Scotland!

I have not updated this thing nearly as much as I had planned. One update per week is pretty weak. My apologies.

Anyway, here is the Scotland update as promised.

For memorial day weekend Matt, Stavros and I took a roadtrip / castle tour through Scotland and it was awesome.

The first night we stayed in a bed and breakfast in the Speyside area of the Scottish highlands. This is where all the popular scotch distilleries are located. It was a long drive from Durham to where we stayed, but Scotland was much more scenic than anticipated. We made several stops along the way at a couple castles, loch ness, as well as some scenic outlooks. I'm not sure my pictures are going to do justice to the mystic vibe of Scotland I enjoyed so much. The bed and breakfast was great - we were all enjoying relaxing, drinking some scotch, and most importantly - not working.

At one point, Stavros and I were ordering a drink at their bar when I noticed what looked like an Emmy statue. The owner of the B&B had won this several years ago and kept it behind the bar. I asked if we could hold it, and surprisingly the bartender had no problem with it. I guess I can check 'Holding an Emmy' off my bucket list now.

The next day we tried to tour a scotch distillery but arrived too late. Instead, we bought a bunch of scotch to take back to the states and headed on our way. Matt had created an ambitious itinerary, so although missing the tour was dissapointing, it gave us a little bit of slack to relax and enjoy the drive. We drove up to main city in the highlands - Inverness, en route to a place called the Isle of Sky. The Isle of Sky is supposed to be one of the more scenic areas of Scotland but unfortunately it started raining when we got there, so visibility was significantly reduced. From Isle of Sky we parked the car on a ferry and took a mini-boat trip back to the mainland. The drive from this point on the mainland to Edinburgh was by far the most scenic. My favorite picture from the trip was taken at this weird column structure that overlooked some hills and a lake.

After about 8 hours of driving we made it into Edinburgh. In England they have a bank holiday the same day as Memorial day, so we were expecting Edinburgh to be fairly active even though it was a Sunday. We were sorely disappointed that we couldn't find any decent, active pubs. After searching for awhile we decided to just go to sleep. The next day the three of us woke up early and did a big walking tour of Edinburgh. The town was much more international than I anticipated. My favorite part of the city was a giant cliff/hill on the outskirts called 'Arthur's Seat'. It takes about ten minutes to walk to the top and you have a perfect view of the entire city.

We left Edinburgh in the afternoon on Monday and returned to Durham much more relaxed than when we had left.

Sorry this post is poorly contsructed and ramble-y. Its early and I'm hungry.