This is our blog about Scotland. We were lucky enough to visit my sister Natasha and stay with her for 1 week and do a road trip around Scotland for another. Throughout this blog I will use "..." and you should think and read "...shame about the weather and the expensive prices".



We really liked Scotland... It was great to see Natasha and also my folks as we all traveled there for a Yates family reunion. All of us hadn't been together for 2.5 years. We arrived with no bags (see previous posting for that little one) and walked out to buy some spare clothes ...

We went during the month of August which is coincidentally the time of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. All five of us took in some shows, some were good, some were not... Our favorite was probably Jimeoin, an Irish-Australian comedian who makes statements about life. One of those guys but real funny. My personal favourite was the last performance we say. Two Irish guys were just standing at the front doing some improv. Their niche was to get information from the audience and then play a clip of a movie. For instance, Natasha yelled out that I was a lingerie salesman so they dimmed the lights and proceeded to do a voiceover for Braveheart, the rousing scene where William Wallace is riding his horse in front of his men, getting their hearts and minds stirred up for lingerie! This was typical of the night.
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Edinburgh is a fantastic city ... My one grip, apart from the obvious weather and expensive nature, is the food. It is crap. The menu has a few local delicacies on it like Haggis, Nips, and Tatties (Haggis, Turnips and Potatoes) but is very similar to things you would find elsewhere. The price list is almost identical to a US price list. But the pound is twice as much so all food cost us twice the price. I know, I'm whinging now. Our favorite meal was definitely an Indian curry we had up in Nairn. Awesome...


We hired a car and did a road trip around Scotland. We stayed overnight in Stirling and Aberdeen as well as two nights in Nairn, a small town near Inverness. The weather in Stirling was beautiful and the castle was pretty darn cool as well. There are still many holes in the walls and statues from where mortars or bullets have hit during battles and sieges in the past.


Aberdeen was nice... We didn't see the sky whilst we were there and in the morning there was so much low fog that we couldn't see the tops of churches. We ended up at a vodka bar for dinner (because it was offering 2 for 1 drinks and meals!) and we sampled our first vodka salsa on a burger. Two thumbs up from me.


Inverness was also nice ... It didn't rain as much on one of the days so that was a good thing. Nairn, where we stayed was quiant and a nice country town. I watched Scotland and Northern Ireland duke it out in the soccer which was good. Nice to feel the local atmosphere in a pub with locals.



On the way down from Inverness to Stirling, we passed Loch Ness and crossed over the rolling highlands. Some mountains were covered in mist from the low lying clouds but as we drove further south, the weather started to clear up so we then got pockets of clouds only covering half a mountain range or we got the sun streaking through gaps of clouds into a valley. It was quite beautiful.


One of the highlights of the trip was seeing a genuine Scottish Highland COW! Jen was sooo excited when we finally found one. We got pretty darn close to it. It's name was Hamish.

So that's about it for our Scotland experience...