As a child, I heard that my great-great-grandfather, George Calder, was a ship captain who sailed the seas from Aberdeen, Scotland. As I learned more about George Calder's history, I realized he spent most of his life in Edinburgh and navigated the Caledonian Canal, an inland waterway, a much less ambitious job than "sailing the seas". There is still that ambiguous time, though, when, as a young man before he married, the records say that George Calder "went to sea." Maybe I do have a connection to Aberdeen, after all. On August 23, 2025, I visited Aberdeen for the first time.
We were welcomed to Aberdeen by a bagpiper in a kilt, skirling tunes as we descended our ship's gangway.
Our guide, on a walking tour of downtown Aberdeen, was also dressed in Scotland's finest.
Aberdeen is called "the Granite City" because of its many fine, gray buildings built from locally quarried granite.
Aberdeen's gray buildings were brightened, during our visit, by a local festival to raise money for Aberdeen's charities. This procession was headed for the city parade.
There were races past the gray downtown buildings for both youngsters and adults.
The city was also brightened by banners welcoming the Tall Ships Races coming to town just after we left.
Aberdeen is also a city of monuments to military heroes. This downtown statue honors William Wallace, who fought off the English.
Robert the Bruce unified Scotland in the late Middle Ages.
Charles Gordon fought in China and Africa and was finally killed in the 1880s in the Siege of Khartoum. Scots are known for being great warriors and, even in the United States, the descendants of the Scots and Scots-Irish have produced a disproportionate percentage of U.S. generals, such as George Patton.
We needed a rest after several hours of our walking tour, admiring Aberdeen's churches, universities, and even cemeteries.
After the tour, we browsed in Aberdeen's art museum, looking for distinctively Scottish art and themes.
Robert Burns, Scotland's famed poet, wrote a poem about his lover, Highland Mary, who died at the age of 23. The poem concluded, "But oh! fell Death's untimely feat/That ript my flower sae early!/Now green's the sod, and cauld's the clay/ That wraps my Highland Mary!" We saw both a statue and a painting of Highland Mary.
I was also interested in the portraits of Queen Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert.
The placard by the painting of Prince Albert said that he and Queen Victoria bought Balmoral Castle, near Aberdeen, because the countryside reminded Prince Albert of his beloved, native Coburg, Germany. My great-great aunt, Clara Eyring, was governess to Victoria and Albert's children when they spent their summers in Coburg.
I liked this painting because it fit my stereotype of the warring Highlanders.
I also liked this painting, titled "Aberdeen at Work." Despite its monuments and stately buildings, Aberdeen seems like a gritty city. It was formerly a prominent shipbuilding city, as well as a fishing center, and now it supplies oil platforms offshore.
Dave and I collect, for our grandchildren, "stuffies" and dolls from the countries we visit. We chose this Highland cow from the museum gift store.
We finished our Aberdeen day at the Maritime Museum.
There were displays about the offshore oil exploration, including this suit used by divers seeking leaks in equipment in the freezing North Sea.
There was a model of an offshore drill rig, and drawings of the men who manned this dangerous work.
And, just out the window of the museum, we could see ships in the harbor.
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