Our adventure: Chapter Fourteen: Ayr

From Edinburgh we drove west through Sterling (the home of William Wallace, aka Braveheart), and up into the highland a bit. We took a scenic route through Loch Lomand and north west of Glasgow.
Eventually we made our way to the coastal city of Ayr. Ayr is the home of famous Scottish poet, Robert Burns, but we had a more personal reason for stopping in this little city. Daniel and I both had great great grand parents that were contemporaries in this town. We do not know if they knew each other, but seeing the size of the town made us quite confident that they did. Our first night there we stayed with some students studying film at the university. We stayed up till the wee hours of the night (p.s. In Scotland they say wee in front of everything) discussing film and Scottish politics. The next day we explored the city and went in search of some of my distant relatives still living in Ayr. My mom was able to give me an address for these distant relatives, but we could not find a phone number and we did not know how accurate the address still was. Still, I was determined to at least try to make contact and make a connection with my distant cousins. I walked up to number 27 Marchmont street and knocked on the door. A wee Scottish man came to the door and confirmed that he was Robert Grahm. All I could think to say was, "hi, we're cousins!". He was a bit surprised, of course, and invited us in for tea. We proceeded to get to know them over tea and they convinced us to stay a few days with them. They are both Historians and showed us all around the city and surrounding countryside. In the evening they took us to quiz night at their local pub, it was fantastic! We loved spending time with them and wished we could have stayed longer. They were amazing hosts and it was so incredible to connect with long lost cousins from the mother land.