Scotland, Round 1

This weekend was rather exciting - I visited Scotland, got to see Kristin, and got my new camera! I'll tell you a bit about life in Ireland before I go into my trip though.

Things have definitely started to pick up, a combination of lots of weekend trips and actually getting to know the Irish kids I think. I've started reading in the library so I don't get distracted in my room, most Irish don't buy textbooks so the library has multiple copies of all the books for classes so you can just go read them and not have to buy them, woo! On Wed we had more frisbee practice and fitness training afterwards. We run shuttles, and I'm pretty good at them since I can turn quickly (skill left over from basketball), so one of the guys wanted to race (he won), but my lungs weren't particularly happy with all the sprinting in the cold and I was coughing like crazy until I had 3 cups of tea. :) That night I taught one of my room mates how to make chocolate chip cookies, I'm definitely still baking here! Then Thursday night it was one of the girls from the frisbee team's birthday, so we went out. First we went to a place called Captain America's for dinner, they make decent burgers and serve long island ice tea in pitchers :P Then we saw Benjamin Button, which I thought was pretty good. Afterwards we went to a bar that was playing kareoke, but left and we finished the night at Porterhouse.

The next morning I caught my flight to Scotland. I flew into Aberdeen and since my flight got in at 10 and Kristin's wasn't until 7 I went to explore the city. There isn't much to do in Aberdeen, except go visit the highlands, so I wandered around a bit. Some of the things that I saw were a pretty cool 16th century house they had converted to a museum, the meritime museum with some really awesome ship models, and the Aberdeen art gallery, all of which were free :) Then I went in a coffee shop which made really good mochas and just wandered around the city and did a bit of shopping before heading back to the airport. I found Kristin and we caught a bus to Inverness. Also, she brought me my camera (canon xs)! I was very excited and spent a lot of time this weekend playing with it.

The bus ride was long and I was kinda carsick so slept most of it. We got to Inverness and found our hostel. It was a really cute one that named the beds. Mine was called Vicious Haggis :P That night we were both tired and didn't get there until after midnight, so just stayed in and played with cameras a bit before bed.

The next morning we got up and found a bakery for breakfast - they made delicious apple turnovers! Back at the hostel I made a cup of tea (I seriously think I'm getting addicted) and we talked about what to do. We had planned on renting bikes but the hostel didn't have any, so we got on a tour bus to take us to Loch Ness for a boat ride and trip to the Urquhart castle. The guide told us a bit about Scottish history and about the lake while we drove. The lake was crazy choppy, our boat really felt like a roller coaster it was going up and down so much. The lake was gorgeous though. We made it to the castle and had an hour to explore. It was pretty cool, two of the towers were still standing and you could see the structure for the rest of it. We then headed back to Inverness and got some lunch. We decided for the afternoon to go to the Ness Islands, which is a park in the town consisting of a series of long islands along the bank of the river. It was a gorgeous day and so lots of people were outside walking their dogs and just enjoying the sun. The park was really cool.

Afterwards we bought some postcards then went to a coffee shop for tea and strawberry shortcake. It was delicious (and I took more pictures hehe). We then walked around a bit before going to dinner at a tapas bar (they had a really good happy hour - buy a pitcher of sangria and get 3 free tapas - so we ate early). The food and sangria were really good! We got scallops, manchego cheese, chicken stuffed peppers, pork with almonds and raisins, and mussels. We then went to a bar to pass some time before our bus (we had to spend the next night in Elgin to be able to catch my flight on Sunday) and I tried whisky and we watched a game. The whisky was really good, it would have been fun to go to a distillery but we didn't have time.

We went back to the hostel to grab our stuff and caught a bus to Elgin, which is about a third of the way back to Aberdeen. There we had our own room in a really cute hostel that apparently just opened. It was really nice. We walked around Elgin, but there wasn't anything to do at night so we just went to sleep.

The next morning we caught the first bus to Aberdeen and I got off at the airport while Kristin headed to Aberdeen to explore before her later flight. I made it safely back to Dublin and spent the rest of the day playing with my camera :)