Scotland

Day 1

Going to Scotland was probably one of my most favorite trips by far. Well, besides Spain, but that’s later on!

When we first got on the train headed to Scotland we knew it would be about a 4 hour train ride. =P Luckily, it was early in the mornig and we thought we would be able to get some sleep. But boy were we wrong. We had screaming children in our car as well as Scottish men playing a card game…

When we got to Scotland and walked outside the station, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Huge, green mountains were right in front of me with a cute small town. Now, we weren’t experiencing autumn in London yet, and Scotland…was in PRIME autumn season. It was beautiful. When we were walking out to our bus we see a smaller bus that says, “Wild and Sexy on it.” I turn to Paul and say, “hey how funny would that be if that was our tour bus for the next 3 days?” And surprisingly, that was our bus for the next 3 days. I walked on the bus and the first thing I heard was Mumford & Sons. I am in LOVE with Mumford & Sons. It brought me back to my apartment with my friends always listening to Mumford & Sons. It made me miss them so much.

Our bus took us took around the city, telling us old stories and myths, while people from the outside pointed and laughed at our bus. The tour guide had the thickest accent and it was amazing! I love their accents. He told us that in Edinburgh, which was the town we were in, has more pubs than heads ratio than any European City. He took us around this small lake surrounded by castles and told us a story about how the lake used to be filled with waste during the war. After the war, they drained it and found loads of dead bodies of women in the fetal position. Back then they would throw women in the bodies of water if they were thought to be a witch. If they drowned they were human, if they didn’t they were a witch.

After that we went and roamed around a castle that sits on an old volcano. We weren’t able to have much time there since we had about a 5-hour drive up to our hostel. We were able to watch Brave Heart on the way up though. A few minutes away from our hostel we stopped at the Loch Ness. We learned that Loch in Scotland is lake so there are loads of different Lochs that are named. The Loch Ness is known for the Lochness monster. The loch Ness is actually quite big. Our tour guide said if you were to drain the water and refill the lake with bodies it would take 10 times the human population and that still might not be enough. The deepest part of the lake is 1,000 feet as well.

Loch Ness

Castle on old volcano

Our hostel was really cozy. It had beanbag chairs plaid blankets and fireplaces everywhere. Walking inside the hostel you can smell the fresh pine trees outside and burning wood. When we got settled into our rooms we all went out to a pub near by. I got a typical Scottish dish- steak potpie and a caramel apple pie with ice cream for dessert. It was delicious.

Day 2

The second day we saw a castle that they used for many films such as 007, Highlander, and Man of Honour. The castle is literally just in-between a ton of mountains. It’s so beautiful. After that our tour guide was telling us that the leopard man lives in the town we were in. If you don’t know who leopard man is, he’s in the Guinness book of world records and he tattooed his body to look like a leopard and has yellow eyes and fangs. He told us that he usually lives in a cave, but now he moved to a house.

Castle they used for various films

The tour guide then took us to a small stream that came from a mountain. At this point, it was freezing cold and raining. He told us that if you dunk your head in the stream for 7 seconds you would have everlasting beauty and never age. He then dunked his head in the freezing cold water. A few others in our group did as well, but I was way too cold to dunk my head in freezing cold water. Then we drove some more... up and down mountains until we got to a graveyard. We saw Alexander McQueen’s graveyard. He committed suicide 2 years ago. He also showed us a grave to show us the Scottish sense of humor. There was a grave that had a bolder for the stone and the story is that the guy who died actually was killed by that bolder when he was rock climbing. So the family got the bolder that killed him and it’s now his gravestone. Haha!

Most of the days we drove for long hours and stopped so he could tell stories and to eat lunch. The roads are so small and they weave in and out, up and down mountains and he drives super fast. After a while it was starting to catch up with me. But the view is beautiful. There was always nothing but mountains, streams, lochs and sheep everywhere. We actually saw a sheep that was stuck in a guardrail, it was quite sad.

We got to our hostel early that day sadly. We had so much time to spare and our hostel was the local pub, local restaurant and local hostel. So there was pretty much nothing else to do but stay at our hostel, since it was everything in town. That night the pub was having a Halloween party so by the end of the night there were a bunch of drunken people dressed up in Halloween costumes. We even saw a guy dressed up in sparkle hair with boobs coming out of his shirt. He was a riot! He would dance and sing to every song, but he was also a little creepy…

 Day 3

Our tour guide drove us up to the highland coast where their old prime minister “committed suicide”. The story is that he got murdered from the government because he leaked out some important information and the government had him killed. They found his body in his car on a mountain and a gun 100km from his body. But the government told everyone that he committed suicide and that he was upset and killed himself because he was gay and didn’t want to come out of the closet. But if he committed suicide, that means that he would have had to shoot himself in the back of the head twice where the gun was found, hide the gun under the bristles, walk to his car and lock himself in. It was an interesting story.

We got to see a river that is the shape of Scotland, which was pretty neat to see as well. We learned about Commandos during the war during the 1700s and where the phrase “going commando” comes from. The Commandos were often frightened when a bomb went off right near them, so they would often accidentally relieve themselves, and they would have to take off their underwear and continue on with the war.

Our tour guide also told us a story about Liem Neeson when he came to Scotland to shoot a film. He stayed in a bed and breakfast and rented out his own truck, so after a film shoot he was driving back to his bred and breakfast and hit a cat that was in the road. He looked through his rearview mirror and saw that the cat was still breathing. He then got out of his truck, took a tire iron out of his trunk, and sacked the cat in the head with the tire iron. A lady then comes out and says, “You killed me cat.” And Liem explains the story and she says, “No, the cat on the street isn’t mine, the cat underneath your car is.” He ended up killed two cats.

On the way back to Edinburgh to catch our train, we stopped in a small, home owned restaurant. I had the best chili ever there. It reminded me so much of home. We also saw the two schools where J.K Rowling got her inspiration from to make Harry Potter, the Harry Potter bridge and the castle they used for Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It was also cool to see the William Wallace monument. They actually have a statue of William Wallace, but since they didn’t know what he looked like, they just made William look like Mel Gibson. The statue got vandalized so much that they had to finally put a cage over it and then they realized that this is supposed to be a statue about freedom, so they took it down. Our tour guide actually told us that in the film Brave Heart, when William is being tortured, it really wasn’t that simple. The torture process was usually 14 hours and they would cut his guts and burn them in front of him. They would also chop off his genitals and shove it down his throat, that’s how gruesome they were.

Castle used for Monty Python

After that, it was back to London. The train ride back was absolute torture. I was in the bus all day, weaving in and out and I just felt beyond car sick. Hopefully, I didn’t get sick, but I had to keep playing music to get my mind off of the movement.

Scotland was such a wonderful trip. It is so beautiful and I definitely would love to go back again.