Scotland: Part I

--- 26 October 2007 ---
Scotland so far has been absolutely wonderful. We spent the first day in Edinburgh which was lovely. I branched out and went with three girls who I had never spent a huge amount of time with before and they all ended up being really nice and a lot of fun. We went to the Whiskey Tour building for a delicious and surprisingly cheap lunch and then booed a tour. While we waited we walked up to Edinburgh Castle and it felt so familiar. I'd been before but it was so long ago I was surprised by my deja vu. Sadly, there were cranes everywhere and we didn't have the time or the money to go inside. But it is a beautiful and impressive castle, perched right up to the edge of a craggy cliff, looking over the rest of the city. Looking was all we had time for before our tour but that was okay because the tour was so much fun! Really interesting, plus, we got some free whiskey and a special glass that felt really smart.
After a little shopping in the "gift" shop I took off on my own for a little Marian Time. It's been nice having company but I've really come to enjoy the pleasure of my own company. Plus, it's hard to coordinate what everyone wants to do. So I really just walked around for an hour - god lost as usual but also sat outside a nice cathedral while listening to a guy on the streets play the bagpipes. I LOVE the bagpipes, they remind me of my dad. I normally don't give money to street performers mostly because I'm just as broke, but his playing made me feel like I was really in Scotland so I gave him as much as I could. He was also beautiful in his full Scottish costume, something about a man in a skirt just emphasizes the masculinity - makes them look so strong and regal. So that helped ;-)
The rest of the evening was nice and relaxing. The whole group had dinner together and then I just went back to the hostel to read and write a little and got to bed earlier than I have in months.
The next day was beyond incredible as we left the capital for the highlands. The day was raging and gray, and while that might be depressing in the city, on the miles of Scottish moors it was wild and romantic. So far, our tour guide Fergus has been hilarious. We were on and off the buss all day but I never fell asleep because he had so many interesting stories. And when he wasn't talking he was playing us Scottish music; from current pop stars to traditional bagpipes and flute which made the expanse of mountains and lochs that much more special. The best though was when he took us to the castle where Monty Python on the Holy Grail was filmed after playing us a clip from that specific scene. He also took us to the Braveheart site while playing us a Euro pop version of the theme song. This guy is just so clever! Everything a tour guide should be.
We saw so many gorgeous things today and learned so much about Scottish history - more than I could ever learn in a classroom. We saw a mountain called The Giant's Fist (because that's exactly what it looked like) and a loch that's shaped exactly like Scotland. We stopped a lot to look at the scenery - leaves turning and orange moors and "weeping mountains" and raging waterfalls. It was all beautiful even in the cold and miserable downpour, but at around 4:30 a small patch of blue sky lit up the mountains that had just before been haunted with mist. And then, right before we reached our final destination, we stopped the bus to watch the brilliant sun set over the Isle of Skye. The thing that really got me though, was the fleeting but deafening silence of 20 college students on holiday standing perfectly still, watching the most perfect thing we had ever seen.