Scotland

All the pictures are at the end on this one- there were too many to place throughout the post.  I just got back from a weekend in Barcelona and my Dad and step-mom arrived in Paris Monday for their ten day visit.  I'm going to Italy with them this weekend, Normandy with three friends the following weekend, Paris the weekend after that and then it's final exams!  Mary and I are travelling together to Ireland, Munich, and Prague the last week before we come home.  My time here is rapidly coming to an end and I have a lot of travel left to do.

Three weeks ago for fall break, I met Mary in London and we traveled around Scotland together for five days, visiting Edinburgh, Stirling, Glasgow, the highlands, and Inverness.  It didn't start out too well- my Ryanair flight from Montpellier was delayed causing me to miss my train to London, which in turn caused me to miss the last subway to Uxbridge, where Mary lives.  I had to buy a new train ticket from the airport in Birmingham and got no sleep that night as I gad another flight from Heathrow to Edinburgh at 7am that morning.  Luckily, the rest of the trip was a success and Scotland is stunning for its combination of old, historical towns and cities, and a mountainous countryside that is surprisingly easy to explore without a car.  Our first stop, running on no sleep was Edinburgh, the "capital" of Scotland, located in the southeast.  

Edinburgh was perhaps my favorite part of the trip.  We had a free hotel in the harbor area thanks to a mistake made my Holiday Inn.  The public buses were cheap and easy to use and the city itself is full of stone buildings, great pubs and Edinburgh Castle of course.  Since it was close to Halloween, we even took ghost walk.  Usually gimmicky, this one was not because it ended in a series of underground stone crypts and it was quite terrifying at times.  Despite being exceedingly tired, we toured Edinburgh Castle and saw the rest of the cities major landmarks- cathedrals, monuments, etc before taking a nap and heading back out for a curry dinner at a local pub (Brits cook excellent curry!) and going on the ghost tour.  The next day, we headed out early to catch our bus to Stirling, about an hour west.

Stirling is smaller town but it too had a massive castle that once protected all of Scotland from English invasions.  This castle was furnished and represented what it would have looked like when Mary Queen of Scots lived there before the unification of Scotland and England.  Scotland fought for centuries to stay independent and William Wallace, whose tower monument we visited led one the final efforts against England.  We also had traditional English breakfasts in Stirling that you'll see pictured below- I'm still not a fan of blood sausage...

That evening we took the train to Glasgow, another hour west on the opposite coast.  We never got a chance to see Glasgow during the daylight but it is a much larger and less touristy city so we used it as a place to stay but we did walk around it quite a bit in the evening and it resembled Edinburgh but wasn't as nice.

The next morning, we got up early and got lost en route to our tour bus, which would take us through the mountains and the highlands on an all day tour.  It was horrible weather- lots of wind and rain, but it eventually cleared up and we stopped frequently along the way to eat in small villages, take pictures in the mountains and we even took a boat tour on Loch Ness.  Did we meet the monster?  Check out the photos...

Sadly, the tour took us right by Inverness, where we would go that night by bus!  So when we got back to Glasgow, we ate dinner and got right back on a bus to Inverness.  It was a Megabus, but in the UK they don't have power outlets and wifi.  In fact, ours broke down in Perth, but luckily we didn't have to wait long for a replacement.

The next day, we got an all day bus pass to take us into the countryside.  We went to three different towns visiting an old whiskey distillery in one and spent a few hours in Elgin- a really nice little town on the North sea.  Elgin has the ruins of an amazing Cathedral- my favorite individual place we saw on the trip.  It was also a very picturesque little town- Christmas lights, cobblestone streets, hills surround it, the works.

That evening and part of the next day we spent in the city of Inverness, situated far in the north, on the North sea.  It's a quiet, uneventful city, but there was a neat battlefield nearby where we got stranded after missing a shuttle back into town.  The Victorian Market and old cobblestone streets were nice to walk around and shop if one is interested and the river running through the city was pretty night.  The afternoon of our last day, we boarded a train that would take us nine hours back to London through Glasgow.  The next day (Nov. 2), I flew back to Montpellier to start classes again.

Loch Ness

The Loch Ness Monster!!!

Mary and I on the shore of Loch Ness

On the hill above Elgin in N. Scotland at sunset

Elgin Cathedral, ruins.  QUITE haunted inside those towers.

Loch Lomond, just north of Glasgow in horrid weather

the mountains of the highlands

small town of Fort Augustus where the tour stopped for lunch

St. Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh

Typical Edinburgh building

From the top of the Wallace Mounument

Broken down Megabus- random parking lot in Perth...

Very cool monument in Edinburgh

Classic small scottish town, can't remember which one

Edinburgh Castle

Inside Stirling Caslte

Edinburgh castle

Part of the Dallas Dhu Distillery which took 30 minutes to walk to in the middle of nowhere!  I broke this machine after I hit it with my elbow and it flooded.  I kidd you not.

The fried tomatoes are the best part of an English breakfast