You've Un-Loched My Heart [Scotland 2017]

We'd originally added Scotland to our itinerary to check another country off our list and to unwind after days galavanting through England and France.  A couple of laid back days in Europe before heading back to our real lives in the States. Scotland ended up surprising the heck out of us.

We signed up for a day tour to the Scottish highlands. Holy. Freakin'. Cow. It was gorgeous. It was a little bit foggy and a little bit rainy the entire time, which just screamed Scotland. I even listened to Scotland The Brave (aka, the one bagpipe song that everyone would recognize multiple times. 

Everything was so GREEN. I felt like it was perpetually St. Patricks Day.

The whole point of the Scottish Highlands tour was actually to go to Loch Ness and do a tour in hopes of seeing Nessie. We stopped in the town of Fort Augustus, where we boarded a boat that took us out onto the lake. A little piece of trivia-- 'loch' actually means lake, so it's literally called Lake Ness.

The tour was incredibly informative and the tour guide was very entertaining. We looked at sonar to see the differences in depths of the lake, learned fun facts about the surrounding villages, and kept our eyes peeled for Nessie. Another piece of trivia-- Loch Ness is actually very, very deep. There's more water in Loch Ness than in all of the lakes and rivers in both England and Wales combined. It's also very dark with low visibility due to a high concentration of peat in the water. 

Unfortunately, Nessie was ever elusive and we were unable to catch a glimpse of her this time. We boarded the bus back to Edinburgh where we wandered around the cobblestone streets, grabbed some dinner, and did a little shopping. Including a super soft Scottish blanket and Scottish gloves that I'm obsessed with.

We didn't have any plans for the follow day except "see Edinburgh". We bought tickets to tour Edinburgh Castle and, as most historical tours, some parts were amazing and informative and I could have stayed all day and others parts were a bit forgettable. The views though? They were definitely NOT forgettable. 

The view of the city from Edinburgh Castle

After touring the castle, we continued our self-led walking tour. Mostly to shops where I could buy pictures of the Scottish Highland cows (they're just SO adorable!), to somewhere we were could eat, and to The Elephant House which is where JK Rowling wrote sat to write some of the Harry Potter books. There wasn't any Harry Potter memorabilia or anything, we'd seen all that in London, but it was still a quirky little stop. 

We rounded out our Edinburgh tour by talking the long, windy walk up to Calton Hill for some more castle views. We got in a bit of exercise before our long flights home and had more amazing views of the city-- a city that I never expected to love.