Coos in the Highlands – July 18th, 2009

This morning we had to arise at the crack of dawn again…this time we boarded a bus for a 12 hour bus tour of the Scottish Highlands. I know the fun level of this sounds questionable…but it ended up being one of my favorite things on the trip so far.

We started out just driving, and quickly ended up in the highlands among the lochs. It was seriously the most beautiful countryside I have ever seen in my entire life. Absolutely breathtaking. Huge huge rolling mountains covered in green, with smooth lakes underneath. Really unbelievable.

We made a few stops along the way…the first being to see the “Highland Coo”…the Scottish pronunciation of cow. It’s name was Hammish and it was covered in fur. Haha. Beautiful. Later we stopped for lunch and had some delicious pub food and bought dessert for later on the bus.

We eventually made our way to Loch Ness to search for the Nessie. Yay! We walked around for a bit, then had a boat cruise on the Loch. It was a bit slow, but the scenery was awesome.

Also while driving, I was able to finally finish The Amber Spyglass…it was AWESOME. COMPLETELY AMAZING!!!! Oh my gosh. I’m obsessed. So so so so so good. And it was cool to be where I was while I was reading that. Really awesome experience.

Once we made it back to Edinburgh, some people in the group and I headed off to the restaurant where J.K. Rowling wrote HARRY POTTER!!! It was called The Elephant Café, and it was really really cute. You could see the Edinburgh Castle from the window…so magical. And the food was delicious too, I had crusty bread with a trio of dips. Yum.

Afterwards we headed off to a ghostie tour! It was sooo cool. Our tour guide was unbelievably attractive…mmm…and we got to see all kinds of cool stuff, like where they used to staple peoples’ ears to the door for doing bad things. We also saw a torture museum, which was extremely disgusting. We learned the true meaning of “getting shit-faced”…apparently they used to throw the waste buckets out each night at 10pm, and people would be coming home from the pubs after a few too many drinks and…well, you can guess the rest. The final part was going down into the vaults underneath the city that were originally merchant storehouses but then became slums later on. There was this big deal about this enchanted circle where people would get attacked by spirits…I stepped in the circle. I’m a bit of a skeptic, so I decided to test it. I didn’t get attacked. I’m still alive. Overall, it was a cool tour though because we got to learn a lot about the city and some history. It wasn’t all that scary, but ya know.

We didn’t get back to the hotel until like 12:30, and I immediately showered then went to sleep after a very awesome awesome but exhausting day.