River and Loch Ness

I woke up in my creeky room of bunkbeds in the worst hostel I’ve stayed in so far blissfully happy to be in Scotland.  I’d heard there was a nice walk along the islands in the River Ness, so I decided to go check that out.  I found this fountain:

And there is an island:

They even have a special place for dog waste in the litter bins:

There are cool railings

There’s a bouncy bridge onto the island

It was breathtakingly beautiful and green and cool and happy

There were a bunch of interesting benches and they were all different

These trees were trying to do Eagle pose

Found Nessy

Another cool bench.  I sat on this one for a bit listening to the rush of water and the chirping of birds.  

Panorama from the bridge

More tree branches doing weird things

It’s the Ladies walk

There’s the city!

Back in town, I followed Rick Steven’ self guided walk through Inverness and found this hidden market:

A Psychic Hairdresser:

The oldest house in Inverness (which was famous for its impressive spiral staircase)

Old church with cemetery.  As I looked at the black and white pictures in my kindle and compared them to the real thing, I thought about how I’d checked out the guidebook from the library with only dreams of actually coming here.  And now it was a reality.  

View from the bouncy bridge

Then I took myself to lunch at the Mustard Seed (Amanda’s recommendation) which had incredible food with vegetables.  

Time for my tour!  We took a bus to a boat

There’s a lock!

A rich person’s house

Another big house that belonged to someone important

Then we arrived at the ruins of Urquhart castle where we got off the boat to explore

View from the castle

I’m in front of the castle!

There they are a little blurry and a little closer

This looks like it was a moat at some point

Pretty views

I climbed to the top of one side

And then my phone died.  No more pictures.  Well!  It was like that saying, if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?  If I’m here seeing incredibly beautiful places, but no one can see my pictures, does it count?  I came to a new level of doing only what I want to do.  Now I would climb to the top of the other tower not to get a picture, but to see it.  Just for myself because I can’t share it with anyone else.  It also had  good view.

I went up to the museum where they showed a video about the history of the area and the castle (involving monks and spreading the word of Jesus and clan wars and speculation because there is a lot they don’t know.  The plaques all said ‘this is what we think this room was for, but we don’t know.’ That aspect reminded me of Stonehenge.  After the video, the screen lifted and the curtains opened to reveal an incredible view of the ruins from up on the hill.  We took the bus back and didn’t see any Nessy sightings (aside from the fake one on the side of the road).  They say there are more Nessy sightings after people have had a few whiskeys.

Back in town my phone was unresponsive to electric current so I went out.  I stopped in at Scotch & Rye (http://www.scotchandrye.co.uk), Amanda’s final recommendation for Inverness.  It was trying to be an ‘American’ Bar and it was as hilarious as she said.  The barmen had Scottish accents and they served mostly burgers and, though they had Coors Light on tap, I ordered a whiskey cocktail.  Each menu of drinks had a clever character description of their maker (though none of them were actually in the bar).

I’ve noticed in Scotland that often I only have to scrunch up my face looking confused and someone will come and offer help.  I’m really appreciative of that at this point in my journey.  I wish this was a feature of my laptop.

I continued on to a recommended Italian restaurant where I had the comfort food I’d been craving- there’s nothing like pasta and garlic bread to soothe the woes of a dead phone.

So I only took mental pictures in the American bar and the sunset over the river to match the ones Amanda posted that made me want to be here so badly months before.

I decided I was still having fun, even if I couldn’t take pictures.  When I got back, my phone responded to a charge and I gratefully tucked myself in.  After being in big cities with Apple stores for 5 weeks, of course my phone would die when I’m in small towns fully booked with tours for 3 days.  Now I knew where my first stop would be in Glasgow.