There... Scotland (5 nights with pub karaoke and urinal troughs)

Last Tuesday evening, I began my trip to Scotland. At the Virgin Atlantic check-in counter, the counter representative was trying to decide who to bump up to first class due to overbooking in economy. I got a nod of approval for my hat, belt, and shoes, and was more than pleased to accept the upgrade. After a glass of champagne, a grilled shrimp salad, a variety of cheeses, and some Bailey's on ice, I had a hand and arm massage from the beauty consultant and drifted off to sleep in the first class pod bed.

Skip ahead to the Scotland part... I'm having a fabulous time with my friend. We went all around touring the countryside (30 shades of green) and small fishing villages (that didn't smell fishy). And what was the first Scottish attraction that caught my attention?

The ruins of some Scottish abbey?

Nae.

An old castle fortress wall?

Nope.

Urinal troughs.

Cannae be possible?

Let me preface this part of the story. I rarely see urinal troughs in the United States. I can barely remember them at the baseball parks to which my father dragged me for Royals games. But, Scottish pubs and, yes, even the Scottish National Portrait Gallery had one common denominator, urinal troughs. If it was just one, I probably wouldn't have cared. But almost everywhere we went, there were urinal troughs to be found. And it didn't even make sense to me. Urinal troughs in America are usually the length of a whole wall. But these Scottish troughs barely covered the space that would have housed two ordinary urinals. Was this some attempt at efficient use of space? I am pretty sure American urinal rules would still apply (Urinal selection, spaces between men, etc).

It almost became a game to take pictures of every pub urinal trough I encountered. The picture on the far left shows the longest urinal trough at a gay bar called CC Bloom's in Edinburgh. The vertical picture is from a pub in Glasgow on Princes Street. The picture with blue tiles (above) is the urinal trough from the National Portrait Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh.