Blogs from Inverness, Inverness-shire, Scotland, United Kingdom, Europe

On August 20 we left Edinburgh for Dundee and points beyond. The largest draw for Dundee was the new Victoria & Albert Museum, an extension of the one in London. It is an amazing piece of architecture, two upside down pyramids of horizontal bands that spiral up and join together. It is on the waterfront next to the ship Discovery, a barque-rigged auxiliary steamship built for Antarctic research. Launched in 1901, she was the last traditional wooden three-masted ship to be built in the United Kingdom. Our next stop was Scone (pronounced scoon) Palace, near the city of Perth. It is an historic house by the village of Scone. Built in red sandstone with a castellated roof, it is an example of the Gothic Revival style in Scotland. The interior part that we were allowed to ... read more

After breakfast, again at the Isle of Skye Baking Co., we headed back to the mainland on our way to Loch Ness. Rain and heavy traffic slowed us down and we arrived at Urquhart Castle after 11:30, so we decided to come back to it after our cruise on Loch Ness. It turned out we could upgrade our cruise tickets to include a stop at the castle for less than the price we would have had to pay to see the castle. It drizzled a bit as we began our cruise, but cleared shortly after getting underway. We even enjoyed seeing a rainbow as we neared the castle. The castle dates back to 1509 and is now just ruins, but still picturesque. Loch Ness is beautiful. Nessie, however, did not show. After cruising back to our ... read more

What a day of contrasts! Our hotel in Glasgow, right next to the railway station has such good wifi! We wandered downstairs and found that the brasserie for breakfast that I’d researched is part of our hotel! After a lovely hot buffet breakfast we packed up and headed to the station to catch our train for our 3 1/2 hour trip to Inverness. The train was just a local train with people alighting and joining all along the way. There were some men on their way to Inverness to watch a soccer game - they started on their ales and drank and chatted (getting louder and louder) all along the way. We were chatting to a man who works for Wendy Wu. Wendy Wu tours started in Sydney but HQ is now London. The scenery along ... read more

We spent our first night at my first AirBnb, a charming 1820’s cottage in the town of Colinton just outside of Edinburgh, the boyhood home of Robert Louis Stevenson. The cottage is the home of a retired teacher named Pam who we immediately adored and put us immediately at ease about the trepidation about staying in a stranger’s home. She chatted with her as she cooked us a delicious breakfast before we headed off to nearby Midhope Castle (Lallybroch to the Outlander fans). Mom is a Outlander book fanatic and I have enjoyed watching the TV series so I have incorporated several Outlander sites along the way on our trip. After Lallybroch we went north to Culross, another Outlander site but quite simply a picture perfect coastal village. Culross has been used in film before because ... read more

At the beginning of this Blog I must apologize to all the people who have sent me messages over the years in response to my blog. Today, October 13, 2017 is the first time I have ever clicked on this page... and such lovely messages and such interesting people have I found. I feel so bad that wonderful messages from 2010 and earlier have gone unanswered. I will try to read them all ...all 90 ... and respond if appropriate. Thank you to every one who took the time to write me. Mia Culpa Mia Culpa Mia Culpa. Promise to be more vigilant and forthcoming with responses. :-) October 13 was a day of travel and discovery ....as you have read above! The day began at 05.30 in darkness and thankfully no rain. I did carry ... read more