Epic Grad Trip: Inverness

During our trip, I kept treating train stations like airports, which they are not. You really don't have to arrive very much ahead of time to catch a train, and especially not when you travel on passes like we did which were good pretty much for any train. So, we spent more time than was strictly necessary in train stations. Which was fine. As we were leaving Edinburgh though, the train to Inverness kept not having a platform. And not having a platform. And not having a platform. We spent a good 20 minutes staring at this board waiting for our train to have a platform, along with all these other people.

It started to seem like the train would be really, really delayed. Or cancelled! And we would have to live the rest of our lives in the Edinburgh station. But just before the train was scheduled to leave, we got a platform, got on the train, and departed not 10 minutes later. The day was saved and we arrived in beautiful Inverness.

We'd been in the UK nearly two weeks by now, and we had gone to Inverness mostly as a staging point to see the Loch Ness, so that evening we pretended we were home (which was easy to do; Inverness was the place we went that actually felt like a "real town") and went to the movies. There was a theater near our hotel with an attached restaurant so went and dined and watched Man of Steel. Which was ridiculous, obviously, but it was nice to have a bit of home away from home
The next day we hopped a bus out to Urquhart Castle, whose ruins sit on the banks of Loch Ness.

Somehow, Lori and I had gotten into a giggly mood that day, and everything was making us laugh, starting with the dramatic opening of the curtains for a view of the castle after the overly dramatic film introducing the castle. At some point in the movie there was a random moose call or something which we though was hilarious enough that after we'd gone exploring, we went back for a second viewing. But that was later. First we explored the castle. (You'll notice that Loo is actually wearing a sweatshirt, which should tell you something about the weather. These last two days in Scotland were the worst weather days we had the whole time we were there.)

And then we joined some tour group for a boat ride out onto the Loch.

And then it started to rain.

We stayed out on deck as long as we could, but eventually we were driven below. We hadn't finished exploring the Castle before catching the boat, but it was still raining when we got back so we decided to take our tour at a run -- laughing the whole time. Obviously we got soaked.

When we'd explored every inch of the place, eaten lunch, and watched the intro movie again we decided it was time to go see one of the Loch Ness Monster exhibits. Obviously. (There had been no Nessie sightings for us, sadly.) When we realized we'd misjudged the bus schedule, we decided that two miles was nothing and we walked back into town.

Or skipped, as the fancy took us. :-) Lori had gotten into the habit of stuffing her bag with treats and had accumulated a number of half eaten ones, that somehow all managed to get nibbled on during this walk. Seriously. At what point I heard a rustling wrapper sound and turned around and was like "What are you eating NOW!?" and Lori lost it. She laughed for like 10 minutes about that. Anyway, we made it to a Loch Ness monster exhibit and it was actually pretty well done and quite interesting. I liked that it focused on the hunt for Nessie rather than getting all "Nessie is real!" Plus there was this, which is just awesome.

After some hot chocolate in town, we headed back to Inverness. I went on a run while Lori took a little rest and probably mostly checked facebook. And then came the task of finding somewhere to eat. We were turned away from five or six different places which were apparently all full before finding (yet another) Indian place and stuffing our faces with deliciousness.

The next day was our last full day in Scotland, so obviously we spent the morning at church. The ward was having their ward conference, which was kind of fun, and which also meant that Loo and I were together for most of it. For the afternoon, we'd decided we'd go check out Cawdor Castle which we'd heard was cool. The lady at the bus station told us we should take the bus to Nairn and then catch a taxi out. She did not tell us that there were multiple stops in Nairn, so I chose the one that was by the "Tourist Information" sign. We got out and... there was nothing. No one on the street, no stores, no nothing. We found the Tourist Information center, but it was closed. So I looked at Lori and she looked at me and we were like "So... what do we do now?"

Okay, I may have exaggerated a bit when I said there was nothing open. There was a chip shop open, and we went in to see if we could get the inside scoop on anything. When we explained what we were after and that the woman at the bus stop had said to get off at Nairn, the young fellow behind the counter said in his awesome Scottish brogue "Ah, you shouldna trust anyone who tells you to get off at Nairn." And that is what Lori and I continue to advise each other. As we were having this discussion, an older gentleman had come in and ordered two ice cream cones, and, on hearing our dilemma offered to drive us out there as he was going that direction anyway. "Sure!" we said and as we followed him out thought "Hmmm... this is maybe not the *best* idea we've ever had." But he'd ordered two ice cream cones because his wife was in the car, so we were fine.

Cawdor Castle still has residents, and so it's fully furnished and was fun to walk through. And the grounds are just stunning, and worth the price of admission on their own. However, having been dropped off by strangers once we were through we faced the secondary dilemma of not knowing how to get back to Inverness. So we had the lady at the ticket office call us a taxi, and we got home with just enough time to catch our overnight train back to London.