And Turn Her Down the Rocky Road

Having left Talisker, the road out from Skye was significantly easier and quicker. Part of that is getting used to driving a car that's much nicer than what I drive at home on narrow roads on the other side while lumber trucks trundle along. Part of that was Alice and Marina's Co-Driving experience using our finely tuned "How's my left? How's my left?" system, which I really think is probably basically what happens during actual rallies. Part of that its that for the first time since we got to Scotland, it's actually nice out. And part of that is that we have a flight to catch.

We made good time getting off the islands and were able to stop a few times along the way. There are a bunch of little pull-off points on the way back, I assume expressly for the purpose of getting cleanly off the road while you gape at the majesty of the place. We swung by the Eileen Donan Castle, where a surprisingly large number of people were eating lunch in the parking lot and we made it to Fort William, where we stopped for lunch.

Potatoes, and because I'm a ridiculous tourist and this was our last meal in Scotland, I went with the haggis, which is fine. It's like sausage. I enjoyed it, but I don't know where this "This food is strange and alien" pearl-clutching attitude comes from. Or, rather, I don't know how to square the "but it's innards" attitude with the fact that hot dogs exist and are sold widely. Everyone calm down.

The rest of the drive was relatively uneventful. We went back past Loch Lomond, where we encountered traffic (due to a ridiculous lumber truck that was too wide for the road) and made it back to Alice's dorm.

Here's the issue. It was around 7. Flight's at 8:45, but Alice is going to run around Europe for a bit after this, so she needed to pack. I returned the car on my own (completely without the How's my Left? system to which I'd become accustomed) and ran back to Alice's dorm. Marina and Alice were finishing packing, and early on in the process, we'd decided to try to check one of our bags for the flight to Dublin, so that we could bring all the things we bought.

We flagged down a cab, had to stop by the car rental place to check on something because I'm a paranoid idiot, and headed off to the airport, arriving at about 8:20. Way, way later than we'd intended.

Baggage check in was closed.

We went through security, which was speedy and efficient, but we couldn't check our bag. Which had a bottle of whisky in it.

I want to say that the security guys were reasonable. They had to confiscate it, but told us we'd be able to pick it up (or have someone pick it up) for a £20/day storage fee.

And I don't know. We were upset about it. I don't know why we were upset. But we were.

It's not like it's the money, really. It was an expensive bottle, one that I wouldn't normally have allowed myself to buy, but attempts to save it would have probably been more expensive than the effort was worth (that is, pay for one of Alice's friends to take a cab to the airport, pick it up, and take it back). It's not that. It's that we'd just done this thing that a few days ago had seemed like it might not be possible. We'd made it to Skye, through the mountains and the hail and the unfamiliar driving and we had done it even though we could have gotten a tour bus to do this for us. We'd rushed to get back, and it was tight but seemed so doable. And avoidable; the decision to bring it at all was a last-minute one based on a very rosy idea of how long it'd take to get to the airport.

It's silly. The bottle we'd bought was available at Binny's (though it was a cut that you'd have to ask them to order, but still, available). And it's not like we even drink, really. But for some reason, after the stress of the drive and the rush to the airport, it stung. It wasn't about the object; that's silly. And I'm aware that this sounds really, really dumb and that of all the things to possibly worry about or be disappointed by, this is way, way far down on even the most banal list of things-that-you-absolutely-shouldn't-worry about. It was a souvenir. It doesn't show up on any sort of hierarchy of actual needs I'm aware of, and of all the problems to have while traveling, I'd pick this one every time.

We got through security, we went to the gate and asked if there were anything they could do, but no. So we boarded the plane, we flew to Dublin, and we got off toward the line of taxis.

We found one, and it was great to be both on the left side of the road and not to be the one driving. We mentioned where we were headed, and the cab driver seemed astonished that we'd chosen to fly into Dublin.

"Tomorrow's Good Friday. Everything will be closed."

That hadn't even occurred to me, and so the first thing that we encountered upon landing in Ireland is that, as the one Catholic member of our merry band, I'd failed to foresee that.

Oh well, we're in Dublin and will see whether the cab driver was right about everything being closed tomorrow.

Hunt the Hare

So, a bunch of things happened. In the end, we're safe in Dublin, though it got a little close and emotional at the end. But let's start in the morning.

We woke up at around 8 and started getting ready for breakfast. Historically, when we've been staying somewhere that includes breakfast (which for the most part means toast and coffee and surly co-inhabitants of the inn), getting down to breakfast is not even sort of a priority. Here, we were in a legit B&B with a lovely innkeeper who we'd already sort of angered by showing up past check in (which is totally reasonable; she was very, very forgiving, and we were lucky in that aspect as the other option would have been to just not let us stay). She was cooking breakfast and she'd mentioned 8:30, so damn it, we were going to be downstairs at 8:30.

So, things that are different about this from our usual lodging experience: Home cooked meal in an adorable little dining room filled with home-made jams and marmalades.

Things that are the same: surly co-tenants.

Everyone just sort of kept to themselves, which is absolutely fine by me. I have never been one for talking to strangers while eating eggs, and I'm cool with having that be what happened.

We mentioned our plans to the innkeeper: head up to Dunvegan Castle (the ancestral home of the MacLeods, meaning mostly that if I were going to make a Highlander joke, I should have done it here), then head down to Glasgow to make our flight at 8:45pm. We'd have to miss going to a series of waterfalls called the Fairy Pools, but the map we had actually showed where the castle was and ignored the pools, so that's what we planned on.

The innkeeper disagreed, and I think I should note that her sentiment seemed in line with most of the other Scottish Tourism folks we talked to.

Unless we were MacLeods, she suggested, the castle's a castle. Do the Fairy Pools instead.

I like that people who are directly involved with Scottish Tourism and recommending things for wayward tourists are just very done with castles. I hope, at one point, that I'll be able to return the favor; I'll get someone walking up to me and asking me my opinion for where to go, and offering up a suggestion of what the Travel Book suggested and I'll get to say "You know what? Navy Pier's fine and all, but do something else."

We took her suggestion (and a map she made, which had all of the points of interest we wanted to see on it) and headed south to the Fairy Pools.

Another dinner-table-width road, but to be honest I'm getting kind of used to those, and this one was only four miles. And I think we were unprepared. We pulled into the parking lot and headed down a dirt path.

Well, mud path. It's been raining for days.

And again, I'm not a good enough writer (or photographer) to really explain the scenery.  It's waterfalls and mountains and streams and a few little rock-bridges and you should go there.

It was absolutely gorgeous. Our shoes did not agree. We underestimated the amount of hiking required, and so my sneakers are in dire-but-stable condition at the moment. Marina's boots were pretty well coated (though more easily cleanable). So, we decided, let's stop at the nearest place where there's probably a restroom to clean up before we start our trip south.

And because we're in a magical wonderland filled with merriment, the closest place that we knew fit that description and was open to the public was the Talisker Distillery, the only whisky distillery on the island.

Side note: when we were delayed by the hail and the snow, there were a few things we were each a little sad about not getting to get to do or see. Marina was a little sad because if we flipped over into a ditch, we probably wouldn't get to buy some local-dyed yarn. Alice was sad because she'd been looking forward to the Fairy Pools (though until this morning we didn't have much of an idea of how to get to them). And I was sad because I'd gone to Scotland and was going to be leaving without going to a distillery.

But we'd bought yarn in Portree. We'd managed time for the Fairy Pools by cutting out the just-another-castle. And now we were going to Talisker! Everybody wins.

The next tour wasn't for a few hours, but we were able to walk around a bit, and there's a bit of an exhibition on how they do things in the visitor's center, so that was nice. And then, Alice and Marina convinced me to buy a bottle of Talisker to take home as a gift, but that we should really get going. So we did, we made plans to open it once Alice returned to Chicago in a few months, and were on our way.

Road to Skye: Part 2

It's a new day, and we're doing much better than last night. We stopped in for coffee at Costa and headed off to the Tourist Information Center, where we met a very nice woman who had never been where we're going and had no advice for how to get there. We'd heard there was a smoother, flatter road that went to a ferry in Mallaig, but the ticket website appeared to indicate that the early morning ferry was sold out, and that the first available ferry would be at 4pm. 

That's fine. Skye's roads aren't going to be any better, so I might as well get used to it. Part of the issue is that the car we were driving is significantly wider than the car I normally drive, so I don't really have a good sense of how far to the left my car goes. Also, the roads are generally pretty narrow, and there are huge lumber trucks that come flying down them as close to the far right of their lane as possible. 

So we worked out a system. Marina and Alice served as both navigators (in the sense of watching where the GPS was demanding we go) and an externalization of my sense of where the left of the car was. This was accomplished through the following exchange whenever a truck went flying by. 

Ryan (panicked): "How's my left? How's my left?"

Marina and Alice: "It's fine. Still fine."

Repeat for every truck. 

We headed off into the highlands, passing Glenfinnan, which had amazing views and also the bridge from Harry Potter (the Glenfinnan Viaduct, if you're into the proper names for things), which everyone was excited about. There's also a monument across the road topped with a statue of an anonymous Highlander, though to be honest I was too worried about my left, even when stopped, to learn more about that until later.

By "anonymous Highlander", I'm going to allow myself to make the obvious and overdone joke.
It's Christopher Lambert.

I should note that now that we were a little more confident in driving, the Highlands are just ridiculously gorgeous. These are almost certainly both the largest mountains I've seen to date and the closest I've interacted with them. 

We drove along, following the GPS, noting that the roads aren't really that bad. And then the GPS had a big straight line.

It had taken us to Mallaig, to get on the ferry.

That's total drive time if you go from Fort William to Portree by going an hour out of the way first.

This is why we shouldn't rely on the GPS. 

To be fair to Garmin, it's not like it's a bad assumption. There are usually ferries every half hour, and Mallaig is closer than driving up to Invergarry and turning to go through Kyle of Lochalsh and the Skye Bridge. But they only do that on the Summer Schedule, which starts Friday. When we'll be in Dublin.

Nothing to do but turn around, head to Fort William, and continue up through the more dangerous course. We were still able to use the GPS by putting in much smaller sections of highway (so, rather than Fort William to Portree, we entered Fort William to Invergarry, then Invergarry to Kyle of Lochalsh, then across to Kyleakin, because not doing so resulted in the GPS screaming at us to turn around and get on the ferry that wasn't running).

We actually made much better time going back. The roads were starting to feel like the Western Pennsylvania roads I grew up driving on. Aside from the "drive on the left" thing, it felt more familiar.

We managed to make it to Kyleakin, which apparently has otters. Or, at least, statues of otters and emblems of otters. So some connection to the otter.

See? I would not lie to you about otters.

The occupant of the ever-present Tourist Information Center advised that our plan to go up to Portree and then around the island to get to our accommodations in Dunvegan on the other side was fine, and agreed that driving on the side you're not used to is confusing. He also recommended that we drive out onto the Trotternish peninsula to get a look at a few of the sights, and then cut across the road that runs across the middle.

We drove up to Portree, bought some yarn, got dinner and continued on.

In the next post, adventures around the Trotternish Peninsula, and finally making it to Dunvegan.

Trotternish

I should, I guess, discuss the geography of what we're doing here. Skye is sort of like a big hand/claw sort of thing, with our point of entry being near the wrist, where the Skye Bridge connects it to the rest of Scotland. Off of the palm, there are a number of little peninsulas, with roads looping out to encircle them. There's a large-ish (in the sense that it was largely two-or-so lanes) road that connects most of the towns and much, much smaller roads that head off in other directions.

When we last left off, we were driving into Portree (going around the palm counter-clockwise), and I cannot overstate how exciting it was to be at something that's sort of like a destination. The roads in Portree were small, but for once, there were buildings and curbs to the far side of my car that I was so worried about, and not cliffs and rocks and the sea.

We managed to make it to a parking lot (A lot! Full of other cars! That weren't going ninety miles an hour on the side I don't expect them to be on!), learned that parking was free because we were still in the off season (as indicated by the ferry that didn't exist) and proceeded to tourist the hell out of the local shops. 

What followed was a flurry of commemorative magnets (of the bridge that got us onto Skye, which for us had gone from "fun side-trip" to "mystical promised land" after the realities of trying to drive several hours in a strange country set in) and skeins of yarn (dyed nearby, and potentially made from some of the sheep that I'd learned to dodge, though no one would guarantee that) and langoustines, which I really think that if you're going to serve, "Norway Lobsters" is a more exciting name than "langoustines". 

We had been advised to check out the western side of the Trotternish Peninsula, then circle back down, cutting across the road that bisected the landmass and continue on to Dunvegan, where we were staying. So we did that. 

And I can't actually describe what it looked like. I thought about trying, and a better writer (or even someone who wrote about travel more than once every four years) could do it, but I can't. 

It was silly. Let's go with that. 

We were able to get out of the car in a few designated pull off spaces (which were every few hundred yards, because whoever made this tiny road realized that a bunch of tourists are going to do exactly that). Past the Old Man of Storr, stopping at the Lealt Gorge (where we may have gotten paranoid about some other tourists seemingly hanging out next to our car a little too much as we were out looking at things) and up through to Kilt Rock, which had the actual rock, a few big signs about a dinosaur they'd found near the rock and a Scottish Terrier because apparently we were in a tourism ad.

The Lealt Gorge. Just off to the right, people looking at the things in our car.

We're staying at a B&B, so after leaving Kilt Rock we thought it would be best to get to Dunvegan before it was too late, in part so that we were able to check in, and in part because while the 1.5 lanes of road were fine in the daylight, we were very nervous about driving around in the dark. So we took the advice of the tourism guy from Kyleakin. We took the cross-peninsula road.

This was a bad idea.

As it turns out, the road across the peninsula is a less-than-one-lane road that's more of an asphalt hiking trail where there's really no point in having a turn if it isn't a hairpin. We were on the Quiraing, a flat-out gorgeous hillside that a friend who we'd consulted about the trip before going had hiked around and which was bounded on either side either by very steep drop-offs, sizeable ditches and just a lot of sheep. More sheep than I'm usually comfortable driving through.

Pictured: Terror

We made our way painfully slowly through the six miles of seriously narrower than most parking spaces terrain, looking up from time to time to take in the gorgeous views but for the most part terrified about what would happen if we hit a ditch, or that we'd continue to get lost and wind up on this dinner-table-width path in the dark. We made it, passing one other vehicle (a delivery truck for a brewery, which seemed to be doing fine), and wound up winding through a bunch of tiny mountainside roads that weren't on the map until we made it to the highway. 

Well, "highway".

Unfortunately, it was late. We sped on to Dunvegan where we were greeted by our mildly-perturbed but really astonishingly pleasant considering we were showing up an hour after check-in B&B host, shown to our room and collapsed from the strain of actually having made it here alive. 

I feel awful about showing up late, but we did it. We drove to Skye. And I didn't get us run over by a lumber truck. Or a swarm of sheep. Sheep travel in swarms, right?

Tomorrow, we get to do what took us two days in around six hours in order to not miss the flight to Dublin.

Road to Skye: Part 1

I am writing this having survived the first half of our journey.

That's the most important part.

We picked up a car from Budget (which had some attendant confusion over how much they'd wanted to charge when we booked the car, versus how much they wanted to charge now that we were picking the car up) and were presented with a Mercedes-Benz A180 with the steering wheel on the right-hand side and very little instruction beyond that.

In the city, it actually wasn't too bad. It's a bit disorienting, but we were able to make it through more or less by driving infuriatingly slowly, following the cars in front of us and praising the miracles of the divided highway, which allowed me to pretend I was still on the side of the road that I've driven my entire life.

We managed to get to Stirling Castle, continuing our Castle Tour of Scotland and if I'm being honest, I think we had a better time there than in Edinburgh. The weather was much better, and the crowd was significantly smaller which helped. A short lunch at the castle-adjacent cafe and we were off into the Highlands.

Here's the thing about what we attempted. It's disorienting to drive on the left, with the car set up differently. It's disorienting to drive through the mountains. And it's disorienting to drive through hail.

So, yeah.

We took a small detour to Loch Lomond, but the weather had turned against us and we were unable to actually get out and appreciate it. Oh well, onward and upward.

It went reasonably ok for the most part, though I was driving roughly half the speed limit, infuriating well meaning Scottish drivers who just wanted to get on their way. Happily, they were able to pass and drive off like madmen. That's fine. It was all going well until a long stretch through the Ben Nevis range where we briefly skidded in what was now snow. No big deal, no damage, just a bit of a scare. By a bit of a scare, I mean we all sort of panicked for a while and I didn't know if I was going to be able to get us either to Skye or back to Glasgow. Maybe we'd just set up camp in the rental car and live on the mountain.

Once we got up the courage to keep going, we decided to take the hit on the B&B that we'd booked, and stopped in the next town we came to, which was Fort William.

Happily, there was room at the Travelodge and a nifty little seafood restaurant called the Crannog on the water, and a place to park the car where I didn't have to drive it anymore for the night.

Urgh. Onward to Skye in the morning, though I'm nervous about how we'll get back in time.

Scotland Trip: Edinburgh, Part 1

Oh hey, it's time for Edinburgh. Edinbrurur. Brubururuh.

As it turns out, the bus system between Glasgow and Edinburgh is pretty straightforward and self-explanatory. Pay some money while still jet-lagged. Sit on a bus for an hour. Get off in a daze near a Tesco.

After going into the Tesco to stock up on provisions (which for the purposes of this trip meant ridiculous chocolate bars and variously flavored chips), we headed up to Edinburgh Castle to begin our day.

Here's the thing about historically important sites; they tend to be really inconvenient to get to. We went through this during the trip to Greece, where all of the really interesting pars are located on big steep hills made of marble. Edinburgh Castle is not on a hill made of marble, but it is on a really big hill and I'm convinced we took the steepest route to the top (evidenced later by our relatively easy hike up the Royal Mile).

Steepness aside, I presume the castle warded off invaders with awful weather and a really long, really slow moving line for admission. Admission lines are to be expected, but something about the outdoor nature of this one, followed by the outdoor nature of much of the castle, meant that by the time we got our tickets (and a touristy guidebook, because we've sort of stopped bothering with the pretense that we're not the most touristy tourists), the main goal was "find somewhere in this historical marvel where it's even sort of warm."

Which was good. We found a room with a model of the castle and a bunch of explanations of how historic everything was, but most critically, a small space heater. Happily, at this point we were able to look through the guidebook and found an entry on something called the "One O'Clock Gun", which is apparently a piece of artillery that's fired at 1pm. 

I say happily, because it meant we were slightly less startled. Still pretty startled, but a little less. There was a crowd gathering around, while a man in uniform prepared the gun, then stepped back to look at a clock, then went back up to the gun with a pocket watch, then fired the gun. Which is really loud. Everyone standing around had no form of ear protection, and we took our cue from them without really considering that everyone here is a tourist who has no idea how loud this will be.

The answer is really loud. 

We toured through the rest of the castle, encountering a choir in the Great Hall and walking through an exhibit about the Honours of Scotland (which was full of wax figures that were a little off-putting, but well enough put together as far as exhibits go) and headed off into town to find lunch.

Scotland Trip: Post 2

I always think I'm going to be better at jet lag than I actually am.

"It's only a six hour shift", I'll tell myself. "Sure, it'll be like being up all night, but I've done that before as recently as, let's say, 2004 (which is coincidentally when I took quantum).

I was wrong.

We arrived in Glasgow after a trip on a plane that was relying on propellers to get us here, which I had not considered before and which I'd probably have been more irrationally afraid of if I'd been in any sort of condition to comprehend what was going on.

Thankfully, I was out of it enough that the 45 minute flight was over before I could worry about it too much.

We managed to check in and intended to meet up with my sister-in-law, who's been here for a few months now and will be our guide for Glasgow and Edinburgh. It was noon. The day was ahead of us, and the sky was bright.

And then it was like 3:30.

I'm still very tired, but we were able to eventually get up and head out with Alice and got a nice walking tour of the University of Glasgow, a revelation in that the subway was evidently shut down for Sunday, a pleasant cab ride to the Glasgow Necropolis (which we'd even have been able to visit if we hadn't slept until it closed) and a bunch of walking through a shopping district, before making our way back to Ox and Finch (where we had a bunch of small plates, and also some fries) and back to the hotel in preparation for Edinburgh.

Scotland Trip: Post 1

I have no idea how we're going to be awake at all this week.

It's currently around 12:30am as far as I'm concerned, but because Dublin is apparently closer than I thought it was, we're roughly an hour away from it being 7:30 in the morning and being corralled off of this plane. My position has long been that I hate long flights, but this whole "leave at 7pm, have the cabin lights dim for roughly an hour, and suddenly it's early morning and you haven't slept" seems like it might take some getting used to.

But hey, it's about time to be tired and trying to figure out the inner workings of the airport in Dublin so that we can get on another plane.

On the plus side, apparently the babies on Chicago to Dublin flights are remarkably well behaved. So we've got that going for us.