Fort William and riding the Harry Potter train!

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The B&B owner asked us if we minded eating with her and her son in the morning. Unlike the place in Stirling, we felt completely at ease and even felt like one of the family. Their B&B seems new...they don't have any business cards yet but we enjoyed it so much we definitely want to remember the name in case we pass through here next time. The view is so gorgeous and she really did a great job decorating the rooms. They're in the process of renovating the cottage on their property to make it a self-catering cottage, so they've really got a great setup.

We're back on the road after breakfast and head into Fort William. Luckily, our Lonely Planet has a map of the town so we don't have any problem finding the train station. The steam train is full but they have a regular train that runs the same route about an hour later and it's cheaper...I'm not really too concerned about whether I ride a regular train or a steam train so we buy the other tickets. To kill time we run to the grocery store to buy snacks and before long we're on our way!

Ali has been sick since she left Ireland so she takes this opportunity to take a nap. She's been driving the whole trip (the car is in her name and she's not comfortable with letting me drive in city traffic...I'll get a chance to later I'm sure). She asked me to wake her up when we get to the Glenfinnan viaduct. Next time we'll drive the route from Fort William to Mallaig...I'm sure the viaduct is more impressive when you're looking up at it than when you're going over the top of it. But, the scenery was gorgeous anyways.

We got out to Mallaig, a small fishing town, and visited their adorable drug store to get cough medicine for Ali. I also picked up some more Hall's Soother's in Black Currant flavor. I'm addicted...I'm eating them like candy instead of throat lozenges. They have a liquid center and I'm going to have to stock up before we head home because we don't have these in the States. I really like black currant everything...I'll have to see what I can find back home.

Anyways, we stopped to cash some of my traveler's checks at the money exchange and were in line behind a rude man from New York City...no surprise there. He was actually pretty pleasant to us but was so rude to the girl behind the counter. I apologized for him because I'd gotten several non-complimentary "typical American" comments so far and didn't want yet another person to think all Americans were rude. She told me not to worry about it...that she knew we weren't all like that, which helped to make up for some of the othe comments I'd heard on the trip.

Mallaig is a pretty small town...a few restaurants known for their seafood, the drugstore, a bank, and some shops and that was pretty much it. The docks were beautiful and I got some great shots. We were able to explore all of Mallaig and eat lunch in the few hours before our train left. You can also take the ferry from there over to Skye...maybe another trip 😊

So we headed back to Fort William and decided just to head on from there. We were anxious to get to Drumnadrochit. The trip was short but the scenery was so beautiful we knew we'd be stopping quite a bit for pictures on the way up. We were right 😊 It took us at least twice as long to make the trip as it would have had we driven straight through but we were so happy to be able to take the time to stop. See...we're on a schedule. We have B&B reservations for Friday night in Inverness so we can see the Highland Games. Once we get up there we really don't have any schedule except to make our plane 😊 so we can backtrack if we need to.

We got to Drumnadrochit in plenty of time. We stayed at Fiddler's at Oakdale right in the Village Green. The B&B owners also own the B&B/pub/restaurant across the street so there was quite a bit of foot traffic. The room was gorgeous and Ali and I were both looking forward to a hot shower. However, the town chose that particular night to do some emergency work on the water pipes and all of Drumnadrochit was without water. Now, that's not such a bad thing if you have your own toilet and can't flush a few times but when 3 rooms are sharing 2 toilets it can get a bit icky. We had buckets and were using up what water was in the tanks so we could dump water in the toilets and flush them but the water started running really low. They brought bottled water up to the rooms so we could wash up and brush our teeth. Even the pub was closing early because of it. Thankfully, the water came back on before bed and we all got to wash up in the sink but no showers until morning when the water gets heated back up. That's okay...the beds look really comfortable 😊

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