Hey everybody a few weeks ago our staff at Alice Obscera put out an episode about

travel expectations the places that either completely blew us away or were a gigantic let-down. Today, we are

going to hear the stories that you told us, like from Carrie, who traveled to

Scotland from the US

to find a castle with a connection to her ancestors,

or from Libby, who made her first trip abroad

and realized at the breakfast table

that she was not in Kansas anymore. I'm Doolan Thuris and this is Atlas

Obschera. More after this. Hi, my name is Carrie Milne Zellman, and I want to tell you about my most disappointing travel experience. When I was going to college in Michigan during

the 1990s I took this class that gave us an international internship experience in Scotland.

And at the end of the internship, my mom joined me for a couple of weeks to tour the highlands.

And our travel plans culminated at this castle that was recorded as a

birthplace of one of our ancestors from over a century ago. So deep in my grandma's family records was the birth of this Daniel McNaughton, who held my

grandmother's maiden name at this Glen Devon Castle of Scotland.

And so my mom and I were super excited to go visit this place

and we didn't really have any more information about it

because this was the time before the internet and we couldn't find anything about it in our travel guides.

We had rented this car and near the end of our trip we used this road map to find this tiny village of Glend-Devin and we really didn't have any other way to find this castle other than to drive around and see if we could find anything promising.

So we passed this small Kirk and a cemetery near this brook and then we found this winding road that was going up a hill on our right

and it was lined with these tall pine trees

and it had this ornate white sign with this black fancy script for Glendevan Castle.

So I was like, oh, this is it.

...