to 30 miles an hour. Whoa!

I love ghost and alien stories but wild boars, not so much. Seeing one from the window of a Gate 1 bus, though? That’d be a thrill. Recently the monster boars have been rampaging through the countryside, killing up a storm. No lambs are safe. 

I also love Gate 1 buses, especially since they awarded me 1^st place and $500 in their 2021 Photo contest. (Really. I wasn’t even trying – what a hoot! And yes, I’ll try again.) This will be our third Gate 1 trip (Thailand and Egypt, previously), and we’ve been absolutely thrilled with our guides on both of those trips. 

Padre isn’t keen on the sort of stressful travel driving he used to do, so nowadays we both prefer to let other drivers and captains take the helm. Bus rides will also give us time to chat up our good Key West friend Pat, who’s joining us. She’s one of our favorite travel companions ever, and she survived Iceland with us. So she’s a trooper.

I mentioned captains because we’re also going on a cruise. We’ve avoided cruising recently (Covid and norovirus duh), but we wanted to visit the Norwegian Fjords and didn’t want to drive. So we’re off under the care of our captain, who will sail us North on P & O’s small, adults-only ship, along with a boatload of mostly Brits. Did you know it’s a bit tricky to book a British cruise ship from the States? We figured out how to pull that off at a seriously discounted price, so off we go with extra bleach, masks, and tests in the luggage just in case. 

We’re also ready to be quizzed about American politics, as we were in Singapore and Indonesia last year. Once our taxi drivers had us trapped in the back seat, they asked a million questions about the wild American political situation. I suppose it does look like a bit of a trainwreck from afar, so we don’t mind. I don’t think we’ll mention Brexit, though, unless someone else brings it up. I heard that Brexit is a bit of a sore subject for many Brits, similar to our American divided political landscape. So we’ll just get to know new people, the best part of traveling the world by far.

When we return from the cruise we’re off to London for a few days. We just missed having tea with the Queen at Windsor Castle on our last visit (they closed the door 15 minutes before we arrived by train). This time I’m determined to pay my respects to Queen Elizabeth at Windsor’s St. George’s Chapel, where she is now interred, next to oodles of other royals entombed under the floor in the vaults.

And what’s with that Stonehenge place? Is it simply an enormous burial ground, or did aliens show up there as well? We headed up to Victoria, B.C. a couple weeks ago to take in a special museum exhibit on Stonehenge, but no mention of aliens at all. Darn. But we’ll keep an eye out for those pesky aliens when we wander around the stones.

By the time we make it to London, Padre will probably be castled out – so many castles and palaces on the agenda! – but he doesn’t get to stop. He says I ran him ragged on our last London trip, and that I did. Unfortunately, the palace he really wanted to see, Hampton Court Palace, isn’t on our agenda because I mixed up my palaces and booked Kensington Palace instead. This was after I encouraged him to read a huge, excellent book on the history of Hampton Court, which he very much enjoyed. Oops. So Padre gets to see dresses instead of the cooler castle, the one with all the fantastic history. Sorry about that, Padre. We’ll just have to come back to London now, at least one more time.

I was able to book a West End play, though, for our grand finale: MJ the Musical. We learned how cheap London theatre tickets are compared to Broadway last time we visited. You can book a flight to London and catch a few plays for the cost of two tickets to a New York Broadway play, so we weren’t going to miss out on the opportunity.

So off we go, quite a bit older – and wiser –  than when we took our first overseas honeymoon trip to Ireland in 1989. Look at us – so young! We don’t look like that any more, of course (whose face do I see in that mirror? Yikes!). 

Inside, though? We still feel like the same adventurers smiling on that Irish dock, off exploring the world and having a grand time. And we’re grateful for every minute.

So thanks, as always, for sharing the road with us and following along – more travel posts soon.