Highlands @ MindSay

This last weekend was spent in Edinborough with my friend Bridget.  She and I were great traveling buddies.  This city was fabulous, because everything was so close together that we could walk everywhere and never got lost.  My biggest complaint of the city is that Scotland is on the pound instead of the euro, so everything is very expensive.  At least I didn't buy any clothes that wouldn't fit in my suitcases anyway.

Admittedly, I am not much of a hostel fan, but the hostel that we stayed in was very nice.  Our room was simple but clean.  The first night we had a Brazilian couple there who were very nice and the next two nights we stayed with two Japanese girls.  I think the girls from Japan thought Bridget and I were crazy, because they were so tidy, and Bridget and I were kind of messy and stayed up much later than the other girls.  Plus, we couldn't understand eachother, so overall it was just a funny situation.

Edinborough (or Edinburgh as the locals write it) has incredibly beautiful gothic architecture.  The castle is very large and sits on a volcanoe at the highest point of the city.  We toured it, and it wasn't too impressive inside, but we had beautiful views of the city. In another part of the city there was a replica of the parthenon, but the funny thing is that who ever was building it ran out of money after 6 pillars, so there is this random beginning of a Greek structure on a hilltop in Edinburgh.  We spent a lot of time on The Royal Mile which had shops and museums.  Also, one day we went to an improv comedy show which was pretty amusing.  One of the actors was obviously on drugs, which made his talent seem less impressive, but it was still funny.  Another night Bridget and I ate at a restaurant called Frankensteins.  It was so cool.  The classic movie played on a few televisions, and the place was dark, and decorated like a laboratory. 

On Saturday we took a 12-hour bus tour of Scotland.  It was LONG!  However, it allowed us to see the majority of the country, which we wouldn't have gotten to see otherwise.  The Scottish Highlands are beautiful.  They are fairly arid, but very colorful.  Plus, I got to see actual mountains too.  We stopped to meet a highland cow named Hamish.  Highland cows look fake, but I definitely fell in love with Hamish. I think I took more pictures of him than anything else on this trip.  Highland cows are so shaggy and their horns are huge!  A woman was taking a picture with Hamish before me and almost got taken out by Hamish when he moved his head.  I'd have to say it was very funny.  Our next stop on the bus was at Loch Ness.  We didn't get to see Nessie, but the loch (Scottish for lake) was beautiful.  I learned that it is 23 miles long and 800 feet deep, so I wouldn't be the least bit suprised if there was a monster in it.  The drive back to Edinburgh seemed very long.  Even after the sun had gone down, our tour guide kept pointing out lochs and monuments that we obviously couldn't see.  Then he blasted Scottish music insanely loud, so it was difficult to sleep.  After awhile, it all just seemed very funny.

On our last night, we went to a pub near our hostel.  It was very small, and when we got there there was a group of about 10 people our age together singing songs and playing guitar.  It was a fun atmosphere, and they were singing old folk songs, or funny Scottish songs.  After awhile some of them started chatting with us, and we sung some songs with them.  After awhile, there were only a few people left, and they invited us to a different bar called Dropkick Murphys.  The bar was off the beaten path, so it just had mostly locals there, but it had great live music.  The group of Scots we were out with were hilarous.  There was a middle aged married couple, and the man wore a kilt.  Then the other part of the group called themselves "the pirates" because apparently, they owned a boat. All of them were so different.  One guy was huge and had a big, round face and long dark hair and was a chef, and another of the guys was a musician and an astrophycisist and the other one was a bagpipe player.  What an odd mix.  I don't think I stopped laughing the entire night though. They were very hospitable, but boy, could the Scottish men (and women) drink.  They have the Irish beat.  I was so happy to meet the locals.

One other funny thing that happened was that Bridget and I ate at a cafe called Blue Moon, which was heavily praised in my guidebook.  After a couple minutes in the cafe, I went to the bathroom, and there were all these advertisements for lesbian friendly bars and festivals.  Once I got upstairs I looked around are realized, yep, every table was single sex.  I told Bridget and we thought it was hilarious that we didn't know (and that the guidebook didn't mention it).  The cafe was great though, and our waiter was hilarious.  Not only did he have a Scottish accent, but he had a gay lisp too.  It had to be the most interesting accent I have ever heard.  I wish I could replicate it. We talked about Texas and his love for cowboys.  Everyone that I met from Scotland was very friendly, so it is good when positive stereotypes come true.

Since I'm feeling a wee bit lazy about writing, here's some pictures from our honeymoon.

This picture was taken on a day trip to the town of Largs. Largs is sort of a waterside community where they have a boardwalk and all sorts of amusements. I love the quilted fields in the distance. You can see them all over Scotland outside of the big cities.

Here's a picture of some mountains just near Glencoe where we stayed for about 4 days.

Glencoe's a small area and it's surrounded by mountains. We stayed in the town of Kinlochleven in The Macdonald Hotel.

Glencoe is famous in Scotland as being the site of the Glencoe Massacre of the Macdonald Clan by the Campbells. http://www.electricscotland.com/history/glencoe/

Believe it or not, the people of this area share a connection with Native Americans. http://www.electricscotland.com/history/world/american_indians.htm

Here's a picture of The Old Man taking a walk on the rocks near the wee waterfalls of Kinlochleven.

Of course, I was too afraid to get onto those slippery rocks!

These are the ruins of Dunstaffnage Castle. We didn't get to go in for a visit because we got there too late.

The ruins of Castle Stalker in Argyle. I believe the lake is called Loch Linnhe.

Apparently, you need to make an appointment to go visit it by boat.

This is Eilean Donan Castle in Lochalsh in the western Highlands, which belongs to the Clan Mackenzie. It's castle that still is inhabited by the Clan Mackenzie descendents. We found some of the tour guides (members of the clan, I think) to be a bit arrogant and have since referred to them as "Snottish".

It's the most photographed castle in Scotland.

This picture was taken in a graveyard in Dunvegan where we stayed on the Isle of Skye (we didn't stay at the graveyard....LOL).

There was a weird cloudbreak and the sun just seemed to erupt over this one spot where the villagers had erected a stone. I love this picture.

Dunvegan, by the way, was really remote and a bit boring, so if you ever go to visit there, I wouldn't advise staying more than a day or two. 

The day after we took that picture, we went to visit Dunvegan Castle. The castle offers seal boat tours out on the loch so I took a few close ups of these big fellas. The seals were very, very shy, but absolutely adorable. It's very easy to see how people often mistook seals for mermaids.

Ahhh...now here's the man.

Ever seen that crap of a movie, "Braveheart"?

This is a statue of one of Scotland's most important heroes- Robert the Bruce- taken at Stirling Castle.

This a picture of a street taken in Stirling. Like Edinburgh, it still looks like an old town in lots of places.

The view from The Balmoral hotel was beautiful. Here's a shot of Edinburgh Castle from our room window!

I'm not a fan of The Davinci Code, but here's a picture taken at Rosslyn Chapel.

If you've read the book, then you know that part of the story ends at Rosslyn.

Apparently, the chapel has many connections to freemasonry and the Knights Templar. The chapel inside is made of exquisite and strange masonic and religious carvings.

The picture above is a stone carving that has something or other to do with a Knight Templar.

Inside the chapel, there are thousands of weird, hidden things. The picture above is one of them. It's barely noticeable when you just look around.

Apparently, it is purported to be the death mask of Robert the Bruce.

This is a picture of The Balmoral Hotel, the hotel that we stayed in on the last few days of our visit. We had a honeymoon suite that was almost as big as my apartment!

That's about it for now.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures!