Highland Adventures with a Dash of Haggis

The two things I didn’t expect to see in Scotland were Nessie, fabled sea monster of Loch Ness who must have solved the question for achieving immortality for how long she’s been kicking up rumors and taking blurry photographs, and all the australians.

There were things I expected that Scotland certainly provided. The propensity of the Scottish for drink has not been over-exaggerated - if anything, it’s been understated. We saw three guys get thrown out of a club for being too drunk (I also don’t think all the attempted “dancing” with the DJ helped their case), and at dinner in Inverness one night, while having a post-burger pee, I was greeted to a bathroom that reeked of urine and vomit at the late late hour of 10pm. Really Scotland, calm down. I don’t think you have to go quite this hard.

As an aside, the next morning, after a night of blackout drinking for approximately 80% of the party crowd of Inveress, we passed a group of people at breakfast who were completely committed to using the scientific method to make sure that the phrase “Hair of the Dog” actually held up. It seemed that in the light of the 11:30 am sun, they were making significant headway. These are the kinds of young scientists we need in the world.

Still don't know why they called it The Mound.

Granted, we didn’t actually know what to expect when we rolled up (or flew, I guess, for those of you keeping track at home) to Edinburgh with nothing but an AirBnB and a dream. In direct defiance of how these things usually work, Courtney had gotten upgraded to the front row of the plane for not being checked in properly, and her seemingly infinite legroom left her feeling content and ready for sightseeing as we bussed into the city center. Immediately, the city opened up around us. Edinburgh is built on both sides of a valley, with a long park down the middle opposite the train station, and the modern city center sitting opposite the old city (also called “The Mound” in an example of severely underplaying it’s size). Scattered around the valley are a collection of old, ornate buildings that added variety and pizzazz to the otherwise modern architecture. We did see a bagpipe player on the street immediately when we got off the bus, in case we were confused about where we were.

The bagpipe player was behind us having a great time.

Edinburgh is often seen as the calmer city when compared to Glasgow (and apparently Inverness - we’ll get to that). It didn’t actually seem to have the bustling populace that I’ve gotten used to seeing in European capitals like Rome or Paris. It seemed almost quite or serene at times. I mean, the tourists were still there, roaming in packs, looking for any opportunity to take pictures and pay unnecessary amounts of money for food. Edinburgh is quite the pretty city, I must say. The park in the middle of the valley was dotted with people enjoying the warm afternoon breeze. Market stalls were lazily winding down, their owners chatting with passerby instead of immediately going in for the hard sell. Street musicians, referred to as buskers by Courtney, lined the cobbled paths and courtyards. One musician in particular, playing a guitar that was being echoed by her compact amp, sat in the main courtyard above the park and played the Mario theme (among others) to the ambling people. We had very little planned, so we just sat and listened to her while the sun sat.

We were in this plaza for a while, and it was beautiful.

It should also be noted that it was in Edinburgh that we first tried haggis. As some of you might know, haggis has the kind of reputation shared with only the finest things society has to offer, like sewage or rotting meat, depending on who you ask. Anthony Bourdain once said, “There is no more unfavorably reviled food on Earth than haggis,” and as we sat down at the restaurant, both of us excessively adventurous, we were a bit apprehensive. We were both quite unprepared for how good it was.

Not entirely sure why it was served on nachos, but it was good all the same.

Haggis is a bit strange. The taste was not what I expected, though again, some of that might be the lingering effects of American hearsay. It has a fluffy texture, as if it was ethically taken from a very well-made pillow doing it’s best imitation of a squishable. Each bite surges with flavor. It’s a mix of all of the different samples of meat and spices blended together, and it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly where all of the good mouth feelings are coming from. Plus, as far as I’m aware, all of the things hanging out in haggis are healthy for you, so good news there! If you’re looking for some more reassurance, I can say that if you don’t find eating a hot dog or a chicken nugget disgusting, then you shouldn’t find haggis any more off-putting. Really, you should let Scotland charm you with all its food,because it’s all just a good time. Black Pudding also made an appearance later on in the trip, and that was just as fabulous as you expect pudding to be, just if it was made of meat (or blood, rather). Really, everything we had was delicious. I think the only thing that put me off of any of it was the biased view that America has of weird foods. We should really just try pudding that behind us. Courtney certainly has; she ordered haggis every chance she got on the rest of the trip.

We didn’t stay in Edinburgh long; just enough to whet our appetites for the Scottish experience. The next morning, we got our first full day of what multiple days in the future would be filled with: planes, trains, and automobiles. We caught a train to Glasgow, another train to Fort Wiliam, and then finally a bus up to Inverness. We couldn’t deny the call of the highlands. Like me when I return after a month long trip from a country where they eat mainly pasta and fancy seafood dishes that all taste wonderful, and upon stepping off the plane are immediately presented with the opportunity to consume a greasy In-n-Out Burger with animal style fries, we had to go to there. There were a few other things also pulled us northward: we had a highlands rail pass (or I would have if I didn’t forget at home like a smart person), we could take the Jacobite steam train (which was the steam train used as the Hogwarts Express in that one popular thing about an angry wizard with no nose), and the lure of the Outlander series, of which I have no actual knowledge of, but Courtney has assured me severely underplayed exactly how much of a party city Inverness was going to be.

Love the old architecture of Europe.

I really can’t say I was expecting the partying. Inverness isn’t usually a hot topic of conversation when talking about travel destinations in Scotland. I’ve always heard that it was a quieter city, in it’s spot way up north past Loch Ness, and when we pulled in on the bus, it really gave us nothing that dispersed that belief. Everything of interest is within easy walking distance, which is convenient for people who like trying the Scottish tradition of considering all times of daylight as 5 pm, so drinking can start. It’s a medieval city, so that doesn’t help with the tipsy part. Just get used to the idea that all the streets are wobbly from the cobblestones. The streets wind capriciously through the city, and we were lead to a beautiful castle with spectacular views of the surrounding city with the river lit by colorful rays of the sunset. We also passed a wide variety of restaurants advertising live music, and kept a mental list of places of where to spend our evening. This was also important, because after traveling all day and giving our feet a good seeing to with all the uphill walking, hunger was starting to set in.

Just to the right of this picture is a seagull standing on a rooftop screaming his face off.

Slightly surprisingly, finding a solution to our hunger was a bit more difficult than we expected. See, we had been operating on the apparently misplaced notion that because it’s light out, restaurants would welcome us in with promises of daily specials and beer. I had kind of forgotten that we were so far north. The sun was really excited to see us, and had taken to staying up much longer than I’m used to. Apparently restaurant owners apparently have other things that they want to do with their life, and since we had let time creep past 10 o’clock, it took us almost 20 minutes to find a place still whose kitchen was still open. I still haven’t gotten used to it. The sun didn’t even peace out until close to 11.

This is about 9:30 in the evening.

We decided to start our evening in Inverness at a bar called Hootenanny. This place was taking full advantage of its European architecture. There were three levels, each with live music. The first level had traditional Gaelic music, played by an excellent trio called Kaitlin Ross and Friends (we stayed for their whole set). A large Ska band rocked the second level. Capping it off on the top was a DJ sporting some sick beats and lasers in a room that felt like a rather large walk-in closet had decided to change its life around and replaced the clothes with a bar.

We wandered through it all, empty glasses marking our passage. As the hour crept past midnight, we decided to change one DJ for another and, quite drunkenly, wandered over to another bar whose big draw was every drink was 2 euros. Let me tell you, we took full advantage of that, and danced our drunk asses into the early hours of the morning.

Quite the beautiful town at night. Or at least I remember it being so. Alcohol got me distracted.

Now, it has been said that you learn many things about somebody when traveling with them. I have indeed learned a great deal about my traveling companion. She is incredibly self-sufficient, independent, and a joy to see the world with. She also has an incredible passion for travel, and does not like being told that she can’t do something - two admirable qualities that happen to be augmented in the presence of alcohol. In our original highland plan, we were going to spend the next day on the Isle of Skye, but as we stumbled into our hostel with the morning hour flirtatiously approaching 3am, the realization that we were quite drunk and the bus to Skye left at 8am slowly dawned on me, and I mentioned to Courtney that the probability of us waking up in time to catch it was low. In hindsight, I didn’t put enough weight into the fact that she said “Watch me!” with her phone in her hand. So it was with alcohol-heavy eyes that I was abruptly pulled from my deep, blissfully drunken sleep to find that she had indeed taken it as a challenge, and had set an alarm for 6:45am at maximum volume - because, to her credit, she knew getting up after drinking is hard - in a hostel room with 6 other people. It took a few moments of laying there, patiently waiting for the sound to kindly bugger off, before reality lazily rolled itself into my mind. The alarm had actually failed in its task. As I pulled myself off the bed and walked over to turn it off, I confirmed that the only person to not wake up to the high-pitched spanish music playing a couple inches from her face was Courtney herself.

Eventually, we roused ourselves. The fabled Isle of Skye would have to wait for another trip (we rolled out of bed about 11), so we finally went to that most famous and mysterious of all of Scotland’s beautiful sightseeing destinations - Urquhart Castle.

It was quite the beautiful view of the Loch.

Alright, it was Loch Ness. Urquhart Castle was on the way though, and we thought what the hell, it’s a ruined castle on the banks of Nessie’s private swimming pool, it’s gotta be cool.

The tower has a stairway only fit for one person at a time that people keep trying to fit 20 people on at one time.

Urquhart Castle’s remains sit on a small hill with expansive views of Loch Ness. It has quite the fascinating history, mostly involving ownership by the MacDonalds (not of fast food fame, although I would to see a Scottish clan from the 1400’s do fast food advertising). A series of conflicts with the British about independence or something convinced the MacDonalds to steal everything of value. This included the doors, the bars on the windows, and even the toilets. That’ll show those Brits. Enjoy your drafty castle. Eventually, during the Glorious Revolution (it’s a thing involving a guy named William of Orange), a large amount of gunpowder was stacked inside the castle and set off, as a giant middle finger to some Jacobites who just wanted to have it for reasons. We took many pictures amidst the milling crowds of tourists before calling it a day. Carrying all your stuff in a backpack is nice, but does get to you after a couple of hours in the sun.

Taking the idea of, "If I can't have it, no one can!" to heart, I see. I love Scottish history.

Finally, our bus left us right at the door of our hostel. Built on a small rise overlooking Loch Ness and surrounded by trees, it was about as charming a place as we could have hoped for. We were also in luck; the hostel had been full up the last couple nights, but most of those were all part of one big group which had buggered off that morning. You could take in the splendor of the Loch by standing on the wood porch, sunlight playing across the sedentary sway of the waves. It was one of the calmest places that I could have possibly imagined to enjoy an evening Lochside. It was also there that we met all the Australians.

I’ve met many australians all over Europe when I’ve traveled in the past, so this necessarily wasn’t a surprise. According to them, traveling is incredibly popular in Australia, and they like to get away from the heat, something I can respect as an Arizonan. What I found amusing is that in a decently sized hostel with only 3 other buildings around it to form any semblance of civilization (the nearest town was 15 minutes away), on the banks of Loch Ness in north Scotland, and with a 20+ hour travel time from the other side of the world, that the only non-Australian person on the staff of 8 was the Scottish maman who actually owned the building itself - . The staff were wonderful, the people were wonderful, the location was wonderful. I can’t speak highly enough about our stay at the hostel.

I also got free tea because they were wonderful.

The water’s edge was a mere 60 seconds walk from the hostel door (most of the walk was making sure you didn’t slip on the rocks), so of course that was the first item on the list. They even had an emergency guitar on the shore in a case. Courtney pulled it out almost immediately and sat around tuning it and playing to Nessie for a while. While showcasing our immense skill in microwaving frozen lasagna, we started talking with a couple girls from the States, and one from Switzerland. All of them were out to see the world on their own, and having a great time hitchhiking through Europe.

The Loch truly is beautiful.

The hostel was remote enough that without a car, you didn’t really have access to a supermarket unless you wanted to test out the quality of the Scottish highland roads with your shoes for about two hours round trip. To make everyone’s lives easier, they just sold alcohol on the premises, which we took full advantage of. Alcohol in hand, we took a wander down with Hunter, one of the staff, to a bonfire on the beach. He said that he’d started making bonfires every night to try and get a bit more socialization between people staying at the hostel. Plus, according to him, all Australians pretty much know basic survival skills, like starting a fire, from birth. He made Australia sound like an entire continent of Bear Grylls’, which is simultaneously exciting and minorly terrifying. We spent the evening drinking wine and roasting marshmallows left in the “Free Food” box in the hostel kitchen as the sun set around us. The only sounds were our talking, the crackle of the fire, the soft lapping of the waves, and the periodic groans from people as they cursed all the bugs surrounding us. Eventually the desire to keep some of our precious flesh unbitten led us inside, where we ended the evening with drunken pool, which everyone simultaneously won and lost, before collapsing on our beds, dreaming of a full scottish breakfast in the morning.

The sunrise, about 3:30 am.

There was one other thing that was discussed that night - Loch Ness. Hunter explained to us that because the Loch is so big, it is able to maintain a constant temperature through both summer and winter. It checks in at a really comfortable 6 degrees celsius - that’s about 43 degrees for all of us fahrenheit users. This is interesting for a couple of reasons. The first is that because it’s always that temperature, Loch Ness never freezes. Apparently, you can even see steam coming off of it in the winter as it’s warmer than the air around it. The second is that if you go in, you have about 10 minutes of happy-go-lucky swim time before you catch hypothermia and die. The Loch is actually only about a mile across at any given point, but you can’t swim across because you’ll die before you reach the other side. It's really only hospitable to some species of fish and coy mythological creatures who happen to enjoy the fact that it keeps humans off their proverbial lawn - or loch, in this case.

I’ve also heard that when feeling sluggish from alcohol, a cold shock does the body good to get it moving.

This guy was very daring with all the fierce hypothermia in the lake.

I didn’t actually submerge myself entirely; I went up past my calves. The original idea was between Courtney and Laura, the girl from Switzerland. It’s quite slick once you get in the water, and the cold really slows you down, so everything feels sluggish. Both of the girls went completely in. Courtney has reported that jumping into water that cold makes your breath catch in your throat and your body seize up from the shock. She also felt entirely reinvigorated, at least once feeling returned to her body.

Our last real morning in Scotland was finished with a full Scottish breakfast from a cafe in the next town over, complete with blooming floral tea, and all the fixings. We sadly bid our companions farewell after that. We had a long way to go: the train back to Glasgow and then a short night spent in the city before our flight the next day. But to me, that was simply passing time. Our next stop was Ireland, and as far as countries go, that was home away from home for me.

Seriously, this is just fabulous.

We wanted to get some of the locals with us because they were so nice, but they were busy, and since we didn’t want to steal them and commit crimes, we left the country scot-free.

Also, this is Nessie. She wandered up while we were just hanging out on the shore.