Aberdeen, Scotland

Last week I made my third visit to Aberdeen, Scotland (where my husband used to live). 

Aberdeen (Scottish Gaelic Obar Dheathain) is a great little city that is now a burgeoning metropolis due to the North Sea Oil trade. Located near the ocean, many people who live here or visit here are connected to the petroleum trade (the hotel I stayed in had three clocks, two of which told the time in Oslo, Norway and Houston, Texas: oil hubs of the world). It's nicknamed "The Granite City," and it's easy to see why: nearly all the buildings are constructed from the locally sourced, beautiful granite. It has one of the smallest international airports in the world, the Aberdeen Heliport, which is growing more and more busy in proportion to the amount of oil that is flowing through the city. 

Me in Aberdeen: You can see why it is called "The Granite City"

I love Scotland. The people are so friendly and the atmosphere is much more relaxed there. We stayed at the Marriot Hotel in Dyce, which was unusual for us because we usually go Hilton. It was located very nearby to the train station, which was great because it gave me the opportunity to go to Union Square every day!


Union Square is a fairly recent mall that was built in the centre of Aberdeen, and it has some stores that I really love. H&M, Pandora, River Island, New Look, Deichmann, Zara and especially Dune are some of my favorite high street brands and they are all there at Union Square. 
What makes this mall even better is that it is directly connected to the train station. Aside from the obnoxious loud teenagers and misbehaving children, I had a lot of fun shopping there. 

Union Square @ Aberdeen

My hubby even took me to see The Great Gatsby. I am an English Literature major from American but bizarrely I had never read the novel up until this summer, so it was very coincidental that they would come out with a modern movie version this winter. Since the movie featured Leonardo Dicaprio, the love of my life (I don't care that he's old and ugly now, I still adore him!), I HAD to see it. I know the movie got some negative reviews, but of course, you can never really compare a movie to a novel anyway. Every movie version of a famous novel is bound to fail at some point: it's nearly impossible to encompass the emotional journey of a whole book in 2 hours. The soundtrack was unbelievable (Beyonce, OutKast, Jay-Z, Florence & The Machine, Lana del Ray, Gotse, etc), although a bit jarring in a movie that takes place in 1918. Lana del Ray's "Young and Beautiful" is such a gorgeous, haunting song that perfectly encapsulates the false values and superficiality that is the basis of The Great Gatsby. 

My car photo

The first time I went to Aberdeen, my sweet husband insisted on driving there from London (8 hours!!!) to show me the beauty of the northern England countryside and the Scottish highlands. And, my, was I impressed! That was truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and the beauty I saw during that road trip remains unsurpassed by anything I've ever seen. The photos I took are a sad reflection of the actual beauty I saw in person. Unfortunately, my camera died just as we were going through the Highlands!

Beautiful, rolling countryside

This time, however, we took a flight to Aberdeen. The British Airways business class lounge in Aberdeen is really nice and quiet. I made a pig of myself and ruined my diet eating scones, cookies, little turkey and salmon sandwiches, soup, cheese and downing three (3) whiskey drinks (I got inventive and combined it with apple cider: it was actually a good combo!). However, the location was kind of weird: we were seated at a level slightly above the regular waiting area with a see-through window. 

We had a number of travel failures this week. On our way to our flight after seeing The Great Gatsby, the train we were in broke down just a few yards from the station. We were stuck in a train for an hour until it pushed back into the station. Then, they had the nerve not to let us off the train until they fixed the problem! We were there for around an hour and a half until they were able to push off. At that point we would have missed our flight, but my husband received an email telling him that it was cancelled anyway. 

Strange: my horoscope said nothing about troubles with travel that day!

So we booked an extra night at the Doubletree Hotel, and got one of those insanely delicious, high-caloried, diet-ruining Doubletree Cookies! Recipe Here!