My most memorable vacation

I couple of days ago I wrote about my dislike of England.

Well, now I’ll write something to contradict myself!

I’ll write about my vacation in Scotland in 1998.

But Scotland is not England! It’s all a bit confusing — Britain, the UK, England, Scotland… I lived in England for many years but only experienced Scotland for a couple of weeks. And going on vacation is not the same as experiencing a country so maybe this prelude, the reference to my story about England is not very appropriate.

Anyway, in August of 1998, just before my final year at boarding school in England my family (my parents and I — I’m the only child) spent a couple of weeks in Scotland. My Dad rented a Mercedez and we drove through Scotland staying at its ancient castles. Yes — every night or every other night a new castle! The kind that you see in movies — medieval-looking mansions, haunted by ghosts!

I don’t want to call this vacation “the best”. It wasn’t.

For one thing, the trip through Scotland that August of 1998 was our last ever family vacation. A few months later my Dad would leave my Mom. My parents’ twenty-year marriage would be no longer. While I couldn’t predict the exact end of my parents’ union, I knew that my Dad had been having an affair. And even the affair aside — their relationship had been deteriorating for some years. My Mom still loved Dad but I knew that Dad was thinking of leaving.