Scottish Highlands

This is the area I was so excited to see. You can't read Sir Walter Scott and not want to see the Highlands. Unfortunately, a lot of other people want to see the Highlands, too, and the area was extremely touristy. But however many fake "Working Woolen Mills!" you pass on the road, you can't deny the natural beauty of the area. I thought this was the most beautiful part of the trip, though Wales was definitely pretty too. We rented a car for this part of the trip (and Wales), and it was one small car. Which was good, because they have darn small roads over there. Joe did all the driving, since I am manual-impaired, and it wasn't so much driving on the left that gave him stress as it was the giant tour buses suddenly appearing from around a corner coming straight at us on the one-and-a-half lane road at 60 mph.

We saw quite a few castles in this part of the trip, and went for a hike in Glen Coe. We asked a man who pulled up to the parking lot just as we were finishing the hike what the name of the mountain was, and he said "Stobcoirenamlach," which means "peak cirque near lake" in Gaelic. And it was a cirque with a little lake near the summit. We also drove around many of the famous lochs. There's a picture of me on the shores of Loch Ness (no monsters).

We also visited Sweetheart Abbey, which is a ruined abbey and a very cool stop. It's in a little tiny town called New Abbey, though this is the only "new abbey" we could find.

Our first day out of Edinburgh we visited Stirling Castle, which was probably my favorite castle tour. There is a lot of history there. And the sun even came out for part of that day, which was the first half-sunny day we'd had! There's a picture of the statue of Robert the Bruce and the medieval ceiling of the great hall at Stirling.