Sept 12/11

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Today we met up with our group. The only problem with bus tours is that you have to do them with other people. We were almost late for the bus, seems the times we were given with our tour information were not right. Luckily we sat at table with people who had started our tour 2 days earlier and they knew the drill. We toured north out of Glasgow, the narrow roads barely wide enough for our tour bus and the oncoming traffic at places. It was raining pretty hard and peering up at the soft green covered mountains from the road we could see rain induced rivers gushing water that looked like scars along their faces. Our trek took us along the lochs(pronounced lo-choking sound-s). First Loch Lochie then Loch Oich then Loch Ness. At about 2/3 of the way up Loch Ness we stopped at Urquhart Castle. The castle is in ruins now after being taken over and rebuilt many times in its life. We got a couple of pics but I doubt they do it justice. From there we took a tour boat the rest of the way up Loch Ness, then up the River Ness a ways until we reached Inverness. On our way we did not see The Loch Ness Monster or “Nessie” as the locals call her. We did hear that the first man to see Nessie, in about 500 ad, was a priest from Ireland who was making the rounds trying to make Christians out of the Picts, who were the natives in the Highlands at the time. So Vicki figures this guy, being Irish, was probably a little inebriated when he spotted her. We did see a lot of little Nessie’s. Stuffed ones, porcelain ones, plastic ones, you name it. Anything a tourist could want.
From the boat we saw a couple of castles and beautiful homes facing the loch. From the water it looks like they try to make flat land to build their houses on, then they farm the surrounding area of the hillside. It seems like all farms are on a hillside.
Our meal was free tonight, good thing because it was pretty fancy. We have had to buy lunches and stuff though and we’ve come to the conclusion that we’re going to have to start buying 1 meal and sharing it. With the difference in the dollar and the slightly higher prices everything is way more expensive here and the portions are more than we need when we’re riding around on a bus all day.

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