Scotland by car...

Edinburgh
We arrived in Scotland happy to be on the ground, and found the Airlink 100 bus that took you to the downtown areas – one stop at Haymarket and one to the central station. The cost was really inexpensive - 3.5 GBP each way – for a bus that came every 10 minutes, was double decker with a huge baggage area, and free wifi onboard. Perfect! We got off the bus at the Haymarket bus stop and looked around in a pretty bewildered state, and within one minute someone stopped and asked if we needed help. This repeated itself a few times in Scotland - world's nicest people!

Our first full day there, we saw the Edinburgh Castle, a magnificent castle which perches right on top of the hill, and is still used by royalty. Of course, it is not free to enter, so we admired the view and took a few pictures before carrying on. From there, you are able to walk up the Royal Mile, which is filled with government buildings and universities, typical tourist shops, cafes, restaurants, museums and kiosks with local artisan wares. And if you veer off to the sidestreets, some of them are actually bridges! You can look over the edge of them, and you are several stories up – and the storefronts that you think are on the ground level, are in fact, on the 4th or 5th level of the building. Strange, but cool! Edinburgh is also very well signed posted, with historical markers galore (even on old pubs) telling the story of Old Edinburgh. At the very end of the Royal Mile, we found a small garden, land which had been reclaimed by the government, and returned to the people. Since the area had historically been for brewery workers and had been a park, the locals decided they wanted to have a small garden with landscaping reminiscent of what the park would have been like years ago. At the very bottom of the Mile were a few attractions that were simply outstanding, the Holyrood Palace, the Scottish Parliament and the Holyrood Park. Holyrood Palace is the home of the Queen when she is in Scotland, and is a gorgeous massive structure which can be toured. We admired the fine gates and the greens around the pace, which looked more like a castle. Due to Christy’s background (ex-Washington D.C. worker), we had to stop at the Scottish Parliament (SP), which was a curious building, and actually looked like something we might see in New Zealand. The building was all concrete and glass, with odd angles, light blonde wood ornamentation and beautiful streamlined fountains in front. The building said it was open to the public so in we went. It was a really stunning building, and we thought that the SP would be hard pressed to not back any environmentally-friendly initiatives due to the amazing view outside the windows. Our last day there, we decided to attack the Holyrood Park, which was at the far end of the Old Town, which had gorgeous hills you could walk up to see the views. It took us about an hour to walk down to that area of town, which we did at a brisk pace, and luckily, most of it was all downhill, and the tourist traffic was light at that time of day. The park is massive and is composed of several really large steep hills, covered by craggy rocks, lichens and green grass. Since it was a Saturday, there were many more people out and about on it then the day before. Many locals also had their dogs out, and we watched and laughed as some of the sheep dogs and springer spaniels bounded about, looking for small animals to hunt or elusive sheep to herd.

Scottish Highlands
The next morning, we were up early for our big drive. We were able to have a nice full breakfast and then decided to trot down to the airport bus stop one block away to pick up our rental car at the airport. We barely missed the first bus, and we thought it would be quite some time before another bus pulled up. Actually it took 8minutes!

Our drive took us through Cairngorms National Park, which is where our hotel was located. To be fair, we really did not know much about where we were going or staying, one of the “surprises” that comes with not having a guidebook. We had not even heard of this national park, or Ballater where we were staying, which was a shame, as we would have spent much more time in this area. The area took up a large swath of the highlands, and had mountains, forests, brooks and streams, lochs (lakes), and alpine mountains and glades. As we entered the area, it was simply amazing! We started to ascend through these really small little roads, which were traffic free. The scenery was stunning – huge hills that were covered with red scrubby brush or yellow gorse, and craggy. It really was alpine, and something we did not expect to see. Certain areas of the land are also open sheep grazing, and there were some funny signs on the side of the road warning you to slow down. Our base town was home to the Ballater station, an important train stop, which was used for Queen Victoria’s visits to the Scottish Highlands. Ballater was also quite cute – there were a few cafes, two small Cooperative grocery stores, a jewelry store, a few churches and more inns and B&B’s. It was quite a good base for travel, as opposed to some of the other towns on the same road that really did not have much to offer (Crathie and others further south). There is also a royal castle at Balmoral in the adjoining town, Crathie, which is more like a park with its sprawling huge grounds. The Royal Lochnagar Distillery is also next door, which must have pleased the Queen! We were not as impressed, as the people working in the distillery were a little snobby. We decided that we would stop visiting the distilleries after that, as what we were looking for (no tours – just paid tastings at a small bar with an explanation) were not available. Once up north, we really noticed that it never really got dark - this picture was taken at 10:30pm from our hotel deck!

Inverness
We were a little nervous about heading north to Inverness, but the drive there easily took it off our minds.... We had frantically booked a place to stay a few days earlier, as everywhere we found online was really expensive. We finally found one within our budget, which said it had street parking and internet and was within walking distance to downtown. All those things were true, and so we also breathed a sigh of relief that we would have the bathroom to ourselves since the owner had not rented the other room out. However, at the end of the night, we determined that we DID share the bath…with the owner (who always seemed to be in there). This was just wrong!

Inverness was a medium sized town situated next to a river, and had a caste in town. It was supposed to be a tourist stop for the highlands area, but it did not seem overly touristy. Many of the people walking on the streets were locals not just tourists, it seemed! We did notice that an overabundance of barbers and salons in town seemed to be “all male” barbers or salons in town. It was weird – there were three such shops in one block alone (maybe there were wolfmen in town). We did find a sweet little pub with food specials and good beers on tap to watch the World Cup match. Argentina was playing, and there was an Argentinian watching the game at the bar in his team jersey – every few minutes he would belt out a Spanish “Ohhhhh Maradona" and have the rest of the bar laughing at him. Guess the Scottish are still reserved. The bar also had a good whiskey menu, where we picked two to try at the end of the night. We decided it was more cost and time effective to try a few at the bar and also buy a few miniatures rather than sit through whiskey tours.

Fort William
That morning, we got our hike in at the Falls of Foyers, which was a nice trail down to gorge which had a huge waterfall. Apparently Robert Louis Stevenson wrote some famous poems there too! There were several different trailheads there, and we also took the “red squirrel walk,” which also had with CCTVs to monitor the squirrel population. We did not note any squirrel population that was active while we were there. We know of a place called Chicago where they can get a lot more common squirrels from!

The main street in Fort William was pedestrian only which was really nice, and we walked it. There was also a really long paved path along the foggy lake, which was impressive. The rain started to fall at this time, which was quite a nice change from the bright and sunny weather that we had experienced to date. That night, we went to the bar in the hotel for a beer and to watch the soccer on the big screen. One funny thing about the pubs in Scotland is their ability to attract all sorts of people during any time of the day. We have seen grade school kids, teens, and in this case, there was an elderly couple having tea at 8pm while watching the game. How cute!

Crianlarich
We decided that we would have an inside day, as the weather was quite cool and gloomy. We ended up deciding to go and see the Harry Potter Bridge, which was really very touristy for us! We drove to Glenfennis, which is about 25 minutes drive from Fort William. We pulled up, and there were several seniors tour buses, and they were all waiting. We had no idea what the fuss was about, until one senior yelled at Marcus to take his picture and get out of the way. We had no idea what was happening – and turns out the twice daily steam train was coming by momentarily, and you could get a pic of the train going over the bridge. So we quickly hopped a wire fence, where we proceeded to get yelled at by another that we were in their way (mind you – this was about 150 feet away!!!). So in the end, we happened to catch it by chance with a million other people! It was not without incident, however, as we heard some folks complaining about the pesky midgies...and we noticed all the little gnats around us. Had we known how bad they would be, we’re not sure if we would have sacrificed a week’s worth of itchy pimple sized bites (10 on Christy’s chest alone!) for art’s sake.

We ended up staying at a gorgeous B&B in Crainlarich (very small quaint town) in the middle of the country called Inverardran House, which was everything you would want a B&B to be - friendly owners, wonderful Burmese Mountain Dogs, great room, quiet night, and wonderful Scottish breakfast. AHHHH, where is more time when you need it?!?!?

And in the end, our Scottish journey came to a close, and we were sad. Scotland had truly been a great country to tour (even on your own!), and the people were so kind, scenery was stunning, and the food/drink were superb. When can we go back?!?!?!

Next Up: Belgium + One Day in France