Castles, Monsters, and Music

Day 4 – Highlands

We woke up early again today, eager to get on the road and see more of Scotland.  We had a good little buffet breakfast in the dining area of our hotel.  Haggis was an option but it looked funky and I haven’t yet gained the courage to try some…maybe in Edinburgh.  The innkeeper said that the haggis in each county is made a bit differently, and that the haggis in Strathcarron isn’t spicy…spicy haggis???  Could I imagine anything worse???

We hopped into our shiny green car and hit the open road, headed for Eileen Donan Castle.  It is one of the most famous landmarks in Scotland, and the castle has been built and rebuilt since the sixth century.  The castle was rebuilt in its former glory and reopened in 1932 as it stands today.  The castle sits in front of some amazing scenery, where three lochs meet.  The stonework looks just like an ancient castle’s would, and you can climb around and look at each room.  The rooms have been set up to look like they did in the early 1900’s.  The kitchen even had some real-looking dead animals in the pantry, showing how dead birds would be kept for days before being plucked…there was fake blood!  Gross!  But cool!  As we were leaving the castle, we saw a bagpiper piping out front; we got a bit of video of him.  I thought he was so smart to be piping outside of such an important monument.  We tossed a pound in his bagpipe case and went on our way.

Our next stop was Fort Augustus.  We chose this place because it lies along Loch Ness and we knew that many boat cruises left from there.  It is a cute little town with lots of tourists.  We were lucky enough to get on a tour right away.  It was a 1 hour boat cruise of the Loch Ness.  We climbed aboard the boat with about 50 Chinese people.  We were the only non-Chinese people on the boat!  What I find funny is that we see so many Chinese people in every country we travel to, and they always have the most expensive camera equipment.  They also spend every tour posing for photos instead of enjoying it.  It was nice to sail the Loch Ness, and we got some good pictures of Nessie (see below)!  It is a beautiful lake with some amazing scenery of Scotland.  There is one point where the guide shows you a horseshoe=shaped clearing on the side of a mountain; this is apparently where Nessie tried to get out of the water, but since the mountain was so steep she couldn’t make it and fell back down.  What else could expalain it? J  Our boat also had sonar equipment so that travellers could see foreign objects below the surface of the water.  The cruise felt a bit like a tourist trap, however, and didn’t talk enough about the Loch Ness Monster for my liking.  I think I would have liked the “Nessie Hunting” boat tour that was “family friendly.”  Apparently tours for kids appeal to me!

After Fort Augustus, we travelled a short distance to the next town to visit the Loch Ness Exhibition Centre.  It took us through various rooms where videos were shown about the quest for the Loch Ness Monster.  They showed actual recounts of people that have seen her, versus the scientific perspective about how it was probably just a bobbing log, or whatnot.  The mystery sure has created a lot of tourism in this area!
I must mention that Chris is doing a great job driving us through Scotland on the opposite side of the road, sitting on the opposite side of the car.  I keep singing Beyonce's "To the left, to the left..." song at him to help him remember...this may be annoying to him.  The roads are so curvy and everyone drives quite fast; I can't imagine driving here.  A lot of the roads are also very narrow with only one lane going in the each direction, and no shoulders.  At some points in the mountains there is only one lane and you have to basically hope that nobody is coming opposite you.  Our only driving bloopers for the day include trying to parallel park into a parking space (took many, many, many tries since we were on the opposite side of the car...we held up some traffic) and driving down a one-way the wrong way, just as a police car came down the street...they were very kind to us foreigners...I'm sure it's not the first time we've done it, but it's the first time we actually noticed that perhaps there was a reason everyone was going the other direction.

Our last destination for the day was Inverness, Scotland.  When I was planning the trip, I just assumed that Inverness was another small town.  I figured we would roll up and see our hotsel off in the distance.  Unfortunately, I “forgot” to look up exact directions to our hostel.  When we arrived in town, we realized that Inverness is actually quite large, and a maze of roads!  We drove around for about 30 minutes hoping to come across our hostel.  Finally we stopped at a tourist information centre (these are in many towns in Scotland) to ask for directions.  We got to our hostel quite quickly after that, and were pleased to see that it was very new-looking.   It was basically a house that has been re-made into a hostel.  When the girl showed us our room Chris and I both had to hide our laughter…we had bunk beds!  When they say “single beds” online, you don’t expect them to be on top of each other!  After we got settled in, we laughed about our beds for about 15 minutes…Chris informed me that there was no way I was sleeping on top, as he was scared the bed would collapse on top of him (I thank the movie, “Step Brothers” for that one!)  Instead, we both had to share the single bed on the bottom bunk.  It was a bit of a squeeze!

We drove back into the city centre for dinner at around 7pm.  Our hostel was about a 20 minute walk from the city centre, but we like to flash our car around town.  We tried to find a restaurant a bit off the beaten path to eat at; however every pub that wasn’t on the main strip seemed to only serve beer, not food.  We stopped by one pub for a pint but left after two guys started fighting over football teams…those guys take it very seriously!  We finally found one called the “Black Friar’s Restaurant” that served beer and food.  We had an awesome dinner there and tried some new delicious kinds of beer.

Our last stop of the day was to a local pub called Gellions, which we realized after is known as the oldest pub in Inverness, originating in 1841.  We chose it because it had live music.  There were two guys at the front of the pub playing the guitar and the fiddle all night.  We had a few pints (Stella and John Smiths) and some whiskey (yes, I finally sipped my whiskey instead of shooting it back quick!) and enjoyed the show.  It was an awesome end to an awesome day.

Loch Ness Boat Tour

Gellion Pub - Oldest in Inverness

Leaving Strathcarron Hotel

On the way to Eileen Donan

Eileen Donan Castle

Chris in the Castle

Scottish Thistle - National Symbol

Our Boat at Loch Ness

Chris looking for Nessie

Monika ready to lasso Nessie if necessary...

Explain that!  Nessie on Loch Ness

Black Friar's Restaurant

Gellion Pub

Our Bunk Bed!