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My watch failed to go off (I later realized that I had set the time wrong) so the hotel's wake up call saved us. We were all very tired as we boarded the shuttle to the airport one last time. Though the airport was busy, we got through our check in quite quickly and after going through security, made our way to our gate.
We had about 45 minutes before the gate was set to open, so we ended up breaking down and buying $7 sandwiches along with $5 coffees. These airports can be budget killers. We were though, able to find a copy of the Lonely Plant travel guide for Scotland in the book store, so we now can at least start to plan properly.
Though we hadn't paid for priority seating this time, we ended up getting window seats up near the front of the plane (Evy and Benjamin scored the front seats with the extra leg room). As the cabin crew finished checking in the passengers, they realized that they had a discrepancy in the number of passengers checked in at the gate and the number on the plane. Since these have to match (something Canada
learned in the Air India bombings), they had to recheck all of our boarding passes. After 25 minutes they found the problem. One passenger had bought two tickets and checked in twice (go figure). We were now on our way, 25 minutes behind schedule.
The flight to Scotland was so fast, it seemed like we had just taken off when we were landing again. Because of cloud, there wasn't much to see on the way though we could see the checkerboard of green fields as well as the inlet where Edinburgh sits, the Firth of Forth, as we landed. Despite that fact the plane was late, it was still arriving at 8 am giving us most of the day for our travels.
Rental car prices here in Scotland our much cheaper than Ireland and we quickly found our selves with a nice black Kia cross-over vehicle which actually gave us more space than any of the cars we have rented here. As we weren't really in the city, it was quite fast to across the suspension bridge that spans the Firth of Forth and out into the country side.
I sort had forgotten how beautiful Scotland is.
The rugged beauty of the land is stunning, and I stopped several times to get some photos. The hills were a strange mix of brown and green bushes, looking almost like a giant camouflage netting. In other places the hillside were marked with bright yellow patches of Gorse, the bush that we had seen so much of in New Zealand. We stopped once by a very still and quite dam, with a great view down a small mirror like lake. A light rain, almost like as mist, was falling for much of our trip. This added to the atmospheric scene and mystery that this land holds.
With such an early departure, Evy, Joshua, and Benjamin all fell asleep in the car. Benjamin was so tired that he prefered to continue to sleep rather than come in for lunch at the small lakeside in that we stopped at.
Getting closer to our hostel, we entered the town of Fort Augustus and saw a sign for a tourism information centre. Here they confirmed our thought that hostels would be our best option for budget accommodation as well as providing us with several maps and lists of hostels.
We walked
back a bit into the town, and watched the boats going though locks there, before visiting the grocery store and buying dinner.
Though our GPS was pointed to the hostel, it seems to get confused by the high cliffs and we ended up stopping once, thinking we had overshot it. When we did find it, it was open but no one was around yet as they check in is at 5 pm. Benjamin, Joshua and I headed down the hillside to Loch Ness, where the two of them built Inukshuks while I tried to fake some Nessy photos.
Shortly after this, the hostel manager arrived and we checked in. The room is big but basic and the hostel dining room has an amazing view of the Loch. As Joshua pointed out, it feels like we are at Granny's cottage in Muskoka.
After as pasta dinner, we got on the internet and did some research on places to stay. Though this hostel, we were able to book ourselves into a castle hostel for Wednesday night. Figuring out the other nights proved more difficult. Every place we checked we found things booked up. In the end we opted for
two nights at a hostel on the Isle of Skye and and one night at a hostel in a Scottish national park. We still haven't got our final night in Edinburgh booked, but our internet time has run out and now there are other people on the sole computer.
With it being so light, we ended up staying out fairly late and as we were going to bed at around 10:30, it was still bright and light outside. The combination of being so far North and just after the summer solstice has made for very long days.
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