A Wee Jaunt

So back in September, just about the time the fuel panic started (!) we took ourselves off for an overnight stay in Strathpeffer. It's a mall highland town. developed as a 'tourist gateway' in Victorian times and it has a certain Victorian charm. However we hadn't taken ourselves there on a whim; we went for the Scottish Opera Highlights tour performance there. 

We booked a nice looking hotel near to the venue, part of a small chain and as always there was a 'loyalty scheme' you could join which we don't often bother with, but this one promised an upgrade if you joined so the OH signed up and I persuaded him not to book the most expensive room on the grounds that we were only there for one night and the standard rooms looked fine if the upgrade didn't materialise. 

In the event it did, and our room was huge, that's about a third of it! 

and with lovely views 

We discovered when we checked out that it was the honeymoon suite! and we hadn't known. We had a very nice dinner in the hotel and as the OH wasn't driving again that night we ventured to have a glass of rose, it was so nice we bought a bottle to bring away with us. Never done that before! 

The Highlights program was very good; quite often there's too much I don't know, and there were some this time that I wasn't familiar with, but that's fine. I don't expect it to be all bleeding chinks of the bits 'everybody knows' but sometimes the balance tips too far the other way. 

The singers were the three Emerging Artist singers  for the current year, plus a baritone who had been on the program a few years ago and who we had sponsored so it was good to see him back. It's early in the program for the EAs to be performing something like this, another thing to thank/blame covid for. It's the first time we've heard them sing before deciding who to sponsor and I was pleased to have the opportunity to do that as there was one who for us was a stand out and who we have subsequently 'adopted'. A video chat arranged through SO, because we're not able to meet in person,  confirmed to us that we had made the right decision as the person concerned is not only very talented but also a charming and likeable person.