What kind of snowballs don't bounce? SNOW BALLS!!!

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We woke to a chilly but another glorious morning and headed off to take pictures of the most beautiful Eilean Donan Castle. The story goes - there are alot of stories aren't there? It only helped me to love the country more and more, so I am hoping I can share the love... :-) Anyway, the story goes that the King had 5 daughters who were very beautiful but far too picky and couldn't decide on a husband. Two Irish fishermen turned up one day and had to spend time in the castle while their boat got fixed and the two youngest daughters fell in love. As the youngest daughters couldn't get married before the older daughters, the Irishmen were quite desperate to marry and told the King they had 3 older brothers back home who would love to marry the older daughters. The King agreed and let the younger daughters be wed, while the older sisters prepared for the arrival of the Irishmen's brothers. Unfortunately weeks passed, then months, then years before the King realised the Irishmen had lied. He was so concerned for his daughters to stay young and beautiful so that they also may marry so we went to a local witch and asked her to keep his daughters beautiful for always. She agreed and the King was delighted. That was until he got home and realised that his daughters were gone - they had been turned into three mountains that surrounded the castle and were all stunningly beautiful, forever. Carol told us that this is because Irishmen are all liars....haha sorry Mal (my Irishmen friend), I know you Irish aren't all bad!

We visited Loch Garry where the loch actually looks like a map of Scotland - pretty amazing. Well done to Mark who made this connection and won the tour map. The next destination was Spean bridge where a very sad part of Scotish history took place. In the old days Scotish clans were known widely for their hospitality. All the clans had been required to sign a document for the English King saying they would agree to English rule, and one clan was a couple of days late signing as they had first got confirmation from their 'official' King in France. As this clan was a few days late the English Kin decided to make an example of them and sent his soldiers to stay with the Scotish clan. Being so hospitable, the Scots let them stay in their houses, fed them and looked after them for a couple of weeks before the King sent orders that in the middle of the night all of his soldiers were to kill everyone in the village. They went through with it and betrayed the very people who had looked after them for weeks. Only half of the village got wind of the killings and fled to the hills to die of the cold or shelter with other clans. This area is now called the weeping valley and when it has a lot of rain there are waterfalls all around the hills and it looks like the valley is crying for its lost Scotsmen and women. Very sad story.

This however brings me to THE BEST PART EVER!!!! SNOW!!!!! We went to Glencoe, the most isolated part of Scotland, which also has a ski centre. There is still lots of snow on the mountain tops here so we decided to take the ski lift to the top of the bottom slope to see the view and hopefully see snow on the ground. It was so much better than that though! We walked out the back through the eating area and it was SNOWING! I have visited the snow before in Melbourne but never seen snow falling, it was so beautiful, I even got a snow flake on my hand that was a perfect star shape! I was like a kid in a candy store I was so excited! Natasha hadn't seen snow before either so we rode the lift up together. As soon as we got up there the view was quite lost on us as we began playing in the snow, having snowball fights, making snow angels, eating snow (not yellow snow). Just generally having a blast of a time. It was the most amazing morning. Definately another wow moment for Scotland.

On the way back to Edinburgh we stopped to walk up to the Wallace memorial which had amazing views and we were glad to stretch our legs. When we got back to Edinburgh we all went out for drinks at a local pub with some traditional music and then all had dinner together at a pizza place, which had amazing pizza's and desserts. It was another perfect evening ending for our incredible tour.

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