That *is* how you make porridge!
I think my last post mentioned I was going to jump on a little pub crawl then get up nice and early for a day tour. Well, thats half right. I jumped on a pub crawl, get back to the hostel after all the pubs closed (around 3am), then got back to the hostel and ended up in the kitchen with the rest of my room drinking wine til 6am.... when I had to wake up to go on my day tour to loch ness!!
So crawling out of the hostel I made a bee-line to Starbucks, one grande latte later and I was raring to go! The tour left Edinburgh and headed up past Hamish the highland cow, through Glencoe past the three sisters and up to Loch Ness where we had a nice stroll around Castle Urquhart, keeping an eye on the loch at all times in case Nessie popped up. This was followed by a nice cruise up the loch to Inverness - it was a perfect sunny day for the cruise. Unfortunately, no Nessie.
Back on the bus and round the corner and there she was.... in front of a BP service station... NESSIE!!! Well, a fibreglass model of her. Good enough! So a long drive back to Edinburgh and into my bunk for an early night.
Yesterday I had to complete a childhood quest, to see if there really was a Perth, Scotland. So down to the train station and off to Perth! Off the train, not a soul in sight... around the corner, no traffic - an uncanny resemblence to Perth, Australia! So I spent a few hours in sleepy Perth before returning to Edinburgh for a ghost tour that night. So with an hour or so to kill before the ghost tour we attached ourselves to the pub crawl and crawled our way up to Mercat Cross for our tour.
Under the streets of Edinburgh and into the graveyards we strolled, entertained by our leader Black Agnes. A good tour that included a few frights in the darkness under the city and Black Agnes demostrating "Burking" on me... then giving me a lift by saying that I would have fetched about 12 pounds at the medical college for my corpse! "Aye, yooo arrr a fayne specimen!"
So up this morning for a big scottish breakkie and a stroll around the city before I jump onto a train back to London. My "restful" weekend in Scotland was heaps of fun, it is a really fun country - could have done with a little more sleep, but the "live when you're alive and sleep when you're dead!" line keeps coming up! I am only a little disappointed I didn't come a few weeks later when the Edinburgh festival is on. Or at least stay one more night to see Westlife!
