Aberdeen Visitor Guide
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| Aberdeenshire - Aberdeen Guide |
Our Visitor guide to Aberdeen, Scotland's hard city. Isolated on Scotland's North East coast, Aberdeen is a city of contradictions, at times windswept and rain wet, in the sunlight it glistens and appeals. Includes what to see and do, hotels and history...
Aberdeen Visitor Guide
Getting To Aberdeen | Aberdeen's History | Places To See in Aberdeen | Accommodation | Eating | Entertainment | Essentials | Hotel Late Deals in Aberdeen | Hotels In Aberdeen | Hotels In Aberdeenshire | Train Booking In Scotland | Compare Hotel Prices in Aberdeen |
Scotland's third largest city, and Britain's most isolated, Aberdeen is a hard place. Hard because of the grey granite of its buildings, and hard because of the nature of its people, who are industrious, thrifty, proud and uncompromising. First impressions are often determined by the weather: when it rains it's about as appealing as cold porridge. Sometimes leaden skies hang low over a uniform greyness, and a howling gale blows in from the North Sea, but when the clouds do part and the sun shines down, the tiny mica chips, which form a natural part of granite, sparkle and glisten like a display in a jeweller's window.
Whatever the impression, it is a place that elicits a strong response. Lewis Grassic Gibbon, the northeast's most famous writer, wrote: "One detests Aberdeen with the detestation of a thwarted lover. It is the one haunting and exasperatingly lovable city in Scotland."
The oil industry has transformed Aberdeen, making it the hub for all North Sea activity. As a result the hotels are full year round and the air full of buzzing helicopters ferrying workers to the rigs. Who knows what it will be like in twenty years time when the oil has dried up.
