It's hard to believe that we're already at the halfway point of our trip. Yet reliving each of the blog posts reminds me how much we actually did and saw each day. I think it also justifies my reticence to talk about the trip with people - I'd completely forgotten so many parts of our days that it was hard to tell the stories. I'm so glad I took notes!
So here we are, on Saturday morning, in Inverness - a fairly major city in Scotland and a huge port city during the Jacobite uprisings of the mid-1700's. Unfortunately our plan for the morning didn't include anything to do with history - we needed to find somewhere to do laundry! We found a launderette (and thanks to the wonder of Google you can see the proprietor having a smoke out front), as they're called in the UK, at 9am and did two loads of laundry. I pulled up the old iPad and took notes from the past two days and enjoyed listening to the proprietor talk about all kinds of nonsense, but primarily recall her angst of folding socks. Alan took off in search of coffee and thus missed the sock tirade. The owner not only allows others to do laundry but also allows folks to drop off their laundry to her and she washes, folds and returns to them via pick up. Sounds as if socks are the bane of her existence.
After the laundry was done and we trudged the mile back to the B&B, we took a trip into Inverness on foot and found it to be a very busy city. It felt a bit run down and far less friendly than other cities we'd encountered so we decided not to stick around any longer than we had to. We took a few photos on the way up to High Street to appease our friends and family who begged for images but I'm afraid nothing terribly note-worthy.
The foot bridge we crossed to get from the B&B to High Street
A look down-river. The bridge in the distance is the major traffic connection between the two halves of Inverness.
Inverness Castle - sounds silly but I was so disgruntled at Inverness that I didn't even care to see it.
We walked up to High Street and wandered some of the shops. Namely I was looking for a knitting shop to see if I could find some fancy yarns that I couldn't in the states but only found a lovely knitting book - so not a total loss. Hubband also found a chocolate shop where I found a chocolate Nessie and he found other delightful chocolate nibbles.
We stopped and had lunch at The Filling Station which appears to be a chain in the major cities in Scotland and then got out of dodge. The food was pretty awful and it was dreadfully crowded so we decided to find something local, but outside of town, to do since we were locked into the B&B in Inverness for one more night.
I'm amazed, even now, at the strong negative reaction we had to Inverness. I'm sure its a lovely city but compared to what we'd seen so far it was quite unremarkable. But truly, one bad day out of 14 ain't bad, right?
We headed out to Moniack Castle and Winery which ended up being primarily a tasting room with an active (lived in) castle on-site (home to the Clan Fraser). To say that the staff was a bit lackadaisical about her job would be an understatement. The sole staff member greeted us by asking if we'd been before, told us to taste the wines, and left. It was hilarious! So we did. And they were ok but certainly a bit outside our standard palette of wines. Most of them tend to be overly sweet as they make wines with everything under the sun except grapes. And I apologize - I took no pictures... I know... I'm the suck.
Deciding that this trip to a caste was a fairly silly trip since we weren't able to see inside the castle and the "wines" weren't to our liking, we headed out to see the Corrimony Cairn which, according to the brochures we found, is a 4,000 year old burial tomb, now not in use, of course. The origins appear to be pagan with a strong sense of worship of the sun. It was very cool!
From the ground level - you could walk (or crawl, really) right in.
The "standing stones" around the cairn - various sizes thought to mean different things - split over time as you can see the three pieces to the left of the image have done.
Another beautiful rainbow - we were lucky to see so many throughout the trip. I guess that's one blessing of rain.
We decided to stop in Drumnadrochit to pick up some toothpaste and for a spot of tea (or more likely, coffee) but got caught up in a gift shop and ended up missing the close of the cafe. So we headed back up the road towards Inverness in search if the Clansman Harbor Inn for a cup of coffee and to determine our next course of action. We had a very strong cup of white coffee (which we've determined is actually a lot like a latte - so lots of caffeine). We watched the Loch Ness boats go by and just wiled away an hour or so in the attempts to avoid Inverness.
By this time our stomachs were grumbling but we were determined not to go back to Inverness for the night until we had to go to bed so we put our trust in the GPS and headed out to find dinner elsewhere since the serving waitress at the Clansman Harbor Inn was a bit of a twit. The closest thing we could find was in Muir of Ord, a small town to the west of Inverness. But rather than taking us south a bit and then west from Loch Ness, the GPS took us all the way north, past Inverness, across the Loch/river that runs through Inverness, and then west. As luck would have it, the few places the GPS listed didn't exist so we headed on to the next town, Beauly, where we found our luck a little better. We did find a pub but it was somewhat less than inviting as there were only 3 other women in the place and a football (aka: soccer) game in the TV.
We saw an Indian restaurant across the street called "Beauly Tandoori" and struck gold. It was delicious! This restaurant "let" us order the king prawn vindaloo (which we weren't allowed to order in Fort William because it was "too hot") and found it delicious. It was definitely hot but delicious! And the service was great since we were the only patrons for the first 40 minutes or so.
After dinner we finally braved up and went back to Inverness for the night. Check out was (thankfully) the next day! Unfortunately we weren't quite through with the disappointment that was Inverness...
