Our next journey began with a quick side trip to Scotland, and I might add that it was incredibly beautiful! It all started with a 5 hour train ride to Edinburgh, and leaving at stupid o'clock in the morning after our epic farewell did not go down so well, plus the motion sickness on the train, I never thought I would make it alive! At first Edinburgh seemed like any other big city, bustling people, shops galore and of course the tourists. As we soon found out that maps can be very deceiving and with no form of gradient we were met with a massive hill known as the Royal Mile. Now it has been a while since we have had to carry our backpacks and we were a tad out of shape (Ray would maintain that it was just me having issues walking like any normal human would).
Now 3 things soon became apparent - 1. Edinburgh was not a typical city with its ancient Gothic architecture and amazing little closes, 2. You can never predict the weather in Edinburgh, 1 minute it is hot and sunny next its raining and so on, 3. These streets/hills were soon going to be killing me! We wandered around admiring the history and found a typical touristy thing to do - The Real Mary King's Close. Now Edinburgh can be thought of as the creator of skyscrapers as the built their house up to 14 levels with only 3 people wide streets between, known as a close. Now what we got to see was an underground city that had been built over, with original houses and the tiny closes that were their sewage system (you definitely didn't want to be outside during the bucket throwing!)
The housing system of old Edinburgh was something else and certainly somewhere I would never have wanted to live. Its the history like this that makes traveling all that more special. Impressed with this amazing city we kept wandering, had a cheap dinner at the hostel and went to bed pretty early, the hangover finally subsiding.
The following day we were up nice and early to meet with our tour group, as we had purchased the tickets many months ago neither of us knew what was in store for us! Our bus arrived and our tour guide, in kilt and all, with long crazy curly hair (something that for some reason Ray seems to want to live up to) jumped off. We all piled on and off we went, past the castle, the birth place of Mr Bell, and some amazing scenery. We drove and drove learning many a story about ancient characters that all made Scotland the place it is today, we crossed the Forth of Firth and soon learned that our guide loved the word 'wee'.
As we passed some truly amazing scenery we realized that we were getting further and further away from the main cities and soon we were in forest. We visited the hermitage where they actually paid someone to live in a cave, although he has long since left. The we had our first taste of proper Scottish whiskey and a quick distillery tour. It was unusual to be on a bus for so long while learning and seeing so many things. It was also apparent that Scotland had many of the 'first', the 'biggest' and the 'oldest things in the world. We stopped off at a stone burial site, getting off the beaten track, a battlefield where the Jackobites were slaughtered, this time the traditional Highland Charge (the same concept as seen in Braveheart) did not work to their advantage.
Throughout the day we reached further and further into highlands and the scenery seemed to change every minute, it is such a beautiful place here. We had lunch in Ptilorchy, dinner in Inverness and even swam in the much bigger and colder than expected Loch Ness. We finished the night off with some local traditional Scottish music then off to bed, I'm sure that the rest of Scotland can only get better!!
L&R
