Last week on Wednesday all the international students were offered a bus tour of Stirling and the surrounding areas, so I went on it and got to see some pretty cool things.
We first stopped at Dunblane, which is a very small town about 5 minutes outside Stirling. The big attraction there is a cathedral that was built in the 1200s because a bishop wanted to have a seat in that area, so he built a cathedral. Back in those days any town that had a cathedral was granted "city" status, so Dunblane is a city even though it is very tiny. The cathedral is very nice. I'm going to post pictures of it so that you can see.
We also went to the monument of Robert the Bruce. He is considered one of the great kings of Scotland (I don't know how historically accurate it is, but the movie Braveheart tells part of the story). Because of all his greatness there is now a huge metal statue of him in Stirling (Stirling was a major battle arena during the war of independence with England).
After that we went downtown and had an international reception. We got piped in by a guy in the full kilt outfit, it was pretty cool. At this reception we got to meet the provost of Stirling (our equivalent of a mayor) and I had a nice conversation with him about sheep dogs. He lives on a farm and he raises sheep dogs and trains them to herd ducks around (instead of the traditional sheep). Apparently one of his dogs ended up in Oregon somewhere. I didn't really follow the whole story (these Scots are a wee bit difficult to understand sometimes), but it's there somewhere.
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