So it has been AGES since I have last posted, and for that I am very sorry. My life has been completely crazy recently. Anyway, I thought I should let you all know about my trip (about a month ago, sorry guys) to Inverness. It was an absolutely amazing trip and I wanted to show you all my pictures.
We left early on Friday the 9th of October. We boarded a bus and drove about two hours to this nice little place, Hermitage, Dunkeld, where we got out and walked to this beautiful waterfall. There was an observation room build next to the waterfall. When you went into the observation room, you could go out to an observation deck and see the waterfall. Originally women were not allowed to see the waterfall in person: it was thought that the sheer magnificence of the waterfall would cause women to swoon. There was a mirror on the wall in the observation room that women had to view the waterfall through. However, fortunately this archaic mentality is no longer in practice, and I was able to view the waterfall and take pictures.
This is a VERY tall Douglas Fir
The observation room
The waterfall!
Me next to the waterfall.
The beautiful bridge that you could stand on to look out at the waterfall.
After we made the short stop at the waterfall, we traveled to Pitlochry to have lunch. Pitlochry is a very cute town at the beginning of the highlands. I had lunch with a couple of friends at a little resturaunt where we had a very rude waitress who would not serve one of my friends alcohol because she "couldn't accept American driver licenses as a form of identification." While legally this may be true, she was just being rude because no where else in Scotland has ever refused us alcohol with our driver licenses. Anyway, after lunch we poked our heads into a few shops. Mostly the stores just sold very touristy things. I picked up a couple of post cards and a chocolate Nessie Monster.
A hilarious shop in Pitlochry that I had to take a photo of.
After Pitlochry, we headed to my favorite part of the trip. We drove about two hours to the Glenfinnan Viaduct. At exactly three o'clock we watched the Jacobite Express, which is the train that is filmed as the Hogwarts Express in the Harry Potter movies, cross the Viaduct exactly as it does in the movies. It was soooo amazing!!!
The Hogwarts Express!!!
After that exciting day of driving we eventually made it to the youth hostel in Inverness. It was pretty nice, not too creepy. I roomed with three of my friends: Alex, Lily, and Cora. On Friday night we went out with some of our guy friends first to Hootenany's. This cool pub that had live music. That was fairly expensive, and very
crowded, so we made our way to another pub, City Bar. After that we bar hopped just kind of finding out what the nightlife of Inverness was like. It was pretty cool, although I ended up going back to the hostel with two guys who have absolutely no sense of direction, so they were completely relying on me to get them back. Which could have been bad, but fortunately we met up with some other people who knew where they were going.
The next day after breakfast at the hostel, we made our way to the Culloden Battle Field. It felt very odd to be at a battle field without my father, but fortunately I had our guide, who was with us for the entire weekend, Alastair, to tell us about the battle field instead. He was very knowledgeable.
This is a view of the Culloden Battle Field from the top of the Culloden museum.
Here is the memorial Cairn in the center of the battlefield. Cairns were originally created by each member of a clan when going into battle would put a rock in a pile, when the battle was over the living would claim there rocks and the rocks remaining would be a memorial for the deceased.
Here are stones marking the mass graves for each clan.
This is Alastair standing in front of the only building remaining from the time of the battle.
After Culloden, we drove to Kingussie for a sheepdog display. We visited a farm where this guy trains sheep dogs. He has close to 15 dogs that he competes in various sheep hearding tournaments. The dogs were amazing. Each one responded to a different whistle. He signalled the dogs to go find the sheep and then bring them to him. He could also have the dogs lie in a line and have one dog heard the sheep between the other dogs. It was pretty incredible! We also got a sheep shearing demonstration, and I got to sheer a sheep (well part of one, with the herder helping me)!
The sheep herder holding his favorite puppy.
The dogs in action!
Weaving the sheep in and out of the other dogs!
The herder with his wife (who incendentally is from Denver. She asked him for a job at a sheep herding show and then when her visa ran out, they got married!) and a sheep who is about the be sheared.
Me shearing a sheep!
One of the cutest puppies in the world!
Me holding a puppy!!! I was in love!
After we disentangled ourselves from the puppies, we headed to the Glenlivet Distillery. We got a tour of the distillery (it was very smelly, at times I thought I was going to get drunk off of the fumes alone) and then had a whiskey tasting. Let me tell you that I am not the biggest fan, or indeed a fan at all, of whiskey. But it was a very neat experience.
After that very full day, we headed back to the hostel in time to get ready for a group dinner at a nearby restaurant. After dinner, instead of going out again, I crashed very early with my roommates. All of us were way to tired to do anything but sleep!
The next day we went for a cruise on Loch Ness, which took us to the Urquhart Castle. The cruise was beautiful! Urquhart castle was a ruin on the Loch. It was pretty well preserved and there were quite a few towers you could go up in and look around.
The beautiful Loch Ness from our cruise.
Urquhart Castle from the Loch Ness.
Urquhart Castle
Me in one of the castle towers.
The ride back to Edinburgh was fairly uneventful. We did stop at Glencoe, which is one of the most spectacular sights I have ever seen. I am posting pictures, but these pictures cannot even begin to explain the beauty of the place.
The beautiful Glencoe.
Well that is all for now folks. This post has taken me much more time than intended and I still have to finish a thermodynamics problem for tomorrow (I know it sounds like so much fun, I bet you can guess why I opted from writing this post first).
Love Always,
Lizzie
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