Loch Ness and the Highlands

Sunday I rode a greyline tour to the Highlands and Loch Ness. The Highlands are simply gorgeous. I had trouble taking photos through the bus windows, so I can't even show you more than a fraction of the beauty I saw, but I've tried. The tour was really fun. The driver was really feisty, and kept complaining about the people on the bus. There were only fourteen people, and the driver told us about five times that he was supposed to take out a 16-seater bus, but some moron parked in front of it, so he had to take the 48-person bus. I was pretty excited about that, because I got to sit all by myself in the front seat. It rained a lot, but it was still a good day. As we were driving through Edinburgh in the morning, we passed George Street. The driver told us that it was named after George III, “The last king of America.” That cracked me up.

I was in the front row! 

Rain!

Normally when I travel alone, there are almost no pictures of me, since I hate to ask people to take my photo. On this trip, I was lucky enough to discover a nice boy from Melbourne traveling alone, so we made a deal to take pictures of each other at each stop. He complimented me on my correct pronunciation of Melbourne, (Mel-burn, not Mel-born), and I felt very worldly and smart. There was also a girl from Germany traveling on the tour, and I was really impressed with her English. The only time I even saw her forget a word was when she forgot the word for carrot, and she said “the orange thing that rabbits eat” so we had no trouble communicating at all. When I mentally compared her English proficiency to my French mumbling, I felt far less worldly and smart. 

After lunch, we got to Loch Ness for a boat tour. The boat had two levels, but I wanted to sit on top to get the best photos. Unfortunately, it was raining on top. About halfway through the tour, I wondered why I cared so much, but I realized that there’s no point in doing anything halfway when I only get to do it once. For the rest of my life I’ll get to remember how I almost froze my toes off at Loch Ness.

The people who didn't have frozen toes

I wish I’d seen Nessie, but sadly, I did not. I don’t think I really believe the monster exists, but if it does, I figured it was unlikely to show itself just because I was on a boat on the lake. I did have a moment of panic when I thought about the Costa Concordia and hoped there were no large rocks in Loch Ness. Based on the air temperature, I’m pretty sure the water was even colder, so I wouldn’t have lasted long in the Loch, even if I didn’t get eaten by Nessie.

Clearly I’m really behind on my blogging, since I’m just now finishing my final post about last weekend, and I’m leaving in about ten minutes for this weekend’s trip. I’ll try to catch up next week. I’m not bringing my laptop with me this weekend. It makes me feel a little bit panicked to go somewhere without my internet connection, but I think that’s all the more reason to leave my laptop at home. So the blog will have to wait.