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Day 1

Day one in Scotland was mostly spent trying to find the hostel where we had booked a room. This was no easy task. The description said "Inverness, Garve." Well, it wasn't in Inverness, or Garve (25 miles from Inverness). It was 8 miles past Garve, way out further than we wanted to be. It was too late to cancel the room though, so we took it.

We made our way back to Inverness (45 minutes each way) for dinner at an all you can eat Chinese buffet (Jimmy Chung's) and saw some live music at Hootananny. It was the first time on the trip we saw a live fiddle. 5th time we saw an accordian.

Day 2

It snowed all night during our first night in Scotland, here are some pictures from early that morning.

Eilean Donan

This was Jen's favorite castle. It is very well maintained and had been rebuilt from ruins in the early 1900's. It is a privately owned castle and the family still uses it for events such as weddings. Part of Highlander the Movie was filmed here. We got there early enough that we beat most of the other tourists, and the weather was perfect (for the moment).

Later in the day, it started raining, then snowing. We ended up skipping a lot of the sight-seeing we planned to do on days two and three in the Highlands just because of the poor visibility.

Hairy Cows

On day three we made our way back across the island towards Loch Ness and made a point of stopping by the Highland Cows we had seen in Garve so we could get some pictures of them.

Urquhart Castle

Urquhart Castle is situated right on Loch Ness. It, of course, has a long history. The earliest settlement on the land is known to go back to 500 AD. It was during a visit to the area in 500 AD that some of the first legends of the Loch Ness Monster are formed. It is also a fairly large castle with a nice visitors center. At this point we bought an Explorer Pass through Historic Scotland to save money on entry to several Scottish historical sites.

Stirling Castle

On day four we visited Stirling Castle (using the Explorer Pass). Stirling is a neat, well maintained and mostly restored castle complex. We took the free tour that was offered it was worth it to get more of the history. Without the tour I don't think we would have been able to figure out what we were seeing, given the overwhelming size of the castle.

Mary King's Close

On day five we made our way to Edinburgh knowing full well that we needed to have a lot of time. We got to Edinburgh at 11:00, ate lunch and went to Mary King's Close. A close, in Edinburgh, is an alley off of a main street that provides access to the poorer/less impressive buildings build behind the main buildings. Some of them were very tight spaces and helped spread the plague in Edinburgh. 4 closes which were mostly abandoned after the plague (when about 1/2 of the residents died) were chopped off and the city council building was build on top. The buildings were left largely intact and used as the foundation for the new building. Walking in this foundation and exploring 500+ year old buildings is now a tourist attraction. It was well worth the money. Unfortunately you are not allowed to take pictures while under there.

Here are some pictures of random closes to show what they are like today.

Edinburgh Castle

Stop number two in Edinburgh was the impressive Edinburgh Castle. This castle (also accessed with the Explorer Pass, otherwise very expensive) is HUGE! Most impressive about it is the fact that it is still used for daily government and military operations. The picture below was taken later in the evening when we happened to be walking past the castle from below on our way to dinner.

Royal Mile

The Royal Mile is a bit of road with shops all over it that leads up to the Castle. Along the Mile, we saw 2 separate guys in kilts playing bagpipes for money. Neat! (Yes, I am a tourist!) The picture below gives you a feel what this road is like.

Edinburgh in general is a neat city. We have never seen a city like it before. The buildings are so high and close together it feels like the Great Wall of China. Everywhere you look, there are 3 or 4 story buildings with 4 or 5 story buildings built on top and no spaces in between. The strange thing was that even though it was only Wednesday, the whole city smelled like alcohol when we walked to the bus station at 5:30am.