Scotland

If you're a big fan, you already knew what was coming in the season finale. But it didn't make it any easier -- or less heartbreaking -- to watch. The majority of the Season 3 "Downton" finale, or the "Christmas special" as its called in the U.K., took place in Scotland, where the whole family (minus Branson) visits the Highlands home of the Dowager's niece, Susan, and her husband, Shrimpy. Most of the trip included bagpipes, hunting, more bagpipes and Scottish reel dancing. But more on that later (and more on O'Brien meeting her Scottish lady's maid doppelganger)

This episode includes poetry and haggis. Actually, poetry and haggis together! A little haggis always makes the poetry go down easier, don't you think? Let's kick things off with ... Airport Shenanigans of Mistaken Euphoria You know that feeling you get when you get the last tickets to Scotland on an earlier flight, and your least favorite teams are stuck on a flight three hours later? You do a little dance, skip around, maybe plan to do some sightseeing with all that free time you'll be enjoying?

Scotland's national bard, Robert Burns, died 200 years ago on July 21 at the age of 37. To commemorate the bicentenary of his death, events have been planned throughout Scotland.Among them is an exhibition called "Pride and Passion," which will run through Sept. 15 at the Royal Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. Songs and audiovisual material complement manuscripts, paintings and objects to present a full picture of a life that embraced farming, traveling, Freemasonry and romance as well as poetry.

SUNDAY'S TELEVISION HIGHLIGHTS IndyCar Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg 2, 712:30 NASCAR Sprint Cup Auto Club 400 45, 52:30 MLB exhib. Boston@Orioles MASN1 Philadelphia@Atlanta MLB1 Colorado@Cubs WGN-A4 Boston@Orioles (T) MASN8 C. base. Georgia Tech@Miami CSN1 M. bask. NCAA Elite 8: teams TBA 13, 92:10 NCAA Elite 8: teams TBA 13, 94:55 W. bask.

LONDON -- Let the Scots run Scotland.That was the message delivered yesterday by Britain's Labor government, which unveiled sweeping constitutional plans to give Scotland a parliament for the first time since the 1707 Act of Union united the parliaments of England and Scotland.Under the plan, a 129-member Scottish parliament would be given broad lawmaking and taxpaying powers to preside over 5 million Scots.Scotland's voters would have to approve the plan in a referendum Sept 11. Prime Minister Tony Blair has vowed to lead that campaign and the one to gain approval in Westminster.

For an afternoon, Kathleen M. Walker's classroom was transformed into the Bakerfield Cafe in Scotland. And 25 third-graders turned into young ladies and gentlemen.Students, many of them wearing their Sunday best, greeted their parents at the door, took their coats and and escorted them to seats. After inquiring solicitously about their parents' health, the 8- and 9-year-olds served their parents tea and shortbread cookies."If you lived in Scotland, things would be different from living in Aberdeen," Chris Smoot, 8, explained to his mother Donna.

Jeffrey Hatcher's enigmatic Scotland Road opens tomorrow at Fell's Point Corner Theatre. The psychological thriller offers yet another twist on the tantalizing story of the Titanic. Under Steve Goldklang's direction, Michelle Pinkham plays a young woman found floating on an iceberg in the North Atlantic, dressed in century-old clothing and uttering only one word: "Titanic." Neal Freeman plays the man who puts her under surveillance; Katherine Lyons is the doctor he hires to care for her; and Margery Germain portrays the last-known bona fide survivor of the shipwreck.

WELL MIGHT British Prime Minister Tony Blair warn Scots against the Scottish National Party. Should it win the Scottish election next May, he said, the new Scottish parliament could become "a battering ram for separatism." So it would.That would be the last thing his government intended when enacting state governments for Scotland, Wales and Greater London on the model of Northern Ireland.Mr. Blair's British Labor Party should have worried about this earlier. During a revival of the Scottish Nationalists in the 1970s, Labor advocated a middle way, "devolution" of some power to a Scottish assembly in Edinburgh, and has never reconsidered the policy.

The wind blew at 85 mph. The temperature hovered around 52 degrees. The squall roared in from the sea. The snow was a rapidly shrinking grayish strip lying in a gully. It was covered with skiers.Welcome to skiing in Scotland.I'd skied from New Zealand to New England, from Squaw to Sugarloaf, but I'd never seen such terrible conditions -- or such determined skiers.Take, for example, my day at Scotland's newest ski area, the Nevis Range. Because of lack of snow, I joined several hundred Scottish skiers hiking from the base lodge to the T-bar, the only lift still operating.

GLASGOW, Scotland -- For an advance glimpse of Bill Clinton's America, the politically curious will find a remarkable crystal ball in Scotland -- the nation that defied Margaret Thatcher for a dozen years and is now one of the few economic bright spots in an otherwise deeply gloomy Great Britain.What the Scottish experience suggests is that the Clinton program of government-led recovery just might work, but only if it is implemented with stubborn pragmatism.More than a decade before Mr. Clinton launched his assault on the conservative legacy of Ronald Reagan -- the closest ideological ally to former Prime Minister Thatcher -- the Scots were defining the terms of battle.

A University of Maryland writing instructor has been charged with second-degree murder in the shooting death of her husband at their southern Maryland home. Joanna J. Findlay, 40, a native of Scotland, was teaching two classes this fall at the university's flagship College Park campus. She now sits in a jail cell in St. Mary's County, where she's being held without bail. According to the county sheriff's office, Findlay shot her husband, 55-year-old Gary A. Trogdon, during a domestic dispute Saturday night at their home in Hollywood.

TURNBERRY, SCOTLAND - That pristine ogre known as golf has struck again, choosing a gorgeous setting by the Irish Sea to unleash its full and singular meanness upon a cherished 59-year-old man. It enticed him for four days of enchantment. It ushered him to the 72nd hole with a one-shot lead in a British Open and a chance to broaden earthly possibility. It brought Tom Watson down that No. 18 fairway to deeply felt applause, and then it threw in a blaring roar when his well-struck 8-iron approach on an 8-foot putt smacked down and bounded onto the green.

TURNBERRY, Scotland -- Golf had another of its inconceivable dreams Saturday. In this one, the image of 53-year-old Greg Norman in 2008 walking up No. 18 at Royal Birkdale down the coast in England with a 54-hole lead in the British Open had not been sufficient, for clearly, Norman had been too bloody young. No, this one starred a man with a phalanx of wrinkles, a bunch of glowing 32-year-old memories and an age just seven weeks shy of 60, so it made sense that somebody asked Tom Watson whether he needed to pinch himself.

Elspeth M. Udvarhelyi, who had held important development roles with several Baltimore and Washington artistic and cultural organizations, and had been development director and interim CEO of the Globe Theatre in London, died Sunday of Merkel cell cancer, a rare skin disease, at Gilchrist Hospice Care. The Roland Park Place resident was 79. Elspeth Mary Campbell, the daughter of a sheep farmer, was born in Dornoch, Scotland, and raised in Bonar Bridge, Scotland. She was a graduate of a private high school in Inverness, where she developed her lifelong interest in music, art and theater.

The best castle hotels in Europe, according to TripAdvisor.com, based on rankings by travelers who contribute reviews to the Web site and TripAdvisor editors. 1. Glin Castle in Glin, Ireland ($491 average nightly rate) 2. Castle Stuart, Inverness, Scotland ($614) 3. Thornbury Castle, Thornbury, England ($394) 4. Domaine de la Tortiniere, Tours, France ($310) 5. Borthwick Castle, Edinburgh, Scotland ($273) 6. Chateau de Bagnols, Lyon, France ($1,335) 7. Castelletto di Montebenichi, Bucine, Italy ($242)

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Pummeled by international and domestic skepticism over his government's version of Benazir Bhutto's assassination, President Pervez Musharraf announced yesterday that Pakistan had invited Scotland Yard to help investigate the killing. In his first major address to the nation since Bhutto was slain Dec. 27, Musharraf also defended the decision to delay by six weeks parliamentary elections that were to have taken place next Tuesday. Rioting in the wake of Bhutto's death, he said, had left the security situation too precarious to proceed as scheduled.

SCOTLAND -- Sung Oh, of Gaithersburg, unloads fishing equipment from his Chevrolet van on a macadam parking lot at the Point Lookout State Park fishing pier."

EDINBURGH, Scotland -- Drug abuse, prostitution, HIV and AIDS fall outside the tourist vision of a Scotland of kilts and bagpipes, shepherds and crofters, Harris tweeds and plaid woolens, fine whisky and golf at St. Andrews.Edinburgh, Scotland's capital, is a stately city of gray and red stone, pinnacles and turrets and crenelations. It is a cultured city renowned for its theater festival.It is not the sort of place you'd expect to find a rampant AIDS problem and some of the world's most progressive programs for the prevention and treatment of AIDS.

CARNOUSTIE, Scotland -- The name of Sergio Garcia, familiar to the world's golf fans for eight years and 36 major tournaments seems ripe for new recognition. Sometime today, here on the east coast of Scotland, the Spaniard could fulfill his huge promise by commanding this 136th British Open and claiming his first major title at age 27. British Open Final round today, Carnoustie, Scotland TV: 6 a.m., TNT; 8 a.m., chs. 2, 7

CARNOUSTIE, Scotland -- That old beast Carnoustie must have snickered yesterday when it saw Sergio Garcia ambling toward the first hole with his caddie and his bag and his new belly putter. That's funny, because when Garcia and the caddie and the bag and the belly putter ambled back down from No. 18 in the evening, the beast lay conquered in the first round by Garcia's 6-under-par 65, and the 136th British Open had another theme. Not only had Garcia, who had shot an 89 in the first round here in 1999, shaved 24 shots off that horror to lead the field by two strokes, but Garcia might just spend the weekend trying to defend the honor of the belly putter.