It t
ook a while to get there, many hours of sleeping, sitting and wandering around airports before we finally made it to Manchester. May have been worth the wait since we were able to score First Class seats from Atlanta to Manchester......Yep, that really is Ellie in a eye mask...comfy eh?We started our adventure by landing in Manchester and catching a train to Edinburgh, Scotland, then a bus and a short walk to our first B&B - The Gil Dun Guest House......pretty sure we didn't fit the age bracket for staying there, but it was relatively inexpensive and free breakfast.
Scotland:
Day 1 - Edinburgh
We caught a bus to the center of town and made our way up to Edinburgh Castle. We toured the castle and tried to stay outta the rain. A pretty magnificent view fr
om the top. After pictures and wandering around the grounds of the castle, we headed down the Royal Mile to Holyrood Park, the Parliament building and since the sky cleared for a bit we took a stab at climbing to King Arthur's Seat. We didn't quite make it to the top due to the rain starting up again, but it had a grand view of the city as well. After all our walking we were looking for a good place to eat.....we ended up at Karen
Wong's, a Chinese restaurant that the Gil Dun recommended.Day 2 - The Highlands
This was an interesting day since we decided to rent a car and drive the Highlands. Really, I am not sure what car rental places are thinking when they hand over keys to foreign drivers. They should have some sort of simulator like drivers ed so one can get the hang of driving on the other side of the road. Probably should have paid the extra money and just rented the automatic rather than a manual. It took me a bit to get the hang of drivin
g with the right hand and shifting with the left....that or 2nd and 4th gear kept changing places....it's alright though cause I think I only turned into oncoming traffic like twice and we didn't ever go off the road, just some curbage and the rental car company didn't charge me for any damage so no harm done....and I don't think Ellie has any psychological damage due to my driving.....We made our way up to Stirling Castle.....the round abouts are a bit of a killer, good thing
you can just circle around a
nd around until you decide which direction you need to go.We made it to Glengary Castle where we stayed the night in the Highlands. Fabulous estate t
o walk around complete with dock, sheep, and cattle moo-ing in the distance. Hungry after a stressful day of driving we went to The Bothy, in which I had a steak pie....like a deconstructed pot pie with Scottish beef...pretty tasty.Day 3 - Highlands cont..
Spent the day driving the Highlands again...narrow roads, fast cars and big trucks coming right at ya made me squirm while Ellie squealed with delight....yeah lots of fun....We hit up the Lochness Castle - Urquhart Castle officially, we just looked at it from a distance after we found spots in the hedges to look through. Looked like a fantastic castle very green and right on the cliff.
Dunnottar Castle was also fantastic as it right on a cliff as
well, but qui
te the trek to get there. Ellie had fun prancing through the grounds and through my pics....I was even bribed to prance to for an apple pie, but just couldn't do it. I did however make a wish in a well, but probably wouldn't come true since I only used a 2 pence that we determined didn't have much worth. On our way back to Edinburgh we stopped off for some Fish and Chips, excellent!Other than yelling sheep when we saw sheep, the other thing I like were the big
hairy cows AND the road signs!
1 comment:
Hey friend! It was so cool to read all about your trip. I feel lucky to have gotten to hear all about it in person too. You are pretty sneaky once again putting this post back in October so it doesn't show up on my sidebar. That's ok though, I'll eventually find it. I'm glad you still blog. Would love to see more posts.
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