New Year's Eve Photos

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These are some of the photos I promised to put in my blog, before i got the flu! These were taken on the 31st of January. We'd heard there was good snow on the Cairgorm Mountains, south of us. Hubby and I planned a special surprise.
;-)

My parents gave us money for our wedding anniversary - to eat out. We took a portion of this money and paid for tickets to go up the mountain in the funicular railway carriage. The queues were horrid (we waited in the queue about 30 minutes for an empty train), but worth it. The view going up was amazing, but hard to photograph through the glass as it was raining. We did get some nice photos at the top... and then the mist came in! Everything went grey. It was very strange and exciting coming down the mountain in mist. My dad took all the photos. :-)

First photo... my mom and I getting seated in the train. It comes in at a steep angle and is hard to stand in (I know because I came down standing and had to hold onto a safety bar all the way).

The next two photos are of the view from the observation deck outside the Ptarmigan restaurant.

Not much snow, but still very pretty. We saw some snow buntings (rare birds), but a silly woman walked up to them and scared them away before we could take photos.

There's a really nice shop and a little museum/hall with all sorts of information on the history of the mountains, flora and fauna. We looked at everything!

This next photo is the cafe/bar area. We had coffee and shortbread as the restaurant was very busy and very expensive.

Going home... it is 4:09 pm and already dark with a little snow and sleet falling. Very pretty! We then drove home through the small towns looking at their Christmas lights and decorations. It was a very enjoyable day.