{"id":144,"date":"2016-06-05T14:26:17","date_gmt":"2016-06-05T18:26:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/?p=144"},"modified":"2016-08-07T02:05:15","modified_gmt":"2016-08-07T06:05:15","slug":"june-5-the-garden-studio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/2016\/06\/05\/june-5-the-garden-studio\/","title":{"rendered":"June 5: The Garden Studio"},"content":{"rendered":"

Arjan has done it again! He found us a marvelous place to stay for the next five days in Scotland\u2014a bungalow called \u201cThe Garden Studio\u201d in Doune, Stirlingshire, about halfway between Edinburgh and Glasgow. Doune\u00a0(pronounced \u201cdune\u201d) is a tiny town, most famous for its medieval Doune Castle.<\/p>\n

\"Doune,
Doune, Scotland<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We are centrally located near Stirling (site of another famous castle) and the Trossachs National Park, which includes Loch Lomand. (More about those places when we have actually visited them!)<\/p>\n

\"The
The Garden Studio, Doune<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the meantime, I want to praise our lodgings. The owners, Fiona and Colin Graham, have set up the little cottage perfectly. It is very cozy and beautifully\u00a0arranged, and\u00a0everything we might need has already been thought of. \u00a0The little house is tucked behind their house, at the end of a driveway you couldn\u2019t find unless you knew it was here. \u00a0We have the ultimate in privacy and convenience, and a wonderful place to relax and stay put for a while.<\/p>\n

\"Our
Our Doune Driveway<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Outside our windows is an old stone fence and rolling green farmlands, with mountains that appear out of nowhere in the afternoon sun. Speaking of sunshine, we have had two days of cloudless skies and temperatures in the 70s Farenheit (above 21 degrees Celsius). Hard to believe that we have brought our travel weather gods with us once again. Even if it turns cloudy or even rainy over the next few days, we have been blessed with absolutely perfect weather to get settled into our little haven.<\/p>\n

Today, we took a long time to get started, enjoying\u00a0the precious sunshine on our porch and streaming in through the windows. \u00a0We\u00a0finally dragged ourselves away to go sightseeing around 3:00 PM. \u00a0Luckily, the sun doesn\u2019t go down until around 10:00 PM, so we had plenty of sunshine to drive a portion of the Trossachs Trail, a scenic loop around the National Park, and take a walk near Loch Katrine.<\/p>\n

Dinner will be at the Lion &\u00a0Unicorn in Thornhill, a nearby pub that sent us away last night because they were mobbed. Last night, we ended up eating at L\u2019Angolino\u2019s in Doune just before closing. Every other place we tried turned us away! While waiting for our table, we took a stroll around the neighborhood and actually stumbled across Doune Castle after the tourists had all gone home for the night.<\/p>\n

Photographs \u00a9 2016 P.J. Gardner<\/a>. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Arjan has done it again! He found us a marvelous place to stay for the next five days in Scotland\u2014a bungalow called \u201cThe Garden Studio\u201d in Doune, Stirlingshire, about halfway between Edinburgh and Glasgow. Doune\u00a0(pronounced \u201cdune\u201d) is a tiny town, most famous for its medieval Doune Castle. We are centrally located near Stirling (site of … Continue reading “June 5: The Garden Studio”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":556,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions\/556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}