The Journey Day 9 Edinburgh, Highlands, Loch Ness, Scotland

September 11th, 2016 Edinburgh, Scotland Day trip to Highlands and Loch Ness

Loch Ness

The third day in Scotland we were up early. We stopped in at Starbucks for pumpkin spiced lattes, they weren't as good as usual because in Ireland I heard a girl say that Pumpkin Spice was just ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg. She took the magic out of the pumpkin spice! I also got a pan au chocolate again! Yummy! Then we walked down the Mile to Haggis Adventures to check in for our day trip to Loch Ness and the Highlands. 

Glencoe

We were there with plenty of times and had to wait a while before we got going, but at least we were able to do so on the bus. The trip was not our favorite. The majority of the trip was spent on the bus. It was a four hour trip to Loch Ness and four hours back. There were very few stops and mostly they were comfort stops. Now, I want to say that visiting the Highlands is amazing and it is very pretty, but because there were few stops and most of it was seen on the bus, it wasn't as good as it could have been. Loch Ness was also very pretty, but since it took so long to get to the Ness, we didn't have a lot of time there either. My recommendation for someone who has one day outside of Edinburgh is to take a trip around the Highlands either a whiskey tour, or hike Ben Revis. Don't try to visit Loch Ness in one day. If you want to visit Loch Ness, then I suggest taking a two day trip! 

North American side

Europe side

I did like our driver and guide. He was very knowledgeable and I learned more about Mary, Queen of Scots, the Highlands and the Loch. One fact that I learned was that the hills were created when the North America plate and the European plate were pressed together creating a mountain range. In the United States we call the range the Appalachians! The land on one side of the Ness used to be part of the North American continent and the part south of the lake was part of the European continent. When the continents split it is very messy!

Hairy Coo!

I also learned that cows is pronounce 'coos' and there are hairy coos, and regular coos. We met two hairy coos on the way up to the Loch.

Another story the guide told us was, The story of the Massacre of Glencoe, which sounded a lot like the Red Wedding. MacIain was late when pledging alliance to William and Mary. So, troops under the command of Robert Campbell were sent to Glencoe. The MacDonalds gave them hospitality for days while they were there. After ten days the troops and Campbell began killing the MacDonalds. So, it was similar to the Red Wedding, only instead of the host killing the guest, it was the other way around.

There was one exciting thing about the trip. Kelsi saw the monster! She was wearing a pink bow and waved at Kelsi before disappearing. This didn't happen when I was looking, but Kelsi wouldn't lie.

Highlands

After the mostly bus ride and little touring we wanted to find a place to watch American football. So we went into a hotel to ask. The hotel gave us three places where the games might be played. The first place was a dud, but the second place was a success! It was called the Three Sisters, and we only got lost a little bit on the way there. 

Highlands

Inside there were all sorts of people dressed up in equestrian gear, not sure what that was for, but it was fun to see. Most of the televisions were playing soccer, and we had to go way in the back to watch the American football games, but we were able to watch them. It was not surprising to find that the section was mostly filled with American tourist! I do believe there was at least one or two Scotsmen watching too. The television were showing only one game for the morning game and one for the afternoon, the night game would be on around 3 AM in the morning, which was the Cardinals vs. Patriots game. Considering the tragic loss, I am ALMOST glad I missed it.

We ordered food. I had a meatball sub which was good. Kelsi had pizza, she said later it wasn't her favorite. Kelsi drank Hop 13 and I had a Tennents! I really liked that beer! 

While we were watching the game, some guys started talking to us. John and Alex were from Kansas City, Mo. They were on their own journey, stating in Ireland, and going to Italy via London in a few days. They were staying in hostels along the way. Though they distracted us from the game they were quite funny. I was also unintentionally funny. I started talking before I quite finished my thoug

"Computer books!"

hts, and Socially Awesome Penguin occurred. Kelsi and John were in a slightly heated debate about eBooks vs Hard books. I really don't care what medium my books come in as long as the books are good. Alex also had a neutral stance, because he prefers movies. Kelsi and John however were very passionate about their side. One of John's key argument was that writers wouldn't stop writing hard books, but Kelsi thinks that eBooks will be the only form of most books in the future. Then, I suddenly remembered that computer algorithms nearly won a literary competition! Instead of saying that I said, "Computer books, have you read them?" Well, I think I won the argument because after that the debate was dropped. We laughed about computer books for most of the night. 

We laughed about it again when we met up in London a few days later. Meanwhile, we go to Cardiff at ten am the next day. 

The Journey Day 8 Edinburgh, Scotland

September 10th, 2016 Edinburgh, Scotland

Woke at 9am we went to a cafe for breakfast Olly Bongo's Cafe and Bistro for breakfast. I had a full English Breakfast and Kelsi had french toast. We both drank lattes. My opinion on the full breakfasts is that I like the English beans better than Irish and I also liked the Soda bread and potato cakes. I prefer Ranch style beans over baked beans so please keep that in mind, if you like sweet beans then you might prefer the Irish ones. 

English Breakfast

After Breakfast, I mailed some postcards, Kelsi got candy. At the Paradise Palms there were Tunnock's Carmel Waffers that she loved! So she was on a mission to find more of them. She didn't find any this time, but she did by the end of the day, and stocked up for the entire trip, she has to restock in London for on our return home.

Then we went to Edinburgh Castle. It was probably the most legit castle that we went to, it had kill holes. Which was the main criteria that we looked for when determining if a Castle was really real. While at the castle we tried some very delicious whiskey. We liked it so much we bought some for Caitlin and Dave as a gift. I think I should have bought more, I thought there would be more alcohol that I would want to bring home, so I only bought one bottle. 

Whiskey Tasting

The views of the city from the castle were awesome. We walked all around to get a look in all directions. At the castle they also have a museum of the military history and prisoner history. It was a lot to absorb! A real history buff might be able to spend all day at the castle alone! We made sure to look at everything, but by the end of each tour we didn't take as much time at each exhibit as we did at the beginning of the tour. It was so much to process.

From the Castle we went to the Whiskey Tour. There is a ride that quickly explains the whiskey making process. I remember the first step is the quality of the water, but then we moved on to the tasting part of the tour, so I'm not certain of the rest of the steps. Some of the steps I remember because I tried home brewing beer over the summer. I learned the lesson, don't brew beer in Arizona in the summer. In the Tasting Room we were given palettes to smell and from the scents and descriptions we were supposed to pick which region we wanted to try whiskey from. I picked the Highlands and Kelsi picked Spokane. The whiskey was pretty strong and I think perhaps I need to practice with lighter less smokey tasting whiskeys for a while longer yet.

The next part of the tour was to a huge collection of whiskey that had never been open. I looked at almost all of the bottles, and they all said Scotch! There were so many bottles and brands. Some of the whiskey will disappear from the bottles overtime, this is called the Angel's tax. Some bottles were more empty than others. Either the Angel's liked that whiskey more, or the sealing process was better in some than others.

Holyrood Palace

After the tour we went to the whiskey bar. Part of our package was tasting 4 of the 5 regions of Scotland Whiskey. So we had a flight of those. Now, I know I don't like the smokey ones! I may have ordered some more whiskey, except that there was too many choices, also we were getting hungry. So we walked down the Royla Mile and ate at The Royal McGregor. I had fish and chips. Kelsi had curry. She is getting more adventurous!

When lunch was over we went to Holyrood Palace. The place is still in use by the Queen when she visits Scotland, but there are no kill holes. This tour I picked up an audio guide, and summarized the guide for Kelsi. I think she enjoyed it because I was so good at relaying the information. People died in this room, this room is where people eat dinner, and etc. Just the fact from me!

Blue box 

Then we went to Franksteins it was a hoot! We ordered beers, Tennents, and sat on the second floor to watch people. People from the UK and Europe are just different enough that I know they are not Americans, but they aren't so different that I can't really pick out what makes them different. It is fascinating! I love watching people. After our drink we crossed the street to the restaurant Cellar Door. We kept walking by it, and it reminded me Tolkien every time we past it!

When you walk in you walk down the stairs to a cellar, only it's not really a cellar, because the building is kind of on a slope so there is a floor below that, which is also at street level and the door we went through is at the bridge level! I'm still pretty confused about the bridges and streets in Edinburgh even though we got better at navigating it!

Cider

The room does feel like a cellar so that was kind of fun. We both ate risotto dishes and Thistle Cross Ciders. Kelsi's was ginger and mine was strawberry. I took a picture of mine and sent it to Caitlin because she is my gluten free friend! 

After dinner we went to get drinks at Paradise Palms. We started with a tea pot, then Kelsi tried a gin fize, gin is pretty popular in Edinburgh, and I had another Tennents. This time at the Paradise Palms it was very busy with tons of people and awesome music. It was such a fun place it seemed to me that many of the people there were locals so it was great watching everyone! I loved it. We couldn't stay out too late because we had to get up early tomorrow for our tour of the Highlands and Loch Ness. When we got back to our room the music was just as loud as the night before, but it was a little easier to sleep. In the middle of the night, after the music stopped, one of the other guests ran out of their room to the bathroom because he was sick. Then he started sobbing! Getting sick is gross, but there was no need to cry about it the way he was. Kelsi and I could only laugh about it.

 

The Journey Day 7 Edinburgh, Scotland

September 9th, 2016 Belfast to Edinburgh, Scotland

Great Scot! I know a few!

We were up early for our flight. Our host had left us some things for breakfast. I had pancakes, I don't eat pancakes with syrup so it was easy to eat while repacking and getting ready. Kelsi ate toast. We both had some tea. We took a cab to the airport. It was a bit of a drive out of the city, but I guess that is pretty typical with airports. There was some difficulty with the card reader in the cab, but everything eventually worked out! 

At the airport, there were more issues with Kelsi's survivors, she bought too many tea towels! She had to fit all of them in her carry on which was difficult, but she eventually got the bag to zip. The there was more issues with the wifi and our electronic tickets. We could only get the Wifi in the lobby not at the first security point. So she had to take screenshots in order to make sure we could scan through the gates. All these mishaps were a bit of a bother, but I didn't mind too much.

Edinburgh, from Scott Monument

After the first point, there was a long security line. Luckily the Wifi worked in there and I took the time to buy tickets for a day trip to Lochness and the Highlands. When we finally got through security we stopped for coffee. Then we went our gate, there was already a queue. The queue was pretty long, in the states they call groups of people at a time, but there was just a single line. I'm not sure which is actually faster, but waiting in line is not better than waiting for your group to be called.

On the plane, I wrote some postcards and read. Kelsi closed her eyes, but I'm not sure if she slept too much. 

We arrived in Edinburgh just a bit after the scheduled time. The flight was short, but waiting to get off the plane took almost the same amount of time! We got our bags and took the tram to Princess Street. It was raining, but that didn't deter from the city's appeal. 

The city is so beautiful. It is built on hills and because this and the buildings, there is a bit of an illusion where two or three buildings look like one building! The hills make dragging luggage around more difficult, but I actually didn't mind too much because it gave me more time to look at everything and everyone. We had pretty great directions and didn't get lost so that made it more enjoyable. The room we were staying at is above the Paradise Palms, which is a bar. When we got in we were shown up to our room and informed that we were allowed a discount at the Palms. We took advantage of this after a quick dress change. I made the decision to wear ballet flats which didn't hold up later in the rain. So that dictated some of our later activities!

Punch Tea

At the Paradise Palms, the menu is American Soul Food and 100% meat free, many dishes are also vegan. I had a veggie burger and Kelsi had nachos. We shared a kettle of punch "tea". The Paradise Palm is so cute inside and the food is delicious. We were there pretty early so we had no way of knowing that at night Paradise becomes a very popular and crowded place. We would find out in short time.

After lunch, we walked back down to Princess street to visit the info center. Kelsi wanted to get more tea towels even if she didn't say so, but they didn't have any. We got a hop-on-hop off bus ticket, but before we took the tour we climbed Scott Monument.

Scott Monument

Scott Monument was built for Sir Walter Scott the Scottish writer of some note. He wrote novels like Ivanhoe and poetry like "Marmion". Which contains the famous quote, "Oh, what a tangled web we weave..." Edinburgh has many many famous authors and was named as the first city of literature in 2004. Every year in August, there is had a huge book Festival. It would have been great to see it! Anyway, Scott Monument is a Gothic style spire, that Charles Dickens said that was "a failure," but I quite liked it. We climbed to the top and the views were great. 

After the Monument, we took a turn on the Ferris wheel. I liked spinning our pod, but Kelsi did not! She was nice though and spun it very slowly.  

I wanted to take the hop-on hop-off tour bus after that because my shoes were soaked and I was hopping they would dry. They did a bit, but it was still raining after the tour was over. The tour was nice because we had a chance to look at sites that we wanted to explore more later. It was the last tour of the day, so it was too late to do any other site seeing that day.

After the bus tour, I waited in a doorway to keep my shoes from getting to wet until Kelsi was ready. We hurried back to our room so that I could change my shoes. We took a different street back up the hill to our rooms. We got pretty lost doing this. We didn't realize at the time that because the city is built on hills there are levels to the city. So when we went up a different street it didn't bring us back to the Royal Mile instead it brought us to a street below it. We only figured it out when we climbed some stairs. As soon as we climbed the stairs, we recognized some buildings and sites from the hop-on tour and were able to reorient our position. I eventually was able to change my shoes, but it took a lot of work.

Edinburgh

Once I had proper shoes, we walked over to Greyfriars Bobby's Bar for dinner. The is a restaurant is named after a very loyal Skye Terrier dog. After his owner died, he stayed at the grave side for 14 years. The dog could sometimes be called away to eat, but would return quickly after. What a cute story. There is also a statue of the dog in front and people will rub it's nose. The nose is shiny and worn compared to the rest of the statue. I'm not sure why they do so, but I patted it a few times. Kelsi started laughing at me when I would. There wasn't much of a wait, but perhaps that was because of the rain. I had a Tennets beer and I thought hard about trying haggis, but I was worried that I wouldn't like it. I am pretty adventurous when it comes to food, but I haven't seen many people review it favorably. Instead, I ate spotted sausage yum! Kelsi had a burger and a ginger beer.  During dinner Kelsi was a hero! A lady forgot her umbrella at her table, she's lucky that Kelsi was there!

The Elephant House

After dinner we walked up to the castle it was too late to go in so we turned around. We also saw a whiskey experience nearby that we decided we wanted to do later on. On our way back to our room, we stopped at the Elephant House for dessert and special hot chocolate drinks. It's a shop where some of the Harry Potter series was written, which thrilled the child and nerd in me. I tried not to be too much of geek about it. Inside the bathroom, the walls are covered with shout outs from fans about the series. It was so cool! 

We called it a night after that, going back to our room to find that the cute Paradise Palms from early was a machine of noise designed for keeping the delicate sleeper awake. Luckily, it ended around 1 am so it wasn't as bad as it could have been.