CRACKING THE CODE: CASTLE IN SCOTLAND

I’m visiting my mother and what novel does she wonder if I’ve read: The Da Vince Code. My sister had given it to her for Christmas. "You can’t put it down," she tells me. Maybe not. But I’m reading Frank Conroy’s Stop-Time, his memoir, a book that I not only can put down, but one that I have to put down. It gets that disturbing.

She’s retired for the evening, my son is watching the Wizards play the Bulls, and I am clicking around the New York Times website when what do I find, above an article in the Real Estate Section titled, How Big Is Too Big? An ad for a sweeps: Win a Scottish Castle! Five nights for 10 at Fenton Tower, September 11 through 15, from Newark to Edinburgh on Continental, golf, whiskey, fly-fishing and Edinburgh.

Of course I entered. It’s open through May 15.

It's one entry per person. (Thank goodness. These bloody sweeps with daily entries are really beginning to get to me.)

What does this have to do with The Da Vinci Code? The castle’s Rosslyn Chapel is in the novel, that’s what. And there’s real history in this sixteenth-century castle: "In 1591, King James VI of Scotland (son of Mary Queen of Scots, and later King James I of England and Scotland) hid from a rebel army in Fenton Tower, today it can provide you with a luxurious refuge," notes Lloyd & Townsend Rose, a firm specializing in luxury holidays, including plenty of stays in Scottish castles.

You know, there’s another Da Vinci Code sweeps lurking out there somewhere, to Paris, and I hesitated entering it because I have not read the novel. Even though I still have not read the novel, I felt that I had to enter this one, coming on the heels of my mother recommending the novel. Plus, it’s my third sweeps to Scotland since I embarked on this luck lark. Yes, things do happen in threes. The trick is to know when to start counting.

To enter, click here.