Scotland, learning to drive, and Jessie says “hi” to Nessie.

We decided that we’d like to see Scotland, not the big city Scotland, but the rural, countryside type living Scotland when you think of sheep, rolling hills, wool, sheep, home made cooking, hidden castles and …did I mention sheep? Anyway, I won’t get into the logistics of booking such a trip, but I will say that it took a good two full days of research and planning, plus making the dreaded decision that renting a car would be the best choice.
We flew into Edinburgh from London and stayed one night there. We arrived pretty late in the evening and took a taxi to our hotel. Apparently, our hotel was located directly across the street from a sports arena and there was a big televised game going on that evening. Add the fact that there is a bar on the grounds and a full scale barbeque outside and you get lots and lots of people. We had to press trough the crowd with our luggage and check in amongst the crowd. It was a warm Scottish welcome of sorts.

We ate dinner at the hotel, I tried haggis and Jess had some kind of Scottish fish. I asked the waitress if the fish was a local fish, and she said “No sir, it’s served all over Scotland.” Well that answers everything. The haggis wasn’t disgusting as one might think, and wasn’t served as a “sausage”, but a casserole mound. As long as you don’t think of what’s in it, it tastes like a meaty-oatmeal with tasty (not salty) flavoring. Albeit, the restaurant was a nice joint, so I probably had the best haggis one could try.

We caught a bus into downtown Edinburgh. It had been raining, so the windows on the bus were completely fogged up and difficult to see out of. It was sprinkling all night, and was a bit chilly, but it made everything shiny and beautiful, and there was hardly anybody around. We walked up the royal mile, and admired the architecture, the castle on the hill, and peeked into shop windows. The royal mile is known for violent, heathenistic practices including ruthless public executions, witch hunts, and torture. There were multiple meeting points for nightly ghost tours that people were beginning to line up for. We thought about doing one, but decided to stop in for a pint and just explore on our own. The place we stopped in on was called “Deacon Brodies” one of the oldest and best kept-up pubs in Edinburgh. Deacon Brodie was a man with dual personalities, and was the influence behind “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”. He was a noble clergyman by day, and a ruthless, murderous thief by night. He was also born in the spot where the pub stands, and was hanged only a few feet from it as well. What are the odds eh? The pub had a nice selection of dark Scottish brews, and friendly talkative locals hanging out there. There was also a Brodie display in the back that had a chilling special effect.



The closer we got to the castle the creepier everything started getting. It was dark, rainy, and the street lights were scarce. You’d pass up freaky looking sculptures and carvings (I even saw a pentagram in the wall!) and these dark, dank alleys behind the ancient buildings. I remember that the area was a terrible spot for the Black Plague, and people were living in filth and dead bodies, with only half of them surviving. I had that in the back of my head the entire time. I never felt threatened, just felt a lurking tone in the pit of my stomach.



True story: we walked the road to the entrance of Edinburgh castle (closed of course). There was construction on the road going on, so there were workers and machinery in the area. Jess and I both heard the faint sound of bagpipes playing where we were standing. There were no shops around, no street performers, just us, the castle, the workers and the dark rainy night. We asked two of the construction workers if they heard the bagpipes as they walked by, and neither could. One even said that there was nothing around, and that we were hearing things, but there was a park down the road with occasional performers during the day. We both heard it, and I even recorded video with my camera. I played it back later, and we heard nothing. I read in the paper a few days later, that those construction workers uncovered a lost underground tunnel, complete with an iron ticket booth dating back to the iron ages. The tunnels are currently being explored to see how deep they go, and who knows what they’ll find next. Maybe the bagpipes were the haunted ghost of the dead bagpiper playing in the dark corridors! Or not.



We took a train from Edinburgh to a town called Inverness, which is the largest city of the highlands. The trip was beautiful as we passed through rolling hills, rocky cliffs, through streams and over lakes passing cottages and small industrial areas. We had a lay over at a station called Perth which was a very quaint and beautifully built station. After arriving in Inverness, we rented a car. Now I called ahead about making sure that you don’t need any kind of “International Driver’s Permit” to rent/drive a car in the UK as an American, and they said it was fine without one. The permit is a recommendation for the chance you might get pulled over by the police, but something called “International Driver’s License” is nothing but a scam. There is no such thing, but you will see it offered everywhere online > enter credit card # here <.


Renting a vehicle was surprisingly easy. All they needed was a driver’s license proving you were over 25, and a credit card. I inspected the vehicle for scratches, etc and we were on our way. So, there I was with a car rented in my name, sitting on the right side behind the wheel, having never driven on the left side of the road in my life, and a trip that will last over an hour ahead of us. There was no other option but to jump head first into it, and be really careful. Everything is flipped. The width of the car stretches to the left of you, left hand turns are protected, you must yield for right hand turns etc so on.

At first, every car that passed me freaked me out. Plus getting out of town using the “round-abouts” instead of street lights was weird and unnerving. Luckily the drive to our destination was mostly a long straight highway, perfect for a driver learning to adapt. The highway ran alongside the Loch Ness and the day was bright and clear.



Just off the road along the way was the Urquhart castle, one of the most strategically and beautifully located strongholds in all of Scotland. It’s a far tourist destination for most, because of its rural location on cliffs of the Loch Ness away from town, but it is known for its picturesque beauty and still draws a crowd. In the late 1600s the castle was attacked during the night while it was ill equipped with men, so the keepers loaded key areas with gunpowder kegs and blew it up so the enemy couldn’t use the castle for a safe hold. It is now a ruined castle, but areas of it still stand unharmed so you can walk through it. The fact that it is ruined actually adds coolness, and is surreal in person to see. There are still huge chunks of castle skewn about the area from where they fell from the sky via the explosion.








We stayed in the town called Fort Augustus, a town of very small population at the southernmost point of the Loch Ness. The town’s livelihood is reliant on whatever tourism it gets, and nearly disappeared in the eighties because of a lull in tourists. It’s still there with two hotels, a church, a few restaurants and a couple gift shops. All of this is located around a small canal. We stayed at a bed and breakfast accommodated by a lovely older Scottish couple who cooked a mean breakfast with fresh heavy farm eggs and thick cut bacon and mushrooms. They also had goats that enjoyed being pet. While researching the town online, I found a tourism info page claiming that “there are so many places to eat in Fort Augustus; you can eat at a different restaurant for an entire week!” Ha ha, impressive! We spent an entire day soaking in the quaint prettiness of the town lounging about and talking with locals and checking out the fun Scottish Nessie shops.








One day we hopped in the car to go on a small road trip to the other side of the lake to do some more exploring. The road went through countryside and rural hills, and was only one lane most of the time. Sometimes I’d approach a farm truck full of sheep or a little beat up buggy coming the opposite direction. One of the vehicles has to pull off the road, into the weeds for the other to pass. They would wave, but then stare at us wondering where the heck we came from, considering our rented 2006 car probably looked like some kind of a spaceship way out there. The area was completely undeveloped and probably unexplored as we drove along the tiny thin little road, barely paved. I also had to be careful for sheep in the road, as they would be grazing along the path, and I would have to slow down making sure not to hit them.



First stop was a whiskey distillery called Tomatin, a Scotch whiskey recommended by the guy who rented us the car (he looked like he drank mucho whisky, too). The distillery offers a tour of the facilities, as well as an education on whisky creation. Sadly, however, it closed early that day and we missed the tour. I did get some pictures of the place because it’s the real deal and was just cool that we got to see it.


Second stop was the Cawdor Castle, a castle that is still lived in by the same family line for hundreds of years. They opened it up to the public for a few hours a day, as long as the public pays a fee and agrees not to photograph the interior. On the site they had a garden and a magical labyrinth, in which I got lost (in fairy bliss that is). I started singing like David Bowie “It’s only forever.. it’s not long at all.. lost and lonely my love... That’s underground…” Anyways, the interior of the castle was like a fancy mansion rich in family heirlooms and original art collected over the years. They had an original by Salvador Dali and Charles Addams just hanging on the wall. There was also a cool display of French rifles confiscated from a small platoon of soldiers on the property. It’s perty there.







Finally, we visited the site of the battle of Culloden. The battle of Culloden was the most modern and one of the most bloody battles in Scottish history. It was the final stand of the Jacobite Clan- men army fighting the British forces for power in the late 1700s. The Jacobites gathered clan-men from most of the clans in Scotland, in the field and waged war despite being outnumbered by the Brits by over 500 men. The day was cold, and sleet blew in their faces, as the British army relentlessly attacked using newly invented grapeshot (which spreads cannon fodder when hit, and can actually kill others with their own flying bone) killing three quarters of them in a little over an hour, causing the Jacobites to retreat once and for all. The field still lay the way it did during the battle, marked with flags illustrating the locations of the fighting lines. Burial mounds are placed around the battlefield marked with headstones showing the names of the clans the dead were part of. It is legend that heathers (a weed) will not grow from the mounds. I saw not a weed sprout from those graves. It was an eerie experience to stand on the ground where so many men were quickly slaughtered in an area unchanged since that day.



We took a boat tour of the Loch Ness. The boat went out to the middle of the lake, and it was pretty cold. The monster was definitely hiding that day, but I’ll tell you what; there is something definitely weird about that lake. It’s kinda like when you go out to the desert and you know you’re walking distance from Area 51 and something weird is afoot; that’s the kind of feeling you get out there on the lake. You see things in the water, like unexplainable lines in the middle of the lake that don’t move, or sights of large dark things swimming deep under and you feel that the lake isn’t any old lake. They had a really cool sonar machine that showed everything under the boat as if the lake was dry, so you could sit down below in the warm staring at a screen hoping to see a long necked beast. There are huge fish down there, fresh water fish that are good to eat, and are the size of tuna but hard to catch. Commercial fishing isn’t allowed, so good luck. The lake is huge, the biggest Lake in Scotland, and I’m just saying, it’s mysterious. It was very pretty that day too.