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Published: April 18th 2009
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The first weekend of March Madison and I went to Scotland and the highlands. We left after school on Friday and took the 5 hour train ride up north. We got in to Edinburgh pretty late and had to wander around to find our hostel. When we finally found it, no one was there to check us in, even though we informed them about our late arrival. It was very difficult to locate someone to get us a room key! Finally once we were sorted we headed straight for bed since we had to be up pretty early for our bus tour the next morning. On Saturday we had a typical American breakfast of McDonalds. We had to be at the pick up location at 8:30 so we had to leave pretty early. All we had time to do was stop at McDonalds to grab something on the way. Once we reached the location all we had to do was hop on the bus and enjoy our breakfast! I had signed us up online the previous week for a trip to Glen Coe and the highlands. We both wanted to go up to Loch Ness, and this was the cheapest and
easiest way to get there. I have come to love organized bus tours because you go several places in one day, don’t have to plan anything, and get chauffeured around by an experienced driver.
The tour started by driving us north to Kilmahog, an old Victorian resort town where we made a stop to visit Hamish the Highland Cow. He was a big, brown, furry cow with horns. I thought he was pretty cute looking, hence the many pictures of him. After the brief stop we got back in the bus and headed further north over the Rannoch Moor toward Glencoe. Our guide kept up a stream of information about the various clans that settled the area and the battles that broke out between them. The two he mentioned the most were the McGregor and the MacDonald clans. We drove through the moors toward Fort William where we stopped for lunch. There are many Victorian vacation towns that sprung up after the Queen started to visit Scotland. They are still very small and I would imagine you would need a car to get to most of these places. The stop in Fort William lasted just long enough to eat,
1st Castle of the Day
Stirling Castle, sorry picture is kinda bad, it was out the bus window then we headed further north toward Inverness.
We made a stop in the Great Glen to take photos of Ben Nevis the highest peak in Great Britain and to marvel at the valley below. The whole area was so beautiful even though it was raining. We saw several hikers when we got out; it looked like there were several trails through the area. Once we reached Loch Ness we continued to drive around the shore toward Urquhart Castle. We actually drove a bit beyond it in order to catch a boat ride on the loch. The boat ride took us along Loch Ness and back to get a good view of Urquhart Castle from the water. Loch Ness has very black water because of the peat nearby. It is also very deep because it runs along a fault line. I think they said it is about 500ft or if you like visuals like me, you could stick the Eiffel Tower in the loch and it would be covered in water. While on the boat it was really cold, but Madison and I were really excited and wanted to stand right in the front. We actually got splashed with water!
The boat ride was our favorite part of the day.
After spending about 2 hours near Loch Ness we headed south back towards Edinburgh. We took a different route home so we could see a few more things. While we were driving it was pretty neat because the driver was pointing out random things like castles, forests, and whiskey distilleries and all of a sudden he pointed to the ruins of an old military fort and said, “I used to play in there when I was a little kid.” I just can’t imagine living close enough to ruins of a fort to just play in there whenever I wanted! The last stop we made on the ride home was in a little town called Pitlochry. We basically just stopped for an hour to get a coffee and walk around. Madison and I found this random barber shop called Sweeney Todd’s Barber shop. It was pretty creepy.
After that it was time to head all the way back to Edinburgh where we went out to supper before heading back to the hostel for the night.
On our last day in Edinburgh we wanted to see the Castle. We made
the hike back up to the old part of town and first headed to the Cathedral; there was a service going at the time so we decided to wait until later to go in. We then finished the hike up to the top of the hill and entered the castle yard. The grounds were pretty big with plenty of museums and military equipment to look at. We ended up seeing St. Margaret’s Chapel, the War Museum, the War Memorial Hall, the State rooms, and the crown jewels. We ended up spending most of the morning there. Next we went to check out the Whiskey Experience shop down the street. It gave tours and showed how and where whiskey was made in Scotland, overall it was pretty neat. On our way down the street we were handed a flyer for the Elephant Café, the location where JK Rowling started writing Harry Potter! We decided this would be the perfect place to go for lunch!
Later we did end up going back to the Cathedral to see the inside and it was very beautiful. We also saw a bag pipe player outside of the church and stopped to watch him for
a bit. For the rest of our time in Scotland we finished walking the length of the old town, saw the Parliament building, and saw the Holyrood Palace where the Queen stays when visiting Edinburgh. We did not have much time for anything else because we needed to catch our train back to Leicester. We had a bit of mix-up with our tickets, so we had to get them changed, but other than that, it was a peaceful train journey home, just long is all. We arrived back in Leicester pretty late Sunday night. Enjoy the pictures!!! I hope you all like Scotland as much as I did!
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