This was taken from on top of this monument which you can climb internally, through a mess of windy stairs and corridors so slim i had to turn sideways to get through. The view of the city was worth it though.As you can see below if you blow up the picture, the castle is set on a cliff in the middle of the city. It looks really amazing but was hard to capture the view in a photo since its so high and large, but you can see the bottom of the castle is well above the heights of the buildings around it, to give you some idea of the size of the cliffs.
The back side of edinburgh castle.
Haggis.. its sheep's liver, lungs, & heart mixed with some veggies and then boiled in a sheeps stomach. Sounds awful, but tastes good. I still wasn't able to eat more than 1 bite knowing what it is, and the look of it doesn't help much.. it does look like minced organs. Megan was more open minded and ate it for breakfast a couple days and here at this shop.
A view of Edinburgh from the castle, looking out over the forth.
We took a bus tour and cruise to and into the sea inlet and under the famous firth of forth bridge, which was designed to never break after a previous bridge failed. Also this country is home to where the expression 'botched' comes from, as an engineer named Botch had a bridge fail too. Here is the firth of forth:
Some seals in the waterway, they were really curious to see us.
Some shots of Loch Ness.. one of many many lochs we drove by in the highlands. No monsters spotted.
We travelled to the isle of skye. The small town we stayed in had 2 bars/restraunts. You know that anyone you want to see is either in one or the other because there is literally nothing else in the town to do other than walk around. I think the population was 800. We made some various stops in small towns and scenic areas, and our main stop was at this mountain that we climbed. It was a more intense hike than any of us thought it would be, and again it was hard to really capture the scale of the mountain or scenery in pictures. Sheep ate and walked around the highest and most dangerous parts of the mountain like it was no problem.
This shirt is horrible, i bought disposable 5 euro outfits and just threw them away each day after trekking through the mud & grim. Unfortunately i wore my ugliest shirt on the day i was 'volunteered' to be the model for the tour group for how to wear an old style kilt, which was really a blanket folded up in really exact ways for certain purposes like carrying deer or weapons or keeping hands warm. It really looked nothing like what you think of when you see modern kilts.. it reminded me more of a beefed up roman tunic, but plaid.
This is, if i remember right, a 160 foot tall stone at the top of the mountain. It felt really massive, and we hiked up to it and sat under it for lunch. if you blow up this picture you can see people standing under it... but they are specs at the mini size!
A view from sitting under the rock at the top.
The northern tip of the isle of skye.
Fairy Glenn
I spent about 15 minutes chasing a pair of sheep around, but wasn't able to catch them. At one point i scared them and they charged at megan but diverted as they got scared by her too, and went away.
The castle where the hylander was filmed.
A valley we walked through where once the entire macdonald clan was slaughtered by the campbells. The local pub in the nearest town has a sign that says "No dogs, No campbells".
This weekend i think we are heading down to kerry and off the cost to an island where there are neolithic housings, but we are packing the day after to leave so i probably won't get pics up. There are a ton more pictures i'd like to put up, we had this squirrel who liked to eat out of my hand and followed us around, more kilt pictures and a million countryside shots... but in a few days we are heading back home. So this is probably the end. I hope you enjoyed it!
EDIT: and megan finally gave me her pics, so here are a couple more.
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