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Published: September 24th 2007
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I've just returned from my three day bus tour of the highlands and the Isle of Skye! It was amazing, and we saw so much that I've actually only gotten an entry ready for the first day. I'll get subsequent ones up as soon as possible, but it all depends on how long my laptop battery lasts, since there's nowhere to plug it in at the moment.
We took a train from Stirling to Edinburgh on Thursday night (myself and two American friends). It was my first experience riding a train that wasn't a crappy Amtrak one, and I was actually kind of impressed. Anyway, we arrived in Edinburgh and found the Castle Rock Hostel with no problems, got ourselves checked in, and decided to wander around Edinburgh for awhile. It was lovely, but since it was nighttime everything was closed, so I'm planning to go back for a day trip on Wednesday. Incidentally, this little chip shop we found at 9:00 served me the BEST chips with cheese I've had so far. Amazing.
Left from Edinburgh Castle Rock Hostel at 9:00 am Friday morning, only they were late so it was more like 9:35. The hostel itself was
Edinburgh Castle
Yes, it's blurry and icky but it was cold and dark and I didn't feel like experimenting that much with the settings on my camera for a better shot. But that was the view from our hostel. very nice! Castle-y theme was a bit much in places, but it was clean and mostly friendly. I would have gotten more sleep, but a girl in my room was snoring. And the (universally ignored) fire alarm went off sometime in the middle of the night.
Went up through Edinburgh, across the Firth of Forth and to our first stop, a place called The Hermitage. Apparently it was the first real public touristy spot in Scotland. Basically it’s this big wooded park area along a river, complete with stone paths/bridges/walkways that are old, but not as old as they look. This place was set up in the 19th century, I believe. The waterfall was gorgeous. After this I stopped having people take pictures of me, because I realized it would become a watch-Katie’s-hair-become-progressively-worse flipbook, which didn’t interest me. : )
Then we headed up to Pitlochry, a smallish, tourist-oriented town in central Scotland. I, personally, loved it. All the buildings along the main street were adorable little shops, it was small and intimate feeling…basically I wanted to spend the day shopping there. Alas, we only had time to grab a lunch to eat on the bus, and then
we were off to Culloden. On the way we saw some old, semi-demolished barracks from when the English were trying to keep the Scots under by occupying the place as far north as they could.
Culloden has a very interesting, albeit tragic, history which I shall not record here. But I highly advise looking up, as it is really quite a good story. When you get there, though, it’s a field…so not many pictures of that. A fantastic gift shop, though.
And then Loch Ness! Through the city of Inverness, which seemed quite developed. I actually think it’s bigger than Stirling, although nowhere near Glasgow or Edinburgh. Loch Ness was beautiful, of course, although we did not see Nessie. We got down off the bus and climbed down some rock stairs (foreshadowing!) to walk a little along the rocky beach and drink hot chocolate. That was actually quite fun once the sun came out!
Oh, before I forget, it was this day (Friday the 21st) that I got my first Wizard of Oz reference, if you can believe it! We were going around the bus, saying where we were from, and when I said “Kansas” Gordon, our
Hermitage
A view from the path. tour guide, went “oh, just like Dorothy!” And everybody laughed and went “oh, bet you’ve never got that before,” so I smiled and said “Amazingly, you’re the first! Congratulations!” It was funny.
But I digress. After Loch Ness (we stopped for a restroom and I bought my ONLY real souvenir for the trip, a Scotland keychain!) we made a quick “photo stop” at Urquahrt Castle, which we couldn’t actually go very close to. It made nice scenery, though. Joe, our driver, was heard to say “What’s the big deal? It’s just a broken down castle!” And Gordon replied, “Yeah, but they don’t have any of those where they come from.”
Too true.
From there it was onward towards Skye, through the increasingly tall Highland mountains. I didn’t get any pictures of those, really, because they would have been out bus windows and so blurry and icky anyway, but it was some of the most intimidating beautiful scenery I’ve ever looked upon. The Rockies are taller, but they lack the sheer presence that the Highlands have. We stopped quickly in Kyle of Lochalsh for groceries we might need over the weekend, and you can see our first good
Hermitage
The pathway look at Skye and Kylachan across the water! That village was tiny, showcasing the painted white architecture of 100% of the dwellings on Skye. Or at least all the ones I saw. Our hostel there was pretty nice. Only our tour was in the one building, so we knew everyone there, and it was pretty comfortable. I slept in the “Dunvegan” bed (they were named after castles, I believe)!
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