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“Youth is the time to go flashing from one end of the world to the other, both in mind and body; to try the manners of different nations.”

— Robert Louis Stevenson

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The morning that Amity and I left Inverness, we were up in the 5 o’clock hour and had a quick breakfast before saying goodbye to Mary.  She gave us a map of Edinburgh that she’d gotten when she was there a few weeks earlier, and pointed out a bunch of places that we should see.  She was so sweet!

Staying at The Ghillies Lodge gave me the same sort of feeling as Connie’s sleepout in Matamata.  I think we were the only guests there during our stay, so it really felt like we were just staying at Mary’s home with her.  I wanted to move in and live a quiet simple life there forever!

We said goodbye and drove off into the dark (surprise).  Our route to Edinburgh took us right through the middle of Cairngorms National Park.  All of a sudden we were surrounded by huge snowy hills and a wintry white sky.  It seemed like we were driving north, farther into the Highlands, not south!  I felt like the Polar Express should chug past us at any moment.  I even saw a gigantic antlered deer standing on a rocky outcrop silhouetted against the sky!  Not kidding.  Planet Earth moment.

Anyway, it was a beautiful part of the drive.  I wish I had photos, but safety first, folks – eyes on the road.  I wanted to see snow in Scotland and I did!  On the downside, when the sun finally rose and made its sluggish ascent between 9-10am, it was shining blindingly in my face for the majority of the rest of the drive.  To help pass the time, Amity found the Radio 1 Breakfast Show on the radio and we listened to Nick Grimshaw sing Lady Gaga covers and admit bashfully that he looks like a potato whenever he’s photographed.  I do like him.

Eventually we made it to the Edinburgh airport and dropped off our car.  It was sad to bid farewell to Milky Tea, but also quite relieving to not have to negotiate driving and parking and just tackle the rest of our trip on foot.  I’m glad we had the car while we did, though – it’s the only way to see the Scottish Highlands!

We trekked to our B&B, the StarVilla (Star Villa?  Starvilla?  It really wasn’t clear.) and met the owner, Doreen.  She was really cute and funny and a little zany.  She showed us about twelve times how to get to the city centre, and told us all about her car troubles and how she was worried about her son driving to Glasgow in bad weather.

After decompressing for a little while, we went up into town and walked all up and down the Royal Mile.  It’s basically the high street in the Old Town, and is charmingly cobbled and lined with old Scottish pubs and wool shops and kilt makers.  We popped into Starbucks for a coffee and I saw my first authentic kilt-wearer: just chilling at a table, drinking his latte and typing on his laptop.

Our highlight for the afternoon was joining up with a FREE walking tour of Edinburgh with a company called Sandemans New Europe tours.  I’ve heard great things about these tours in other cities, so Amity and I decided to give it a go.  Our tour guide, Billy, was an authentic Scot from Dundee!  He had a fantastic accent and was also very short.  It made it hard to keep track of him sometimes.  Luckily, he was also a bit hyperactive and had an affinity for jumping up on things, which made him easier to spot and also earned him the affectionate nickname Billy Goat.

Our tour took us all around the Edinburgh Old Town.  We walked down the Royal Mile, past St. Giles’ Cathedral, and the Mercat Cross, which criminals used to be nailed to by their ears (see it behind Billy in the photo above).

Billy gave us lots of interesting tidbits about the history of Scotland and Edinburgh along the way, which I loved.  He was an awesome tour guide – full of knowledge and absolutely not afraid to embarrass himself.

We walked along to a spot that gave us a great view of Edinburgh Castle (I’m sorry, I thought it was really funny to get Billy in all of my pictures because he was so goofy.  I can be very juvenile sometimes.).

Then we went down the steep steps to the Grassmarket (Billy skipped).

This was where hangings used to take place (Edinburgh has a very grizzly history in parts).  Billy told us the story of Maggie Dickson, the only person to survive a hanging there!  She has a pub named after her now, which is cool.  Maybe that should be my life goal.

We took a break and, on Billy’s advice, popped into Mary’s Milk Bar for hot chocolate.  Mary was adorable and whipped us up hot mugs of her specialty hot chocolate, which she makes from real chunks of chocolate, spices, and milk.

Amity had milk chocolate, orange, & cinnamon and I had white chocolate & cardamom.  Both were deeelicious.  There was also a guy from our tour who didn’t know what cinnamon was… I still think that’s funnier than I should.

We joined back up with Billy Goat (he always said, “Join me!” so we thought we’d humor him) and walked up to Greyfriars Kirkyard, an old church and cemetery filled with mossy gravestones.  Billy told us that it’s said to be haunted and that people have reported ghosts kicking them in the back of the knees.  These are ghosts with an excellent sense of humour, in my opinion.

The sun was setting so it was tough to get a good photo of the kirkyard or scenery (more later though), but the sunset itself was lovely!

On the other side of the kirkyard we saw the grave of Greyfriars Bobby, the most famous dog in Scotland!  He was the watchman’s dog, and then guarded his master’s grave for fourteen years after his master died.

We headed back uptown, crossed the Royal Mile again, and went down one of the closes (old alleyways).  Billy told us the history of the Stone of Destiny (which he always said in a very dramatic voice), a sacred national symbol of the Scots.  I’m trying to include links so you can look this stuff up if you want, it’s all fascinating!

(I would absolutely recommend doing a Sandemans tour if you’re in any of their cities.  It’s free, but many people tip at the end, and I was happy to do so because it was so worth it!  I really like to learn about the history and culture of a place when I visit, and Billy offered us so much information on this tour.  Also he was funny to watch.)

Our tour ended with a fantastic view of Edinburgh’s New Town, including the Ferris wheel, Scott Monument, and Christmas market in Princes Street Gardens (which, way back in the day, used to be a cesspool of human waste because it’s a low point in the city – mm!).  This photo doesn’t actually show that stuff.  You will just have to trust me.

When the tour ended, Amity and I headed off on our own and went into a pub for dinner – and a few minutes later, Billy walked in!  This was serendipitous.  This was also cool because he got us discounts on our food.  I had a really gross flat beer (we are not amused, Scotland), and haggis.  HAGGIS.  And I liked it!  “Try the manners of different nations,” as the RLS quote at the beginning of this post says.  Granted, I think it was a bit more nicely-prepared than is stereotypical, but I ate it all and I am claiming credit.  Award me my haggis badge.  Thank you.

Finally we said our goodbyes to Billy and decided to stroll over to the New Town to explore the Christmas market on our own.  All the stalls and merchandise were exactly the same as the ones in Southbank London, which was a bit of a bummer because it made me feel like both are a lot less unique and special than I’d thought!

It was a really nice atmosphere, though, and the city was beautiful all lit up for Christmas.

Look at the moon!

For some inexplicable reason, although the Christmas market was located near the high street (at the top of the hill on the left of these photos, by the Ferris wheel and monument), the place where children could go to sit on Santa’s lap and get their picture taken was at the bottom of the valley (where all the white lights are in the center of these photos).  You had to walk down a creepy dark path to get there, and it was called SANTA’S GROTTO.  I did not feel that this was an inviting situation.

After we wandered back and forth through the market, and through a cool underground mall, we walked back to the StarVilla, collapsed on our comfy beds, and found a couple of episodes of QI before we turned in.  Are you sensing a pattern that all good vacation days end with our favourite British telly?  It’s because they do.

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“For that is the mark of the Scot of all classes: that he stands in an attitude towards the past unthinkable to Englishmen, and remembers and cherishes the memory of his forebears, good and bad; and there burns alive in him a sense of identity with the dead even to the twentieth generation.”

— Robert Louis Stevenson

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The next morning, Amity and I breakfasted (I like using “breakfast” as a verb) at 8am, again well before the sun rose.  Way up north in Inverness, it didn’t rise until about 9 o’clock!  We ate in an adorable little breakfast nook with old maps and sketches on the wall that looked over the River Ness.  Well, it would have if it hadn’t been dark out.  Here’s what it looked like later:

Mary had the radio on in the kitchen and the show host was interviewing Eddie Izzard, who was talking about how his grandmother used to hoard sugar when there was a sugar shortage.  He’s great.

The weather was nice, so we backtracked and drove south along A82 so we could actually see Loch Ness.  We found a carpark that had steep steps right down to the shore.

The loch was beautiful and it was incredible to actually witness and experience such a legendary place!  Still no Nessie sightings, though.

We went a little bit further south and decided to visit Urquhart Castle, a ruined fortress from the 13th-16th centuries that sits right on the banks of Loch Ness.

The castle, like most of Scotland, has a very fascinating history on which we watched a short film (introduced by an endearingly awkward girl who listed out all the languages we could choose to hear the film in even after we’d spoken with her in clearly native English).  I do really feel like I got to soak up a lot of Scottish history for just a short week there, which was excellent.

Then we got to explore the ruins on our own.

We had both good luck and good planning on the trip – by hitting spots like this early, we often had them all to ourselves!  It was great to wander around the castle and get photos that weren’t teeming with tourists pretending to lean on things.

In the hour or so that we walked around the ruins, there were snow flurries and brilliant sunshine and dark clouds rolling in – the light was amazing!

I loved standing up in the windy tower (which was once bedchambers) and taking in the view all the way down Loch Ness and the Great Glen.

Scotland is such a beautiful country.

We also learned a little Scottish Gaelic from the informational signs.  My favorite was “Robert the Bruce raid apon a litill palfray” – palfray meaning pony – closely followed by a long-ago writer’s recollection that he had just felt an erth-quak!

As we drove back north, a huge, vibrant rainbow appeared right in front of us, coming down into the middle of the loch.  As Amity will tell you, this was my ideal situation.  Somehow I managed to keep the steering wheel straight long enough to pull over and snap a photo.

I believe this was also when we were listening to Fern, the spazziest BBC radio host ever, who liked to talk about her Christmas parties, which are usually attended by lots of quasi-famous people.  Also that super creepy new song by Jason Derulo.  He is a big weirdo.

The rain picked up, so once we got back to The Ghillies, we made tea and relaxed in our room for a while.  We were both sorely tempted to crawl into our beds and nap the afternoon away because we were so sleepy and comfortable, but we knew we had to make the most of our time in Scotland despite the rain!

Unfortunately, most sightseeing or wandering about the town was vetoed by the weather, but Amity had the brilliant idea to look up movie times, so we bundled up again and walked across the river to the Eden Court Theatre to see the second installment of The Hobbit.

It wouldn’t be a true Amity & Julie trip without an LotR movie!  I still don’t think this trilogy is even close to living up to The Lord of the Rings, but I still liked the movie overall.  Highlights: Peter Jackson eating a carrot, Gandalf’s sparkly scarf (why was it sparkly?!), Bilbo kneeling nonchalantly when Smaug spotted him.  Martin Freeman is such a perfect hobbit.  But I digress.

After the movie, we walked into the Inverness city centre and got takeaway sandwiches from the M&S, passing Inverness Castle on the way.

We meandered our way back and finally returned to our tartan oasis.

If I remember, we watched the episode of Top Gear with Slash on and then turned in early.  Another happy day in Scotland!

Up next: Edinburgh!  So start practicing your proper Scottish pronunciation now because you’ll be saying it a lot (at least if you’re reading these blog posts dramatically out loud, as I like to think that some of you are).  It’s ED-in-burr-uh, not ED-in-burg.  Don’t ask me why.  Perhaps my litill palfray would know.

Well, the dust is beginning to settle from the shenanigans of the first half of this winter break, and I’m hopelessly behind on blogging about it.  I have about a week left before school starts again so we’ll see how much I can catch up in that time.  Let’s pick up where we left off, back in Scotland, which somehow now feels like a very long time ago.

As the Brits say, let’s crack on, shall we?

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“To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.”

— Robert Louis Stevenson

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Well, traveling hopefully and labouring were certainly themes of the second day of our Scotland trip.  This was our biggest “roadtrip” day, as our only plan was to drive from Glasgow to Inverness (known as “The City in the Highlands”).  The drive would normally take 3-4 hours but we had all day for it, which meant lots of room for detours and exploring.

Our day began with a lovely sunrise in Glasgow… at 8:30am.

Yep, turns out Scotland’s waaay up there – about even with the lower part of Alaska, in fact – and there’s not too much daylight in the winter.  We’d actually scheduled our visit during the darkest week of the year, right before December 21st, so well done us.  Still, it made it easy to see the sunrise every day.  We enjoyed that one while having breakfast courtesy of Thomas at Craigpark, and then set off north.

We decided to drive up through the Trossachs National Park and right along Loch Lomond (of tenth-grade concert band fame).

The Trossachs looked like this:

Yes.  Braveheart.

And Loch Lomond looked like this:

It was very gray and overcast that day, but it was nice in a way.  Scotland’s not one of those places that you necessarily want to see in good weather all the time.  You have to appreciate the roughness of the landscape a little bit.  Sort of like Milford Sound, I think the Scottish Highlands seem a bit more majestic and impressive under stormy skies than bright sunshine.

Milky Tea continued to carry us faithfully northward and, as the title of this post suggests, we passed many lochs that day.  After Loch Lomond, there was Loch Awe, Loch Etive, Loch Linnhe, and even, delightfully, Loch Lochy.  But more on that later.

We were driving along the banks of Loch Awe during a midday burst of rain, when Amity (our trusty navigator) noted that we were pretty near to something called Kilchurn Castle and that we might try and visit it.  Now, the number of castles in Scotland rivals the number of lochs and we were keen to see as many of both as we could.

Unfortunately, we were having trouble keeping a GPS signal since we were up in the boonies in bad weather.  We had our route and preplanned stops marked out on an actual paper map (my proposed tentative title for this trip was “Maps, Not Apps!” but don’t worry, I’m not making t-shirts or anything), but it was a bit difficult to deviate to things that weren’t shown on our map.  For example, the GPS on my phone was showing that Kilchurn Castle was in the middle of a lake loch.  After a minute though, we realized it was pretty likely that that’s actually something the Scots would’ve done.  And lo and behold:

See that vaguely castle-shaped mound in the middle of the loch?  “Selves, it’s a good idea to try and get out to that,” said we.  And so, after driving past the same stretch of road a good few times and finally finding a helpful hint on Google about the non-existent entrance markings, we parked and set off down the marshy path that leads to the castle.  If the water’s high enough, it turns into an island, but it was low enough to expose the little land bridge that day.

Kilchurn Castle was built in the 15th century and abandoned in the 18th.  As such, it’s mostly ruins now, but still presents quite an impressive sight.  It was really amazing to walk up this crumbling fortress and think that, five hundred years ago, people actually lived there!

Fun fact: the barracks are still mostly intact and are actually the oldest surviving barracks on the British mainland.  History!

You can still go inside and climb up to the top of the battlements, but not on a Sunday, which is when we were there.  Ah well.  The view would’ve been nice, but only three or four stories higher than the one we had anyway.

While we were walking around the outside of the castle, the sprinkles started turning into actual rain, and by the time we got back to the carpark, it was pouring.  Between Amity’s unlined coat and my dumb felt boots, we were both soaked to the skin on different parts of our bodies.  Luckily we could just dig into our bags and change, but actually, I don’t think we got properly warm again for the rest of the trip after that little debacle.  Live and learn.

As it always does in Britain, the rain let up before long, and we stopped for tea and soup and scones at a hilltop café overlooking Loch Linnhe and Castle Stalker, which I’d really hoped we were going to see!

Yes indeed, it’s another castle in the middle of a loch!  But it’s such a cool one!  It was also the home of the French Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  Now go away before he taunts you a second time.

At this point, we were feeling ready to reach our destination, as the whole getting-soaked-and-freezing part had put a slight damper on our adventuring stamina for the day.  It was only mid-afternoon, but we were already losing the light.  We drove past the excellently-named Loch Lochy but truthfully didn’t even notice (it’s very small).  Maybe that was where we pulled over to see this excellent sunset though!

Hmm, yes.  That loch looks a lot like a Loch Lochy, don’t you think?  Say that five times fast.

Back to sunsets.  I love ‘em.

Sadly for us, beautiful sunsets are inevitably followed by total darkness.  That’s just how it works.  Literally the way the world turns.  So when we finally got to drive along the infamous Loch Ness, this is all we saw:

The full moon was pretty cool, actually, and a little eerie.  Like a sea monster head should’ve popped up from the lake right in the middle of that patch of reflected moonlight.

We didn’t bother trying to sightsee in the dark and instead kept driving until we finally reached Inverness and our ludicrously cozy bed and breakfast.  How cozy is ludicrously cozy, you ask?  Feast your eyes upon this slice of Scottish heaven:

Wall-to-wall Black Watch tartan carpet and matching wool blankets on each bed.  So perfect.  We stayed at The Ghillies Lodge in Inverness, and both the B&B and its owner, Mary, were beyond sweet and lovely.  Our room did get really chilly at night because it was right under the roof, but I think we both were totally comfortable under the piles of blankets that were on each of our beds!

In fact, we walked into town to get something to eat, but then came straight back and parked ourselves in bed for the rest of the evening to watch 8 Out of 10 Cats until we fell asleep to the sound of rain on the roof.

Footnote: Why are you taking so long to blog about Scotland, Julie?  Well, as I was just explaining to Amity whilst laying facedown in her comforter, I’ve always wished that I’d blogged about my travels within New Zealand in more detail so that I had fuller accounts to look back on – so this time, I’m going to!  However, if you are weary of my wordiness, pop over to Amity’s blog and read her account of our trip in one post.  It’s quite funny – but beware, spoilers.