The Tour Begins

Wednesday April 19, 2006

Today I woke up and paid for breakfast in the hostel. That kinda sucked having to pay extra for breakfast but at least it was pretty decent. I had all my bags packed and ready to go so I could check in at the tour place by 8:15. I checked out of the hostel and was on my way at 8:05. The tour company I signed up with is on the royal mile which is just one street up from where I stayed at so it should have been easy to find… notice how I said should? Oh yeah that’s right. Ashley is at it again- proving she sucks at finding her way around cities. Ok for some reason I got on another street that I thought was the royal mile. Well it wasn’t so I had to turn back. When I did reach the correct street I went the opposite way. I got to the end of it and realized oh shit its got to be the other direction. Hey its not like I had solid directions to this place. All I knew is that is was on this street. So I turned around and headed back the other way. I guess you could say I had a lovely sense of dejavu again because at this time it was 8:25. I was supposed to be there at 8:15! Yikes!! So yet again I experienced ‘the- oh shit what if they already left?’ like I did with Ireland. I finally came upon it though at 8:35 and was fortunate to just make it there with about 2 minutes to spare! Chyeah that was a miracle. Big relief number two on this vacation. So it’s a fairly small group like 20 people on a medium small bus. We headed out through Edinburgh where we saw the Scot monument- largest monument dedicated to a writer- Walter Scot? Then outside of the city a ways we passed the field where the battle of Bannockburn took place. Very cool! Your history lesson for the day- The Scottish actually won a battle here against the English. Very big event for them. Then we went into sterling and saw the Wallace Monument.

It happens to be the largest monument dedicated to a person or so the tour guide said. (To William Wallace… Braveheart anyone?) Oh and we got to rip the movie to shreds all day because it is so horribly inaccurate historically speaking. You know that near the Wallace Monument someone made a statue of Mel Gibson as William Wallace? How strange/stupid is that?? But all in all I still love that movie anyways. :P We kept driving and we passed Doune Castle. Any Monty Python and the Holy Grail fans out there? This is the castle where they are throwing animals over the walls. Pretty cool huh? Well as it turned out I saw a lot of places today where movies were filmed. And who could blame them? Scotland is so amazingly beautiful you could just about be in tears. Course it helps if you have been mountain deprived for 3 months. ;) Hehehe. Our next stop was to see Hamish the cow.

The typical Scottish Highland cow (or highland Coo). Very big and furry with horns. Incidentally the horns are used to make Viagra which is the number one over the counter drug in Scotland. I’ve just got all sorts of random crap to tell you don’t I? : ) Next up was Glencoe Valley- increadibly beautiful of course. They filmed part of the movie highlander here. We continued driving some more and stopped somewhere to have a short 30 minute hike. More amazing scenery of course. We continued on and stopped at a place where we got some free whiskey. Well really it was just tiny sips in little plastic cups so we could sample. Some were ok but I wasn’t too fond of a few of them. Our final stop of the day was at Eilean Donan Castle. This castle has a fascinatingly true story behind it supposivly. It was destroyed a long time ago and then a few hundred years ago they rebuilt the castle on the same site. No one knew what the original castle looked like though but the guy who built it had a dream of what it looked like. He built it that way and the blueprints for the original surfaced many many years later. As it turns out they match by like 95%. The guide claims this is true… but ya know… who knows. And like everything in Scotland there were a few films made here as well. I think one of them was one of the 007 movies. The castle also had a lot of significance in its earlier years because of its location near the sea. Anyhoo we kept on to the Isle of Skye where we are spending the night at a hostel. We are staying in a small town right at the edge of the Isle of Skye- Kyleackin or something like that. All I know is that it reminds me of Madagascar when the zebra says that’s krack a lakin. :P Yes I’m a dork. Don’t mind me! Hehehe. Well the city is small and there isn’t much to do here. Our hostel has a bar downstairs so we all kind of hung out there. Later a band came in and was playing some traditional Scottish music- very good by the way! Ok well that was today but before I go ill give you a little language cource. Did ya know that in Scotland a lack is a ‘loch’ and a mountain is a ‘ben’? There are also a great deal many more things that have different names here. Oh and another did ya know for you- as you might have noticed I have used a ‘ instead of a “. Did ya know that that’s what the British use instead? Ooo interesting no? Ok- that’s it. Love ya all! Ta!