A big birthday is coming up for Deb this year. Trying to decide what to do for the combined milestones of birthday plus getting through six months of chemotherapy has been a challenge. It’s a bit difficult as there are lots of things I’d like to do. Most of them involve some kind of travel and we usually wait for warmer weather for that sort of thing. I’ve never been bothered by putting off a celebration on my birthday day for the promise of something amazing further down the road. We can wait for something fun and different to appear.
That something has presented itself much sooner than expected. I got a Scotland events newsletter today. They were featuring the events for their upcoming Hogmany (New Year) celebration. This is something I have always wanted to do. And it looked just amazing! So, I ruminated on that for a little while and might get back to that later.
Then I remembered I hadn’t checked the Celtic Connections calendar for a few months. So I hopped on over to their webpage. OMG!! One of my all time favorite Old Irish bands, The Bothy Band, were in the line up. They hadn’t played a live concert event since 1979. I found my birthday event!
We’re going to Scotland for Celtic Connections!
https://www.celticconnections.com
A crazy full day of planning ensued. Who else will be playing we wondered?
Oh my, LOTS of great people and bands!
So many to choose from. Oh no, there are some overlapping conflicts.
Who do we really want to see? How will we decide?
We’ll need to get out a calendar and get all those tickets lined up in advance.
How long will we need to stay to catch the not to be missed acts?
We’ll leave on Jan 17th and get there on the 18th and stay until Feb.1.
Where will we stay?
In an B&B in the center of Glasgow. Just a block and a half away from the main event where we will be spending most of our musical nights out.
How will we get there?
Iceland Air of course!
Who can resist turning that flight layover into a slightly longer stay on the same ticket.
Thoughts of those steaming hot pots are like a siren’s call whispering Paul’s name.
We’ll spend 3 more nights in Reykjavík, before heading home on Feb. 4.
We’ll get a car for Iceland, just in case I can get Paul out of those hot pots to do a bit more exploring.
Of course, our Iceland side trip will depend on how the earthquakes and lava flows are behaving.
We might not be allowed to stop in Iceland if Mother Nature is still in the throws of giving birth to some new landscape.
A Bit About Celtic Connections
This now-massive event started in 1994. It takes place every mid January though early Feburary (18 days) in Glasgow Scotland, which has been designated as a UNESCO City of Music.
We will be among the 110,000 expected to attend in 2024.
Musical artists from around the world are featured in the lineup for the 18 days of which we’ll be there for 14.
The musical venues are spread out all over the city in the evening, from concert halls, pubs, to churches.
During the day, they offer activities including workshops (learn to play the pipes anyone?), educational programs, and walking tours. In the evening, there are pop-up performances at the Festival Club. Then there are the late night sessions where the music continues after the featured evening act ends. Those start at 11:00 pm and you never know who’s going to appear to entertain the crowds. There will be no early to bed night for us on this trip. Sleeping is for babies. We can sleep in when we get home.
If you are still reading this post you may be curious about the list of people we have tickets to see.
Note that there are days we are still trying to fill in with some sort of adventure, which might be more music events or maybe a train trip to Edinburgh. We’ll just have to see how it goes.
Jan. 19, AM: Merchant City Walking Tour
PM: Nuala Kennedy
Jan 20, Xabier Díaz & Adufeiras de Salitre with Barzaz
Jan 21,
Jan 22, Bothy Band
Jan 23,
Jan 24, Altan
Jan 25, Celtic Odyssée
Jan 26, Eddi Reader and Robin Adams
Jan 27, An Dannsa Dub
Jan 28, Littoral: Leonard Barry & Guests and Tarran
Jan 29,
Jan 30, Carlos Nunez
Jan 31, Alan Stivell
Still reading??
You’ll notice we finally fixed our travel blog, this website, but of course, in the fixing of things, a few other things got broken.
All in all its working better than before, and we are hoping to have it all back together before we take off in mid-January.
More to come in soon.
