Scotland!

So, Scotland!  I keep starting and re-writing this because I don't know how to tell about Scotland in a non-boring way.  Remember those family and friend vacation slide shows you may or may not have had to sit through when you were younger?  Yeah, I don't want to create one of those!  Plus I didn't take a lot of photos, as everyone else had cameras and mine is a piece of junk at this point, so whatever photos I do post are taken from somewhere else.

Days 1&2 (Monday/Tuesday): I flew via Virgin from LAX to Heathrow.  Bit of a delay due to a now-forgotten ash cloud, but I made it!  Then flew bmi (I'd never heard of them either) from Heathrow to Edinburgh.  Stayed at a nice little hotel called the Piries on the west side of the city.  Attempted to meet up with my brother and his fiance and others for dinner, but miscommunication resulted in me walking 2 miles to one place and not seeing them, taxi'ing to another and not seeing them, learning that I can't figure out how to dial a UK number via a UK payphone, and calling it a night and walking back to the hotel.  I did enjoy walking the city though, especially since it started raining, and I do love me some rain!

Day 3 (Wednesday: I wake to the wonderful buzzing of the fire alarm.  By the time I realize what the buzzing is, get dressed, and go downstairs, whatever fire existed in the kitchen area has been extinguished, and the hotel is safe once again.  I shower, eat, and head back to the airport via bus to meet the parents.  Their plane is on time, but sadly their luggage was not on board.  After making delivery arrangements for the next morning, we get the rental car, a nice Mercedes C180 sedan (although NOT the 5 door wagon I ordered due to 6 pieces of luggage), and head up to Glencoe.

Edinburgh to Glencoe:

View Larger Map

We arrive at Clachaig Inn in Glencoe, our home for the next 4 nights!  We were some of the first to arrive, and my brother and his fiance have run an errand but arrive soon after.  We greet and then check into our rooms.  Another small room that doesn't bother me, but my parents' room is the same size, which is small for two people.  See, they're big fans of double beds it seems.  Not queens, not kings, but doubles.  Good for one, bad for two or more!

We chill for the evening, have some dinner (including vegetarian haggis!) and then call it a night.

Clachaig Inn:

Vegetarian Haggis (sorry it's blurry, it was taken with a cheap camera phone.  The round things are cracker-type things):

Day 4 (Thursday): Although assured my parents luggage would arrive by 9am, it didn't.  We called, and they said 6pm, so we went off on adventures.  Almost everyone who would be attending the wedding was now at the hotel, so we had about 20 some people who would making today's day trip to... Loch Ness!  Alas, we didn't see Nessie, but we did see some nice castle ruins.  I give you... Uruquhart Castle, near Drumnadrochit and Inverness, on the shore of Loch Ness:

After Urquhart, we had lunch at some random place along the road.  I think it was another bed and breakfast type place, but it had a nice dining room that we took over.  Then it was on to Glenfinnan monument, where Bonnie Prince Charlie raised his standard at the beginning of the Jacobite Rising.  You can google the monument, because it's not that exciting.  We were MUCH more excited about this:

See, this is the Glenfinnan Viaduct, which is a part of Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets, Prisoner of Azkaban, and Goblet of Fire!  Also, proof that I WAS there...

On the way back, we stopped at a seafood restaurant for dinner.  It's a good thing Scotland has a lot of salmon on their menus, or else I would have gone rather hungry!

I think that was pretty much it for that day.  More hanging out at the inn in the evening I guess.  We did a bit of that...  Oh, right, we got back after 6pm, and guess what... no luggage.  Yup, parents are still in the same clothes they wore on the plane.  Sad day.  I call, and we're told by 9am the next day (Friday).  We would be the first stop of the day.

Day 5 (Friday): We have breakfast and wait for luggage which doesn't come.  My parents are going to sit back and wait while the rest of us gallivant to another castle and to the nearest 'big' town.  They change their mind at the last minute and join us after all, much to our joy.  We head out to our first stop, Dunstaffnage Castle!  It's a nice castle, much more put together than Urquhart was, and my ancestors built a tower there, so there's that.

Dunstaffnage Castle:

After this, we head to Oban! What's intriguing about Oban is that it was basically built around a Scotch distillery (which we toured, but not until Saturday...).  We were told of a restaurant that had 'the best' mac and cheese around.  So we went there, and yes, it was REALLY REALLY good mac and cheese.  Then people split up.   Girls went shopping.  Parents went off on their own adventures.  Guys went climbing a hill to see McCaig's Tower, which is an unfinished monument designed and commissioned by John Stuart McCaig, a wealthy, philanthropic banker who died before it could be finished.  In it's finished form, it was to be based on the Colosseum, but only the outer walls were finished by the time he died.  So now it's just a circle with a park in the center.  But it's a very nice circle and park.  See?

Photo by Ian Britton

View from up top:

So we hiked up there, checked it out, and it started raining.  So we high-tailed it to a pub, where I had a pint of John Smith's, which I'd always been told was good, good beer, and it was good.  Good, good beer.

We headed back to the hotel, and discovered that my parents luggage STILL had not arrived.  My parents were troopers up until this point, when my mom was about to lose it, as the dress she would be wearing for the wedding which was the next day was in her luggage.  A few minutes later I see a courier truck arrive, and I rush down, meet the guy who is on his cell phone talking to someone about giving them a full refund, grab the suitcases and rush them to my parents, who are now overjoyed and they start unpacking things.

While they unpack, a small group of us, myself and my brother included, decided to climb the large hill or small mountain, as I don't know which it is, that's across from the inn.  There was a bit of a rock path, so it wasn't like mountain climbing, but it was high up.

We decided to climb up to that waterfall in the center-ish of the image:

Here's me climbing:

And here we are near the waterfall that's I think off to the right of us:

After this we headed back down.  We didn't make it back in time for dinner at our hotel, but the hotel about 10 minutes away was still open, for only a few more minutes.  About ten of us book it over there, although my brother stays behind to hang out with his friends since it is the night before his wedding and all.  We have dinner, and return to the hotel.  I'm greeted with my brother's friends asking me where I've been, as they apparently did some bachelor party type things while I was gone.  I'm not going into details, but let's just say I'm glad I was at dinner because there are some things a brother should never have to see, and what occurred that night is one of them!

Day 6 (Saturday, WEDDING DAY!):

The wedding was an evening wedding, and was a very, very simple wedding, pretty much requiring no setup.  More on this later...

While the wife-to-be was busy getting her hair did and dolled up and whatnot, the rest of the young crowd went back to Oban to check out the Scotch distillery we weren't able to see the day before.  It was a long tour, but very informative and interesting.  Sadly, it didn't improve the taste of Scotch...

We headed back, got dressed, and went off to the wedding site, which was a nice little inn just a few miles away from where we were staying and on the shore of Loch Linnhe.  The wedding it self took place on a grassy pier located at the hotel, and then afterwards we had dinner and an open bar in the hotel's restaurant/bar/lounge.  Great wedding, very simple, very small, and awesome.  Despite being along the shore of a large lake, and Scotland often having wet weather, nature was kind to us and it didn't rain until moments after we entered the restaurant for dinner.

Here are the bride and groom and wedding attendants, with the pier in the background:

As the brother of the groom, I took it upon myself to get my brother his first drink as a married man.  Since neither of us are Scotch drinkers, we went with... Guinness!

After a fine evening with finer food, drink, and friends, we called it a night and headed back to our hotel.

Day 7 (Sunday):

After breakfast, we packed up the car (managing to fit all luggage into the trunk and half of the back seat), and went to see my brother and now sister-in-law once more before heading back to Edinburgh for the rest of the week.  We briefly said goodbye, as we wouldn't be seeing them again until back in the states (I still haven't seen them since that day), and drove back to Edinburgh, enjoying the countryside once more.

We had chosen to stay in a chain hotel outside of the city, as we wanted to be able to easily take day trips, and when we had been booking hotels, I wasn't sure how much I'd enjoy driving on the other side in the road, especially in a city!  I'm glad we didn't stay in the city, as parking would have been expensive, and there are some very, very narrow streets in Edinburgh.  Plus our hotel was within short walking distance of a train station that went into downtown Edinburgh.

We checked in, and then headed into the nearby town for dinner.  We found a nice Chinese restaurant and relaxed for a bit, and then headed back to the hotel and called it a night.

Day 8 (Monday):

We made our first foray into Edinburgh, and did so by train.  We did many touristy things, including taking the city tour busses all over the city, and hopped off to go see Edinburgh Castle.  It's amazing what they built so long ago, and that those structures are still standing!  We also got to see the Honours of Scotland, which are pretty amazing.  At one point we stopped for coffee at The Deacon's House Cafe, where the story of William "Deacon" Brody is depicted along the walls.  Deacon Brody, who is the inspiration for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, was a cabinet maker who would make copies of his customers' keys and later rob their houses using these copied keys.  He did this for 20 years before getting caught.

Day 9 (Tuesday):

On Tuesday my mom wasn't feeling very well, so after getting her some get-well items, my dad and I headed back into Edinburgh on our own (driving this time!) and went to "Our Dynamic Earth", which is an incredible 'journey' through the Earth's past, present, and future.  It's quite an exhibit that is really hard to describe, but involved shows and displays and just some really neat things.  Dad and I went back towards the hotel and grabbed dinner at Pizza Hut, another short walk away.

Day 10 (Wednesday):

Mom was feeling better, and we decided to go bird seeing.  My dad has been a birder for many, many years, and so he wanted to go to some cliffs not too far away and see several species of birds.  St. Abb's Head is a beautiful coastline nature preserve that has shoreline walking paths along the cliffs which the birds nest.  Pretty incredible:

My dad also wanted to see Hadrian's Wall, which was built in the 2nd century AD by Roman emperor Hadrian across what is now northern England, as a measure to keep the "barbarians" of the north out.  

Someone online mistakenly said that Hadrian's Wall ran through Newcastle, so we headed south and checked out Newcastle, but found no wall.  We did find the tourist office, and discovered the wall was a good 40 miles west.  So we drove a while, and found one site that had just closed, but pointed us towards another closed, but accessible after closing, site.  It was a short hike from the parking lot to the ruins, but well worth it!

Again, incredible that these ruins still exist.  Makes me wonder what OUR buildings will consist of in two thousand years...

Hadrian's Wall (and sheep!):

Day 9 (Thursday):

Thursday was another day trip day.  We started out at Rosslyn Chapel, which you may recall from the book and movie of "The DaVinci Code".  Our next location to visit was going to be Traquair House, which is an old mansion full of history.  However, we didn't actually go there, as when we stopped in Peebles for lunch, my mom wanted to spend the rest of the afternoon there checking out the small shops in this small town.  Meanwhile, my dad really enjoyed walking along the Tweed river scoping out birds. Like so much of Scotland, Peebles was beautiful, and my parents decided they could retire there.  Not that they would, just that they could.

After Peebles, we headed back towards our hotel, taking the scenic route and grabbing dinner at an Indian restaurant in a tiny town I can't remember of and can't find on a map, and then called it a night.

Day 10 (Friday):

Friday we lazily went back into Edinburgh and did the souvenir thing.  We also went to Jenners, which used to be the second oldest independent department store in the UK, although it's now owned by House of Fraser.  While Mom perused their thread collection, Dad and I looked at luggage.  I now want really light luggage since I know it exists and would make packing so much easier when you don't lose 10-12lbs on the suitcase alone.  We also picked up a digital handheld luggage scale, which made packing that night much, much easier.  After Edinburgh, we had dinner back at the hotel, and then packed for our journeys home the next day.

Day 11 (Saturday):

We got the airport a few hours before my parents' flight, which was two hours before mine.  We turned in the rental car and went to check in.  My parents had no problem, but I had to wait two hours before checking in, which was also when my parents' flight would be leaving.  So, I bid them farewell in the departures check-in area.  Eventually I checked in, went through security, flew to Heathrow, went through security again, flew to LAX, and went home.

It was an awesome trip, and I'd definitely like to go back to Scotland in the not-too-distant future.  I'm going to have to get a better camera by then so I actually take pictures next time!