Scotland Honeymoon: May 10, 2011

I'm in a blogging kind of mood today. I'm blaming it on yesterday which turned out to be a not so great day. I felt undervalued by a client (unintentionally, I believe) and am now slightly less than motivated to work for her today. SO, to repair my self esteem I'm going to relive my honeymoon a bit. I realize that today is officially 2 months since my last full day in Scotland. Wow... I've been dragging my heels just a bit, eh? What can I say... things've been busy!

Back to the story at hand...

May 10th was morning number two at Craigpark Guest House in Glasgow; we scheduled breakfast a bit earlier than the day before so we didn't have to wait for coffee. Sadly, I set my alarm for 6:15am so I could shower before the 7:00am breakfast we ordered. Big mistake. We didn't go to bed until midnight the night before so when the alarm went off we were both a little bit more than peeved. However, post-shower and a cup of coffee we were right as rain (pun intended) and ready to face the new day. Today's adventure? Driving on the wrong side of the road!!!

We were stuffed into the back of the taxi by 8:30am and on our way to the Hertz lot. I gotta say, these rental car companies put an awful lot of trust in people. The agent just handed us the keys, smiled and walked away. No instructions. No "remember you're on the wrong side of the road, mate". Nothing. So, we fired up the Vauxhall Corsa and decided that we'd just go for it.

I should take a moment and make a bold statement here, and I may have in the past, also, but just to be clear: in my world, I'm the best driver there is. Yes, I realize this is a blanket statement and there are far more qualified drivers out there, many of them who share the road with me each day, but I don't KNOW these people. So, in my little sphere of influence, and in my somewhat-biased opinion, I'm the best driver. Even better than Hubband. But here's the caveat: I'm the best driver I know... in America. Hubband, however, has risen up the ranks in my estimation after successfully navigating us through Scotland in a manual, on the wrong side of the road. He. Was. A. Champion! We picked up the car in a deluge of rain and had to find a highway all while learning how the car worked. We had one little bump to a curb when a car came towards us on "the wrong side" but otherwise, I have no complaints. This car could MOVE! We got something ridiculous like 50 miles to the gallon. No, seriously, you read that right. 50 miles to the gallon. It was awesome.

Our destination on this rainy Tuesday was Fort William, a smaller city about 110 miles north of Glasgow. However! After the harrowing trips up the narrow highways and the recommendation from our tour guide the day before to "pull over if a truck is coming because the highway is too narrow and he'll hit you if you both try to pass" made up our minds that we should try to stay on a wider highway. We decided, at the recommendation of a friend, to take a detour to the sea port town of Oban. I'm SO glad we did. The town was beautiful!

BUT! On our way to Oban we decided to go back to Inverary where we stopped the day before for lunch to take some more images of the town and have a coffee. By the time we arrived we definitely needed the stop. Albeit Alan was doing a great job navigating the windy roads to wend our way through this beautiful countryside, the roads are narrow and he was up-shifting and downshifting like a mo-fo. He was ready for a break and, as navigator extraordinaire, I was too. Mama needed some caffeine if she was going to stay awake the rest of the way north.

Yay for more white coffee! Check the neckwarmer and wristlets. I made them!

This is the tiny little town coffee shop - it's across the street from the George Hotel where we had lunch the day before.

This is main street. All of it. At the top of the street to your right is the Whisky shop and across the street from is is the George Hotel. Pretty simple. No one gets lost in Inverary.

This would be the frontage street. These buildings face the water. Behind us was a small 7-11 type store and the access to the port... seen below. And that's about it for the town.

Ok, so side trip over. Now it's really time to head to Oban. We stopped and had lunch at a great little Fish'n'Chips shop called Norie's and then strolled through town for an hour or two, with an obligatory stop at the Oban Distillery. Sadly, they didn't offer us a tasting or a tour so it was a brief stop.

The Columbia Hotel was one of the most prominent buildings on the water that we could see. It felt very "Jack Sparrow". I dunno... I liked it.

And this just cracked me up... The Pokey Hat? Presumably they are referring to the cone but last time I checked the cone was on the bottom of the ice cream - not very hat-like at all!

For the record, we saw no seals. But lots of boats. And water. 

Main street Oban - bad picture of a great little town.

So, with belly's full and the smell of peat in the air it was time to make the last leg of the journey north to Fort William. It continued to rain much of the way up there but we were warm and dry in the car so it didn't faze us much. When we finally arrived in Fort William the sun broke through the clouds and the timing couldn't have been better. We arrived at our next B&B, Treetops of Fort William, where we were staying for 3 nights, and we were able to capture this amazing view from our room. If you go to the website, just for your reference, we stayed in the top room. 

It was THAT green. Truly amazing!

And a sneak peak at the room: the chair become my place of refuge each night with my iPad to take notes and my book to relax with.

Hubband was posing for the shot... ok, not really, but he looks good, right?

Hubband reading? What? With BARE FEET? This man MUST be on vacation...

The last leg of our journey that night was our excursion to find dinner. We've discovered the one flaw with B&B's: they're not B&B&D's (Bed & Breakfast & Dinner)... so we had to venture out to find a restaurant. Unfortunately, High Street in Fort William is a very busy place, even on a Tuesday night, and parking is a bit hard to come by if you don't know where you're going. So, after a few failed attempts to find parking, and one drive down a street that we thought was a street but in actual fact was a pedestrian only zone, we headed back towards the B&B somewhat defeated until we found:

What we failed to recognize as we ran into this place one minute before it closed was that it said "Frozen Food Specialists". There aren't microwaves at B&B's. Nor are their ovens at our disposal. So we bought a box of Oreo's and a bag of "cheesy flavored chips" that the check out gal assured me were "just like Doritos". Allow me to reassure you - they were nothing like Doritos. We went to bed feeling pretty awful that night for all the bad food we ingested but were mollified by the fact that we had more adventures on the horizon...