Scottish Highlands

This past weekend I took a trip back up to Scotland to go on a Highlands tour of the country. My friend Laura ( from Newcastle) met me up there and we stayed in Edinburgh with my friend Mike (a friend from UCSB) who is studying abroad up there. Laura had never been up to Scotland so on Friday I showed her around the city. Saturday morning we left Edinburgh and headed up to Glencoe (glen in Gaelic means "valley) which is an area of Scotland that was home to the Macdonald clan back in the era of clans. We then headed north to Fort William which was named after William of Orange. Then the most famous stop....LOCH NESS. The water there is really dark because the bottom of the lochs are covered with peat. Loch Ness is not the biggest loch but it is about 24 miles long, 1 mile across and 600 feet deep. Loch in the native tongue of Gaelic means "lake". We continued north and spent the night in Inverness which sits on the river Ness just north of Loch Ness. There we tried some Haggis (a traditional scottish meal made of the heart, liver and lungs of a sheep mushed together with oatmeal and onions...kind of tastes like meatloaf) and we also tried some local Scottish Whiskey. Laura and i could barely get our small glass down..that is some tough stuff! Mike on the other hand is an old pro these days! I think i will be passing on whiskey in the future. The next morning we headed south stopping in Fort Agustus, Drumnadrochit, Pitlochry (which is a small Victorian town) and eventually ending back down in Edinburgh.

http://s494.photobucket.com/albums/rr304/stacey_conrad/Scotland/?albumview=grid&fullsize=IMG_1520.jpg