Highland Adventure

My mom is visiting! She arrived Thursday afternoon. I had gone to the train station to meet her, but she got in earlier than I had anticipated so she actually came back to the train station to meet me meeting her. Such is life. We went to lunch at Cafe Rouge (soooo good!), then since it was sunny, we walked around Bath. We walked up George Street and past the Jane Austen Center up to the Circus, then headed out of the Circus towards the Royal Crescent. I pointed out the road leading up to the Northhamptons. They are far away. We walked around the Crescent, where I discovered a new museum, although goodness only knows if I will have time for it. We walked down through Victoria Gardens and past the playground, lake, and mini-golf course. I wish I had time to mini-golf. We even stopped into the Jane Austen center-- I feel like while I'm here I should do a Jane Austen walk (and a Bizarre Bath walk). I can't wait for May 1st-- no more papers! We went to Martinis for dinner, which was excellent, then I headed back to Nunes to pack for Scotland!!!!

Inverness Castle: Inverness, Scotland

Friday morning at 7:00 a.m I was in a taxi heading to Bristol Airport for my flight to Inverness. The flight was fantastic. We had these two drunken queens sitting in front of us and they were hilarious! One of them grabbed a (male) flight attendant's butt ("I want some of that!"). He had also lost his boarding pass, and said to his partner? "They are looking me up in security, like I'm a threat... do I look Arabic?" They also sang along to the iPod they were sharing the whole time. One of them, who looked like Christian from Project Runway, was meeting his mother and he said, "Oh my God, what's my mother going to think when she sees me in this state (i.e- drunk)? She hasn't seen me in 10 years!" to which my mom whispered to me, "Oh dear, I hope she's seen pictures!" Overall, an amusing flight to the Scottish Highlands.

Inverness--and the whole Highland area-- is beautiful! We checked into our hotel then began to walk around. We walked down by the River Ness, composed of overflow from Loch Ness, which is both one of the shortest rivers in Europe at only 6.5 miles, and a tidal river flowing to the sea. There, we stumbled into a little cafe for lunch. I had Scottish salmon and cream cheese on a warm croissant and a bottle of Nessie's Monster Mash brewed in Scotland by Cairngorm Breweries. The beer was excellent! It reminded me of the beer we brewed in CW at the Governor's Palace last year.

We walked a little more, stopped into a few shops including Highland House of Fraser, then went into the tourist center to book tickets for some tours we wanted to do the next day. The tourist center changed our plans: instead of two tours on Saturday, we ran to the Jacobite Tours bus stop for a tour of Loch Ness that afternoon. On the Jacobite Temptation tour we spent twenty minutes on a bus driving out to the Clansman Hotel Harbour with a wonderful tour guide named George pointing out sites along the way. Then we took a half-hour cruise on Loch Ness, but we didn't see the monster (affectionately known as "our Nessie" by the Highlanders). Loch Ness has black water, though, like nothing I've ever seen before. It did not reflect the blue of the sky. The foam our boat churned up looked yellow brown, like we were sailing through Guinness. It felt really weird to see water so black. We got off the boat at the ruins of Urquhart Castle. We had an hour to explore the ruins and the visitor's center. The area was beautiful and the history of the castle was interesting. More interesting was the fact that for the entire weekend I saw not a single Union Jack flag, only the flag of the Cross of St. Andrews-- the Scottish flag.

Leslie mentioned in tutorial last week that Scotland was advocating once more for independence from the UK, and everything I saw pointed in that direction. In the video about Urquhart Castle there was this quote:

...for, as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom – for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself. - The Declaration of Arbroath

We saw the same quote the next day on a t-shirt at Culloden Battlefield. Culloden Battlefield really was awesome. The battle took place on April 16th, 1746, so the brand-new Visitor's Center was swarming with Highlander's showing their pride. Nearly every man wore a kilt with his clan colors, and women too had on some bit of tartan. Even little boys--probably only five or six at oldest--sported kilts. They also had festivities planned, including Highland Music, Highland dancing, costumed interpreters explaining camp life and life in the Highlands before (and after?) the battle, and guided battlefield tours. Furthermore, the Visitor's Center was one of the best museums I've been in, and I've been in quite a few thanks to my Saturday Seminar with Whittenburg, being an RPA last summer, and taking a course in Public History. It presented both sides of the story equally and fairly without bias: a hefty feat, considering we were in the heart of the Highlands. On one wall was the Jacobite story and on the other was the Government story. It explained the background really well, and combined technology with traditional museum approaches to be both entertaining and education. I was muchly impressed.

The battlefield itself was... small. It's hard to believe that in one hour in such a small space 1,500 Highlanders died and the Highland way of life was subsequently destroyed. There are mass graves on the field with markers naming which clansmen are buried beneath the earth. One rock said, "Here marks where the leader of Clan McGillivray fell" with a Scottish prayer beneath it. The whole thing felt rather sad and hopeless.

My mom and I went back to Inverness around 3:00. We stopped in at a shopping mall (the first I've seen in Europe!) for some mindlessness and American-ness. We got some shirts at H&M, a store I hate in America but love in Europe, then we went to some traditional Scottish shops... ok, tourist shops... in the center of town and bought ourselves some Fraser gear (yay Jamie Fraser! Yay Outlander!) and some Scottish Tablet fudge and some Celtic style jewelry and some Loch Ness Monster/Nessie souvenirs.

We ate dinner at a Scottish chain called Jimmy Chung's, which is a Chinese Buffet. Why Scotland has a Chinese Buffet chain I am not sure, but the food was excellent and extremely cheap. The rest of the evening was spent walking around Inverness-- along the river, through some side streets, past rows of houses and B&B's... the town is quite lovely. Just charming. I think the best way to visit would be to stay in a B&B, rent a car, and travel around the tiny villages surrounding Inverness. Just getting out and exploring the Highlands. The area is beautiful. I think of all of the places I've visited Scotland wins as most beautiful, except perhaps Garmisch, which has the advantage of being situated in the Alps. But Scotland had a haunting beauty, especially the area around Loch Ness. I hope to go back someday, to explore it more fully.

This morning my mom and I got coffee, then walked up the River to the Ness Islands, a series of three islands connected by bridges. There's really not much on them besides trees and running paths and an occasional sculpture or two, but the walk was beautiful. It was even warm enough to take off our coats! After our walk it was time to fly home to Bath... where English hills hide quaint villages, fog obscures the countryside, and baby lambs have appeared in the fields with the arrival of Spring.