April wedding, cloudless skies, beautiful Inverness.

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The journey to Inverness from Glasgow is one that I enjoy. The slow-moving A9 can be frustrating to the locals who battle tourists on a daily basis, but as a tourist the drive from city to lowlands, right up to the Highlands, seeing the scenery chang, always makes me smile and appreciate how lucky I am to live in Scotland, so close to all this beauty. Also, the further North you go the stranger the place names become (personal favourites include Auchtermuchty, and the River Garry which makes me snigger like a schoolboy and make bum jokes), and the number of "brown signs" increases dramatically. One day, we plan to do a trip taking in every brown sign we see, regardless of what it is for. This will include the mysterious "Time Capsule" which we keep seeing between Stirling and Glasgow. I find myself becoming increasingly enamoured of the little tourist traps, as opposed to the bigger, more obvious ones.

This was my second visit to Inverness, and once again, it was for a wedding. As the majority of Adam's family come from Inverness, every trip to the forbidding North tends to be for some form of celebration or other.

This time, his cousin was getting married. Now, I really like Inverness. I think it's a lovely little city, made all the more beautiful for the fact that the River Ness flows through the centre, and it's incredibly pure, clear water often has people fishing in it, right in the middle of the city. Also, I never fail to have a good time in Inverness, and am always surprised by how friendly everyone is. Couple this with the nearby famous loch (Loch Ness, for those who aren't sure), and you have somewhere which truely fits the moniker "capital of the Highlands".

For the wedding itself, we stayed in the gorgeous Drummossie Hotel, a rather luxurious (by my cheapo standards) hotel where the wedding was being held. The only reason we stayed there was because we got the cheap(er than normal) wedding rate, and it saved having to get taxis. The wedding was fantastic, the bride gorgeous and the day surprisingly warm for April. There was much dancing, eating and drinking, and a good time was had by all.

The days either side of the wedding were mainly spent sat in the sun, or walking in to the parks, looking at the animals and playing on the swings and things. As spring is upon us, it seems to be breeding season for all the little animals, and we witnessed some interesting duck-orgy shenannigans in one of the parks. They can be randy little buggers when they want to be! Not much else was done, as we saw Loch Ness the last time we were here, and this trip was all about seeing Adam's family, who we hadn't seen in about half a year.

I've included pictures in this blog from my previous vist (the ones of Loch Ness). I've decided to do this for two reasons

1) To highlight how nice Loch Ness is, and
2) To highlight how Nasty Drumnadrochit, and the tourist side of Loch Ness, is.

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Photos

Ness Castle
Scottish Pride, taken mainly for the flag

River Ness
You can just see the town in the distance.

A poking
Adam was about to get it!

Monkey Boy
I'm a child at heart

Duck Orgy
The Mr Ducks are on the ground. The streak in the air is the (lone) Mrs Duck

A little bit of politics
There were elections around the corner. I've no idea of their policies (probably solely based on the smoking ban), but if it's free beer for all, they have my vote

The bridal "car"
This has made me want to learn to fly a helicopter.

Loch Ness (2006, sept)
The only day we got grey skies on our previous visit.

Drumnadrochit, land of tackiness
Ride 'em, Cowboy

Drumnadrochit cafe.
This made me die a little inside.

The William Wallace "experience"
The main building material was fibreglass. The small picture of the man himself (right hand side) looked like a Japanese Mel Gibson. It was sadly closed.