Drumnadrochit

Hiya!
  This last weekend we managed to get out of the city and head north.  We bought the cheapest tickets to Inverness, a city about 3.5 hours north of Edinburgh. We thought that our train was to leave at 11:40 PM, but it turned out it was 9:40 PM; we were stupid about reading military time (21:40).  I unfortunately bought the last ticket out of Edinburgh's Waverly station, so the boys had to walk to the next stop, about a 30 minute walk west. They got lost, and ending up almost running. They got to the station, and Josh didn't have his confirmation number and couldn't get a ticket, but a kind porter took pity on them and gave him a handwritten note in the place of a ticket.  I had the same issues at Waverly, but luckily it was a big enough station that the ticket windows were still open and they could just look up my number.
  The train ride passed quite quickly--hangman and such diverted our boredom. Around midnight, we arrived in Aberdeen on the eastern coast, where we had to get off. The train station was going to be closed all night, and although we had a train to catch at 6 in the morning, we could not stay there. No room at the inn. So we headed off into the rain, unsure of where to go.
  We managed to meet some uni kids on their way to a club, so we asked if we could come along, and they obliged.  We followed them to this really awful club with bad music and no one there, but it was a roof over our heads. When they closed at 3, a few of the kids offered to take us to his flat to hang out till we left.   I promptly fell asleep on the couch when I got there (as well as Devin), but Josh braved the wee hours to make sure we got up on time.  He also paid for the cab to take us to the train station when we got lost in the dark morning rain.  VIP of the weekend?  I have a picture of the guys at the train station that morning,  but I'll be nice and not post it, since we looked rather haggard.

  Caught the train and made it to Inverness.  Cute little town--not much going on though.  They have a castle--but its not even old!

Onward to Drumnadrochit though.  We took a double decker bus along the A82 (parallels Loch Ness). Its rather scary riding in the top in front. It kind of feels like a hovercraft, but since the driver manuevers that thing  like a small car, you feel like you might go careening into the loch at any moment. It even sputtered stop one time, waited for two minutes, heard the driver making a call detailing the problem, shuddered back to life and continued the journey.
 

 Drumnadrochit is a tiny town (hamlet) of about 200 people, right on the edge of Loch Ness about 20 minutes away from Inverness. While it is tiny, it has a booming and overwhelming tourist side, a disappointment. There are more craptastic clutter stores about the monster than need be.  But we booked some beds in an old farm house converted into a hostel, a bit away from the center of the city.  It was a nice place--they had a great coal fireplace in the small living room where we go to hang out in when the weather turned cold.  The lady who ran it told us all the things to avoid, and when to go to other things.

  The first thing we did was walk up to see a waterfall.  The walk was rather nice; the countryside is in full fall gear right now, but it was a gorgeous warm day. Lots of sheep farms.   The sheep in the foreground was renamed "Stubbs" by us--he literally did not have front legs, but managed to scoot around grazing anyhow.

 
  Cheeky little boy.

Then we walked back to town, the boys singing a capella the whole time.  The country needed that music.

Every road sign in Drumnadrochit is written in both Gaelic and English, as evidenced by Devin's apparent confusion.





A Hairy Coo!  A hairy highland cow.  This one was quite scary to me, but Josh said he was quite friendly.  I'll believe him.

The lady at the hostel told us to go to Urquhart Castle at night to avoid the 7 pound entrance fee. All we had to do was "hop a couple of fences.  Public Property in Scotland belongs to the people, so there are no trespassing laws."  So grabbed a pizza and some beers, and played a game of UNO in front of the fire with these German travellers before heading out.

  The walk wasn't bad, and when we rounded the corner, the entire castle was lit up along the edge of the loch.  Who pays for it to be lighted all night, I don't know, but it sure looked cool.  We had an entire castle ruin to explore by ourselves, and as the bats flew over our heads, we made silly shadows on the wall.

The next morning we walked to the loch.
Its quite a nice lake--huge actually, but rather skinny.

We did not see the monster--unless you count the unusual specimen that the boys came across while on our journey back to town.  Should they call National Geographic, or maybe just National Enquirer?

It was a fun trip--good to get out of the city, see some new places, have a few adventures.
 May there be more!