If it's not Scottish, it's crap!

I'm not sure if I mentioned that I recently went on vacation. To Ireland. Did I talk about that at all? I can't really remember. But before I went on vacation to Ireland, actually, I went on vacation to Scotland.

Have you ever been to Scotland? You should probably go. As soon as possible. It's positively lovely. We started out in Edinburgh. That's pronounced Edinboro, which you probably already know, even though that doesn't make any sense. How does a word ending in "gh" make the "o" sound? I do not know. One of the mysteries of Scotland, I guess. Right up there with the Loch Ness monster, to be sure. But I'll get to that later. We were talking about Edinburgh.

In Edinburgh, we rented an apartment that was ideally situated right on the main street in the Old City. We literally walked down our steps and onto this street. The entrance to the apartment was located between a whisky shop (that's how the Scots spell whisky, spellcheck.) and a shop with plaid stuff. It was the best. At night (please excuse me while I wax poetic here) we could hear the sounds of street musicians drifting up from 3 stories below. Oh, and we were directly across the street from a cathedral. Big time. So in the evenings, we could sit in our living room, sipping coffee or cider and munching on shortbread and listening to bagpipes. I'm not, like, a huge bagpipe lover, and actually one night there was a guitar player/singer that was really, really good, but man, you guys. The atmosphere of this place. Edinburgh. Yes.

Just outside of Edinburgh is a little village called Lauder, and in the village of Lauder is a not-so-little house called Thirlestane. Thirlestane Castle, actually. It's home of the Maitland family, which, in some complicated family tree business that I will not attempt to explain here, I am descended from on my mom's side of the family. It was only fitting that we'd want to visit the family castle while in the area. We rode the bus. It took an hour. It was worth it.

In Edinburgh we had haggis and ale and fish and chips and chicken pie and terrible coffee and it was all very fantastic. And then we took a tour of the Highlands and it was ever more fantastic. What we saw of the Highlands was all shimmering lochs and green mountains and picturesque castles.

We spent two nights on the Isle of Skye and could have used a million more. What a dramatic place. Dramatic cliffs.

Dramatic lighting. I was obsessed with the lighting. I have way too many pictures of sunbeams on the water.

I mean, just look at this place.

Even the cows are dramatic. Look at all that hair. Adorable.

Plus, the ground is purple. It's purple. Because it is covered in heather. You couldn't make this place up if you tried, I think.

 So, Skye is gorgeous and you should definitely add it to your itinerary for your upcoming trip to Scotland, as I previously advised.

Elsewhere in the Highlands...

Loch Ness, which I found to have just the right amount of eerie low-hanging clouds.

There are something like 30,000 lochs in Scotland and I'm sure there might be better ones to visit than Loch Ness. But it turns out Loch Ness is actually huge- it's the biggest loch in the country (by volume) and according to our guide it could fit the entire population of Earth. If you took out the water, that is. I'm not a scientist but that seems pretty huge. So that's interesting.

Plus, monsters. 

I think that's her skeleton or something.

So, you know. If you're in the area, then yes. Loch Ness. Do it.

That, in a tiny tiny nutshell, is Scotland. Not all of it, by any stretch. But some. This is like Reading Rainbow, only it's Vacation Rainbow. If you want to know the rest, take a trip!