Scotland (Pt 2)

After our road closure, we arrived late at night to Portree, and the next morning we woke up to this beautiful view outside our bedroom window:

Our pink airbnb was straight off a postcard (literally--we saw pictures all over the town with our street on it).  We stayed in an apartment with Mom and Dad.  Early that morning, Dustin and I took a little walk around the cute streets and enjoyed the beautiful scenery.  We wandered upon a little gate with a path and a bench and so we sat down and watched the birds and the bay.  Apparently it was a little yard of a house across the street, and the owner came out and visited with us and let us feed the birds.  He had a lovely thick Scottish accent and was a friendly, weathered old man who had lived there for most of his life.  

We met up with the family and everyone headed further into the Isle of Skye towards what ended up being one of my favorite places in Scotland: The Fairy Glen.

The Fairy Glen was a lovely little hike through green grass covered mounds, with sheep wandering through the paths.  I loved it!

This is about as brave as I get.  I am terrified of heights, but I also hate missing out on any fun thing.  So, I followed the steep path up and took my picture from the top, and I'm glad I did.  It definitely wasn't the highest thing I have climbed, and I mostly felt safe, but there were a few moments of fear.

The view from the top.

So green and beautiful!  Just how I imagined Scotland to be!

From the Fairy Glen we drove on to the Quarang, also one of my favorite places in Scotland.  It was so so beautiful!  Some of the family just stopped at the lookout and then went on to the next stop.  Dustin, Nicole, Matt and I decided to hike the lower trail through the middle of the beauty.  Monica and James decided to hike the upper trail that followed along the top of the cliff, overlooking the beautiful valley.  We all met up about the same time at the end, and then ate a hamburger from the random food truck parked there and then drove on to our next stop.  

We loved all the wandering sheep!

Our next stop was a lookout called Culnacnock.  There were beautiful rock cliffs and a waterfall.  We only stopped for a few minutes and then we drove on to the hike Monica had been looking forward to the most--The Old Man of Storr.

It was a pretty long hike, and so after about 30 minutes of it, we left Monica and James to hike it alone and us and the Craguns drove on to Dunvegan Castle, where my parents and Chad and Val had gone.  (The Haggerty's and Hanchetts had gone back to Portree to grab Jim after the Fairy Glen, so they were trailing along our path, but a little behind us).  We felt bad about missing out on the best views of the Old Man of Storr, but we also didn't want to miss out on Dunvegan.  So we had Monica share her great pictures with us.

Dunvegan was a cool castle and had some pretty gardens to wander around.

That night we arrived back at Portree and found a yummy Japanese Restaurant to eat at, with my parents and Chad and Val.  Chad and Val were driver's of their car, and we were the driver's of ours, so we hadn't had a chance to really visit with them until dinner.  It was nice to finally have some time to talk with them!

We found a few other family members wandering Portree, so we wandered with them.

The view from our Airbnb at night:

The view from our Airbnb in the morning:

The next morning we checked out of Portree and headed toward our next hike called the Fairy Pools.  We had to make a quick stop to dunk our faces in the river and receive eternal beauty at the Carbost Bridge, which, obviously, we all did.

At least my chin and nose are eternally beautiful...  It was so cold and I had already done my makeup!

There is no denying that Dustin's whole face should be eternally beautiful now!

The Fairy Pools hike was pretty.  We got to watch some shepherds herding in their sheep using their dogs and that was fun to watch.  James also did another ice bath.  He's crazy about ice cold water!

A huge item on my Scotland bucket list was seeing these beauties (you know they have dipped in the enchanted waters).  We finally found some Heeland Coos! (Highland Cows, for those of you who don't speak Scottish)  They were in a corral along the road and so we stopped and took pictures and petted them for a few minutes.  We did have to admit that on our re-entry form back into the United States because I had definitely come into contact with livestock.  Whoops!  How could I resist!

We stopped and toured Eilean Donan (in the day this time).  It was beautiful!

Another view from the online camera, taken by a family member back home.

One of these things is not like the other...

Our Scottish lunch at the café at Eilean Donan.

The next stop, and by far the coldest place we visited was Urquhart Castle.  It is right on the shores of Loch Ness and the wind off the lake was freezing!

My parents were troopers on this whole trip!  They are 75 and 78 years old, and they totally kept up with all of us young whipper snappers in our 40's! (and a couple of us in our 50's).  I was so proud of them!  They knew their limits and stopped to rest as needed, and avoided certain hikes, but overall, they pushed through a very busy schedule and seemed to enjoy it!

We left Urquhart Castle and had my parents in our car and as we were driving through the little town along Loch Ness, we passed the Loch Ness Center and my mom wistfully mentioned that she had always wished she had been able to go to there when they had come to Scotland 13 years earlier.  So, we made an impromptu decision to ditch everyone else and hurry and stop and take the last tour of the day.  It was fun!  We learned all about the legend of Nessie and got some cool souvenir photos, to boot!  And now my mom won't ever have to go back to Scotland because she's seen everything! 

We arrived at dinner a little later than everyone else, but still had plenty of time to enjoy a pot pie and the most delicious sticky toffee pudding of all the others we had tried. 

Matching t-shirt pictures that night and then games and Chat GPT around the table for our final night together.  We got up early and said goodbye to everyone the next morning and they all flew back to their homes while Dustin and I had one more day in lovely Scotland.

We felt grateful that we ended up with an extra day so that we could circle back and see most of the things that we had missed at the beginning of the week because of our flight delays.  We threw in a couple of extra things (because it is a little faster to travel with two people than it is traveling with 14!).  The first was the Sueno's Stone.  It was carved over 1200 years ago!

There were fields and fields of beautiful daffodils all along our drive.

We stopped next at the Elgin Cathedral.  It was the second largest cathedral in Scotland.  We really enjoyed this one!

We made another important stop at a Harry Gow for a couple of yummy donuts and a quiche for brunch.

We stopped at Dunnottar next and loved this castle!  The setting was amazing, as the castle was built right on the cliff and there were stairs leading down the hill and then back up to the fortress.  It was beautiful!

We continued to follow the plan from the week before and ate at the same fish and chips restaurant in Stonehaven that my family had.  It was so good!

More beautiful flowers.

My family had checked with both of these castles to see if we could use our tickets the next week since our flight was delayed, and the ticket booth workers had both told them we could.  That made it very easy when showed up.  We just explained what had happened, and the people let us right in.  At the Glamis Castle, the man even told us that he was expecting us!  He had been the one that my family had talked to the week before.  That was so nice of them and made it much less stressful for us.

The long path toward Glamis Castle, the castle where the Queen Mother, Queen Elizabeth, was born and raised.

We were the final tour of the day, and the only ones in our group, so we got our own private tour of the castle.  It was a fun castle!  I was glad we were able to see it.

The grounds were large and we walked all around them and got lost trying to get back to the parking lot.  But don't worry, we eventually figured it out.

More hairy cows.

We made another extra stop just before dark at Carrbridge to see a bridge built in 1717.  We got to Inverness pretty late and hadn't eaten dinner, so we drove into town and walked through a lot of drunk people to finally find a restaurant still open.  We ordered our pizza (we could have chosen pizza or curry at this restaurant) and ate it in our car in the parking lot of our Bed and Breakfast.  Then we quietly went in and went to bed, exhausted.

Our bed and breakfast.  The host was super friendly and we had fun visiting with her the next morning while we ate a delicious traditional Scottish breakfast.  And then we hurried to the airport and made our flight just in time!  We had nothing too exciting (thankfully) on our flights home, and they didn't even ask about my contact with the Highland Cows...

It was such an amazing trip and we loved being able to share it with all of my siblings and parents!  It was so fun to experience our Mother Land with them for the first time!  By the end, we were all pretty good at our Scottish accents (at least, we thought we were) and felt very connected to our ancestors and grateful for the heritage we have!