Fall Break Round Two, Scotland

Scotland Highlands

SCOTLAND. This was definitely my favorite leg of the trip. There was only six of us on the excursion to Edinburgh, so it was a nice little break from being with absolutely everyone from the villa. We arrived REAL late on Monday. Got in at around 11:00 PM, off to the hostel and arrived at about 11:30. We were all wide awake, so we explored the area around our hostel and found this really neat little bar/club right close by. It was pretty fun, there was a whole lot of people our age hanging around, which was nice. AND EVERYONE SPOKE ENGLISH. It was so nice to be able to actually communicate with the people around you. There was also fast food galore, which was definitely something that I haven't been used to. Definitely way more like America than anywhere else I've been. Except for the cars driving on the wrong side of the road and what not. That was super confusing. I would look to the left and start crossing the road, and I'd almost get run down by a car coming from the right. Yikes. I didn't figure that out honestly the entire time I was there. Didn't help that our hostel was in a busy / downtown part of Edinburgh which provided ample opportunities to get hit by cars. This was probably my favorite hostel however. Great location, and it was a super hipster place. Lot of backpacking bros there, and it had a bar in the hostel, pretty neat.

Edinburgh Castle

Part of the Royal Mile

 Day number 2. We got up around 10 or so and made it to the start of our FREE WALKING TOUR of Edinburgh, which was one of the highlights from the trip. Our tour guide was named Izzy, and she was from Chicago. These are a couple of sights we saw, shown above. We saw the Edinburgh castle, which was quite impressive. We also spent a lot of time on the Royal Mile, which is the main street in Old Edinburgh, and has many important government buildings and churches, etc. on it. We not only saw many landmarks and things on the tour, but learned a lot of fun facts as well. Such as, there used to be a lake right near Edinburgh castle that eventually filled with feces due to the lack of a sewage system. Also, Edinburgh was big on witch burning, and some of the walls in the cities are made out of witch ash. We also learned Edinburgh is one of the most haunted places on Earth apparently, and toured a famous graveyard that houses over 100,000 corpses. We also learned and saw the Cafe where JK Rowling wrote some of the Harry Potter novels before she was famous, as well as getting to see the school that apparently inspired Hogwarts, and the tombstone of Tom Riddle in said graveyard that apparently inspired Lord Voldemort. Being the HP fan that I am, it was a great tour. After the tour we had a little bit of time to wander, and we went into the National Musuem, which was free. We mainly went to see the stuffed Dolly the Sheep, the first sheep ever cloned, which is displayed in a glass, rotating case. Our tour guide called it "Disco Dolly"

VOLDEMORT. Tombstone from said graveyard

Birthplace of HARRY POTTER!

So that was day one. We got fish and chips for dinner after a day of exploring and touring. Best fish and chips I've ever had by far. Tremendous. It was some hole in the wall place that was recommended by our tour guide, and she definitely did not let us down. It was unbelivable. Post dinner, five of us went on a pub crawl in Edinburgh. That was a blast and a half. We went to five bars and ended at a club that was once an old, abandoned church. The bars were all different too, one was a backpackers bar, one was more of a soccer bar, one was Halloween themed, and the others were just normal bars. But it was a great time, and got to experience various Edinburgh pubs, etc. Then we went to bed, because we had a big day coming up tomorrow.

Scotland Highlands, One of the Glens.

The next day, this is Wednesday now, was possibly my favorite day of fall break. We had scheduled a bus tour that would take us all around the Scotland Highlands, and up to Loch Ness. Said tour started at 8:00. We woke up in our hostel at 7:37 and the tour bus stop was 20 minutes away. Whoops. Luckily, we all got ready REAL fast, and had our hostel call us a taxi. We got there just in time. It was a pretty small tour bus, only about 15 people, and our tour guide was great. He was a higlander, so he knew a whole lot of stories and histories about the highlands, and told us all about William Wallace (aka Mel Gibson in Braveheart). He also wore a kilt. Our first stop of the tour was about an hour in to go see the most famous "Highland Cattle" in Scotland. This guys name was Hamish. I still don't understand why, but we all were obsessed with Hamish and had a great time at this stop. We even bought Hamish snacks to feed to him. Again, I can't explain this obsession, but it was great.

Hamish

            The tour continued on up around the Western boarder of Scotland, and we saw a couple of neat castles / bridges etc. along the way, including one of the castles that was used to film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, called Doune Castle. Our next stop was a small, costal town to grab some quick lunch. It was pretty neat to get to see the coast, despite the fact that it was raining on and off all day. We then continued on and stopped in Glen coe, one the most famous Glens in Scotland. I think the picture above was from Glen coe. The landscape throughout this entire tour was great. Just really large hills with that orange tint to it, and there were so many little mountain streams coming off from them that you could drink from and what not. Which I did and it was great. The water there is super dark and almost has a brownish tint, but apparently it's not dirt, but just happens that way from the highlands and what not. Or so our guide claimed.

After taking pictures and seeing Glencoe, we finally arrived at Loch Ness. Getting there was pretty cool because it was definitely something that I never thought I would ever see in my life. The lake itself is almost 23 miles across, 1,000 or so feet deep, and extremely dark. Definitely the darkest lake I've ever seen. Unfortunatley, it was raining so it wasn't as pleasant as it could've been, but it was still really cool. The town Loch Ness is in is really small, called Fort Augustus, so the lake itself is definitely the main attraction. We did not see the monster, however, we did see some ducks. We then continued the tour heading back towards Edinburgh, and made one stop in a small, victorian town whose name escapes me at this time. Nope, it was called Pitlochry, there we go. It was a pretty neat stop,  just one main street with a lot of old, victorian style shops on the sides of the roads. It reminded me a lot of small towns on the way up to cabins and what not, except for a lot nicer. The also went all out for Halloween, and had decorations up all over the place, so I guess they do celebrate it in some spots of Europe. Then, we finally made our way back to Edinburgh after a day of seeing the highlands, glens, highland cattle, and loch ness. It was a great day. The next morning, we headed off bright and early for Amsterdam.

Loch Ness