Wednesday in Scotland

Well, this is just going to be a temporary blog post because there is so much I have to say about this day... but because there are so many names and stories and other things, I couldn't recall them all when typing up the blog. So most likely on Sunday when I'm back in my room and have the time, I'll use the internet and help recreate as much as I can from the days trip.

But so you aren't out of the loop until then, here's a little of what happened.

Anthony & Thomas (two french guys who were in my room and the guys I hung out with most of my time in Scotland) and I got up early to catch the bus for our tour of the Highlands and Loch Ness which was scheduled to leave at 8:20 am. We got there around 8 am, but by 9 am, no sign of our bus - then right after 9, it pulled up. Apparently there was a bad accident on one of the main roads into Glasgow. But we loaded up and got on our way.

We headed north the whole day but the first point of interest was Loch Lomond, the largest freshwater loch in Scotland - it's one island has a nudist colony on it! We stopped at the mouth of the loch as it heads into a glen. It was an overcast day and raining on and off at this point.

After that, we kept heading north following the river and the glen, to a town at the middle of three glens and from there followed another glen northward. Along this glen is the railroad that they filmed the Harry Potter movies, including the huge viaduct in the second movie. We didn't get to see it in person but I got a postcard of it! This then took us into Glencoe. This was a really cool place because the entrance is a huge mountain guarding it. Then, later on in the glen are three huge mountains in a row which are known as Faith, Hope and Charity. This is also the spot where the McDonald clan was massacred with the betrayal of the Douglas clan (I think I got those names right!)

Anyways, from there we continued through the glen, and past another loch and stopped at a monument for the colonels lost in wars which had a great view of the glen. Then we headed up along a range of barren mountains and through a barren land beyond it - only one tree grows in that area. Unfortunatley my picture of it was too blurry...

After that, we started into the Great Glen of the Highlands and stopped in Fort Williams for lunch. Fort Williams is at the base of Ben Nevis (Ben is the Gaelic word for mountain) which is the tallest mountain in Scotland. From there, we followed the Caledonian Canal which uses 5 lochs across the Highlands and 29 locks to connect the Atlantic with the North Sea on the other side of Scotland. It was gorgeous and the sun came out for most of the rest of the day at this point.

The second to last of the 5 lochs of the Caledonian Canal is the famous Loch Ness which is the longest, deepest (around 700 feet deep at it's deepest point!), and has the largest cubic volume of all the lochs in Scotland. It's very dark and almost impossible to see deeper than 15 feet into the water which helps hide "Nessie!" We had two options at this point of the bus tour - to tour the Urquhart castle ruins on the banks of Loch Ness and take the boat back to catch the bus, or an hour boat ride on the Loch Ness. I picked the castle because I love castles and historical places and I still got to go out on Loch Ness in a boat. My friends went the other way.

The castle ruins were amazing! I took so many pictures and it was cool because you could actually go up on some of the levels of parts of the castle. I'll naturally talk more about this later, but I only had about 45 min to walk around the ruins. To top that off, I ran out of batteries for my digital camera so I had to take a picture or two, then turn it off to save the juice! But I got the pictures I wanted, so I was happy. The boat trip back was fun too... but unfortunately no sign of "Nessie"

Anyways, after that, we headed on to Iverness which is the northest we went on the bus tour. From there, we turned south and followed the A9, also known as the "Spine" of Scotland till Perth, then traveled back to Glasgow. Most of this part of the trip was boring as there was not much to see and aside from a short rest stop, it was nonstop. It was also night by that point so even taking pictures or seeing things would've been difficult. It actually made us kinda tired!

But when we got back to Glasgow around 9 pm, we first got dinner at Burger King and then headed back to the hostel for a bit to just relax and figure out what to do. We met a German girl there who had just arrived, and we ended up going out to the same bar as the night before for a few drinks. We then went to a club but we were about the only ones in there as it was midnight and a wednesday night as well. So we went back to the hostel to watch some TV, but there was nothing on there either so we all headed to bed.


Sorry it was very brief... well, brief compared to my long blogs! But there will be a more detailed one coming later!