Edinburgh: Part 2

Alright, so I will do as I promised and finish up telling y'all about Edinburgh.

So, here we go.

Day 2

We woke up early on our second day in Edinburgh, Saturday, to go on a tour of the Scottish Highlands. We met at a bus station and soon boarded, leaving the city around 8 am. The tour was awesome. We got to see some of the most beautiful scenery ever, and visited a lot of cool places.

Our route is the red line.

After stopping briefly at a whiskey brewery/cafe in Callander for breakfast, then went on to see Hamish, the famous Highland Cattle of Scotland.

Moooo we're adorable.

We then went on towards Glen Coe. Glen Coe is famous as the ancient home of the MacDonald clan, and for the massacre that took place there in 1692. The MacDonalds were killed by their rival clan, the Campbells, under from King William of England. It's actually a bit more complicated than that, but you can Wikipedia that.

A tiny bit of scenery as we approach Glen Coe. In the background, you can hear our driver telling us the story of the Massacre. (Please forgive the awful camera-work.)

I still can't get over how gorgeous this place is.

Our next stop at the Onich Hotel on Loch Linney. We had a lovely lunch, took some pictures along the Loch, and then continued on to our main attraction, Loch Ness! Loch Ness is mind-bogglingly huge. And deep. On our boat tour that we took, there was a sonar screen that showed what the sea-bed looked like, what fish were where, and the temperature and depth of the water. In some places, the water was as much as 650 ft deep. That is insane. The captain of our boat told us that the water is so cold that, if you fell in, you'd be dead in about 40 seconds. Needless to say, we all kept well away from the rails.

Our boat captain explaining how the sonar equipment on board works, and how to interpret the data on the screen. For those of you who haven't stopped asking me to post videos of accents I've come across (cough cough Mom).

Unfortunately, none of us ever did spot Nessie (although the captain had some very interesting photographs) and we had to leave Loch Ness pretty much as soon as the boat returned to the dock. So, we carried on to Glen Spean, alongside Loch Laggan, stopping in a lovely stretch of woods to take a quick hike and see a gorgeous waterfall. We got back on the bus and were off again, passing the Dalwhinnie distillery, the highest distillery in Scotland. It's quite good, actually.

NATURE!

Our final stop was the village of Pitlochry, where we really only had a breather, a biscuit, and a quick look round. We clambered back on the bus and headed home, arriving back in Edinburgh around 7:30.

After a long day of touring, we had a great dinner at a classy pub, then headed back to the hostel to crash.

If it's one thing the British know, it's how to make good sandwiches.

And that is day 2 our Edinburgh trip. I kind of summarized a lot of it, but 1) some of the details are a little fuzzy now (my fault, I know) and 2) I didn't want to bore you guys with random trivia. Day 3 will come eventually, but it won't be for a while, as I'm going to Dublin tomorrow! So, I will see you all in a few days, and hopefully this time I'll be more punctual telling you about it.

Cheers xx