Holly and I woke up at the crack of dawn, booked it out to Starbucks than waited for our tour bus. We were taking a tour of the West Highlands, Lochs, and Castles.

This tour was through a company called Rabbies. We get on our bus to find ourselves with maybe 10 other people and Shelby. Shelby Shelby Shelby.

Best. Tour. Guide. Ever.

She was wonderful. I’ve never seen anyone speak more passionately and honestly about their home. She said she only has one day to make us fall in love with her beautiful country. She was hilarious and brilliant.

She knows so much about Scottish history. She told us about how when the English came–

I’m gonna digress for a minute. There seems to be a lot of tension when it comes to the English. So many counties, including our own, don’t like the English. It just seem to be a common trend in Irelad and now Scotland. Even though they say “no hard feelings. It’s the 21 century” they really still crack jokes and aren’t fans. I think it’s funny. America is nosey and puts our nose in everyone’s business to help. At least we don’t try to take over and make you our property, eh?

Anyways, English come into Scotland with their Protestant ways. They cause clans to turn on clans and kick them off their land. Because of this, many Scottish people fled the country, moving to our new land. This is why there is such a huge population of Scottish blood in America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and randomly South Africa.

She asked if anyone on the bus had

Scottish blood and I raised my hand. She saluted me and said “welcome home.”

You could definitely see the difference between the highlands and the lowlands. Cattle were everywhere and the mountains came out of nowhere filled with trees, flowers and just green. It was beautiful. We stopped at a few castles and lochs. For anyone who cares a loch is a lake. Loch Ness is the most famous

Loch because of Nessie, the Loch Ness monster.

We learned loads about castles. Many people still live in them. If a family can no longer afford a castle, but willingly open it to the public (whether it’s a fee entrance or free) Scotland will maintain it. They want to preserve as much history as possible. I thought that was way cool.

By the way, Scotland has the cutest cattle in the world. I wish they all looked this way!!!

Through this entire tour we got so much history of Scotland and how she fought to get her independence back. I would tell you the awesome things she told us but it is so much history and all intertwined and would take forever to tell.

We learned all about Mary Queen of Scots. About becoming queen so young, being sent to France, Queen of two lands, having her husband killed, her son not caring if she got killed. It was fascinating.

We also learned all about Scotland’s true Braveheart is Robert the Bruce, not William Wallace like Hollywood had depicted. That was a great piece of history. Even drove past the battlefield. Like it was no big deal!

I can’t even explain how great this tour and history was!! She even played music. Each song was relevant to what we were talking about or where we were. It was fantastic. I knew one song! Haha! Thank you Made of Honor.

We stopped at Kilchurn Castle which is on Loch Awe in Glen Orchy. It’s now a ruin castle that was built in 1449 I think. This was owned by a man who belonged to the Campbell clan. I will talk more about that clan later. It was a beautiful.

So many pictures. It was beautiful! I loved it. From there we went to this cute small town for lunch. In this town was a castle that was used for a Christmas special in Downton Abbey, which I love!!

The family was home and still lived there so no exploring took place. It wasn’t worth the money for a few rooms.

This castle was also owned by a man of the Campbell clan. This clan was a clan that turned on another clan after being bribed by the English. In Scotland there’s a well known overall gentlemans agreement, you could call it. If the weather is shitty, you will take a person in, friend or enemy. The weather is so unpredictable that this was widely followed and recognized in Scotland. So enemies would be camped out 500 feet from each other or in someone’s home and battle would be put on hold for a better day. I think that’s very honorable.

This clan though took advantage of that and killed much of another clan. The clan was about 300 big, the one that was killed. They had refused to sign a allegiance to the English so the English wanted to prove how powerful they were. No one knows if they chose that clan because the chief signed a day late or because they were small with only 300. Either way, the Campbell clan signed allegiance to the English and then attacked this clan in their sleep. After spending 13 days being taken care of by them. Horrible!

A breaking of this understanding happened again with Robert the Bruce. The final battle, Scotland was out numbered. They were forced into war because Robert the Bruce’s brother told the English to give back the last castle that Scotland had to take back for victory or they would bring hell upon the castle and take it by force. Well the English decided to send over a thousand soldiers. Robert the Bruce thought his brother was an idiot but he had no choice but to fight.

The Scots knew they were out numbered. No matter how strong you are or weapons, numbers matter. Robert the Bruce was riding around on a small pony on the eve of battle, trying to give the best pep talk to his men. As I said before, your enemy could be camped 500 feet from you. An English soldier was practicing his jousting on his horse and looked over to see the King of Scotland without armor or weapons so close. He charged, his joust aimed at Robert the Bruce. Robert the Bruce saw him out of the corner of his eye and waited until the last moment. He had his horse side step having the man ride past him and then he pushed up so hard and high and pulled out his favorite weapon that no one could see and bashed his head in half.

Scotland won the war the next morning.

They say the soldiers fought like lions, and numbers meant nothing. Scotland had her freedom.

It was such an epic story I thought I was watching a movie. The detail, I could see it all. Shelby was a great story teller!

Our last stop was at Loch Lomond where I put my feet in the water- check! We stopped at sterling castle’s base and then headed back.

Once back Holly and I grabbed grub and passed out! It was a long day, but beautiful!

Our third day in Scotland was our last day with Raya. I’m totally sad she is going and am gonna miss her!

We slept in late, but eventually we all got up to find Edinburgh gloomy cold and rainy. We headed out to get some food. After the three of us ate and did some shopping, we decided to take the walking tour. We figured it was cold and rainy, there couldn’t be too many people.

This tour was a free walking comedy tour of Edinburgh. Our guide, whose name I don’t know, was pretty funny. He was dressed in a traditional kilt, which we have actually seen a lot of around here.

He was great, explaining he would tell us whatever he knows and if we ask a question he doesn’t know the answer to, he simply will say he don’t know. In the beginning asked if anyone in the group was a smart ass.  So I raised my hand. He said “Great! Haggle me. I love it, but I will haggle you back.” Fair game, challenge accepted.

Our first stop was in this car park between a bunch of fancy buildings. He said raise your hand if you have a gym membership of any sort. People raise their hands while Holly, Raya and I look at each other like “ha! nope.” The guy sees this and calls on Raya. There was a gold box on the ground in the middle of a parking space. He asks her to go on it and do jumping jacks. Raya, being a good sport does. Then he asks her to dance, he dances with her and also yells at her to stay on the gold box. Everyone is laughing. He asks us if Raya is a law abiding citizen. I mean we have only known Raya for 3 days. Well, in that time, we happen to have discovered the answer to that question. And now this is where I don’t tell you the story.

The guide thanks Raya and she comes back, everyone is laughing. He then tells us Raya has just broken the law and committed high treason. “No, you don’t get arrested for dancing in the street. But you do get arrested for dancing on a mans grave and you Raya have just danced on top of the grave of John Knox. A very important man to Scottish history.” Her jaw drops and everyone is kind of laughing. I chime in with a “And he’s burried in the middle of a car park?” He laughs. “No worries though, you are not Scottish therefore you can’t commit high treason so you will not be hanged.” He says. Everyone is laughing now.

He goes on to explain it use to be a cemetery and is now the court rooms. The highest profile cases were done in a building close to us. He also explains to us about the statue we are standing near. It was pretty cool. If, at least here in Scotland, a man is upon a horse as a statue and the leg is raised of the horse, he died a hero in battle. If all legs are down, he was a brave hero but died of natural causes. That was actually a really interesting fact to be able to note about every statue we saw.

He told is how the statue is made of lead and over the years the acid rain caused it to erode and make a hole in the mans head. The statue was filling up and beginning to move because it’s off balance so they drilled a hole for the water to go through. In the penis. “Ladies and Gentlemen the worlds only peeling statue!” He yells. Everyone is cracking up. He tells us how it’s hilarious they did this because on in Scotland media is not allowed into court rooms. So the set up outside and this statue is directly out front of the high profile case room. He said there’s been many times on the news you will see them reporting about a huge case and this statue in the background. He said one time there was a man who had been dropping his pants and walking around all over Scotland. Like this huge case of indecent exposure.. So the news is outside reporting on this and it rains a lot in Scotland and all you can see is this statue in the background with the horse looking like it’s peeing. Everyone at this point is cracking up. He says we can YouTube it, it’s true.

We continue our tour about the first fireman and how he invented the fire helmet. How he quit the army to be a fire fighter and originally it was looked down upon. The statue was near a church when we were looking at it but apparently back in the day they had it on a big hill. Then in 1996, I think, an episode of the Simpsons aired and Bart cut off the head of a statue. Two days later this guys head was cut off and missing.

To this day, they don’t know where the original head is. After this happened, for 4 years they would profit from this headless statue by charging people and allowing them to climb up and place their head on the statue and get a picture. After a while the council thought it was disrespectful so they gave him a new head and a new home. Haha!

We moved on to an area where he began to talk about torture and killings back in the day. He called upon Raya again and handcuffed her with old handcuffs. He began to explain about all the witch killings that happened in Edinburgh. As well as various ways they use to torture people. The Scots were brutal. He said they would handcuff your arms above you (using Raya as his example) and put you in a coffin fit for the body and shut the door. This door had twelve long spikes on the inside.

If that doesn’t do it for you, they upgraded. They had a similar device but with 24 spikes that when closed would stop about a foot from your body. Then, a man would crank a wheel on one side that caused the spikes to slowly move forward. He would crank it until it was about an inch into the body and then stop. Imagine, stuck in a box. Spikes in you at 24 different points on your body. Only an inch in, so you’re still alive and the man stops. That’s horrible enough. But not for them. The man would leave for 2 hours with the person left in the box. What would he do? Go out and sell tickets. Tickets to the towns people to come and crank the other side of the machine which caused the spikes to slowly expand outwards. There was a little box on the front so people could see the face. That’s absolutely horrible.

Another form was they would put a rat in a box with you, your arms handcuffed up. They would make it so the rat felt danger and the only way for the rat to escape would be to  burrow it’s way out. Through your stomach. To your chest. Out your mouth. But if you did something really bad they would put two rats in. Adding competition of survival to the rats.

Ever wonder where “the rat race of life” expression came from?

Yes, he’s holding a fake rat in front of her as he explains. I know it’s gross but it’s what we learned. He said he or anyone from Edinburgh alone is not proud of what happened but they can’t pretend it didn’t.

He was also very serious when talking about what happened with witches. Vague as well. They killed more witches in the city of Edinburgh alone than all of Europe combined. He wouldn’t tell us the exact number. He said numbers don’t matter because then it becomes a competition and all those people just become numbers. The true travesty of what happened gets lost.

He let that sink in. From the tour overall, by piecing it together, I gather it was millions.

There’s even a sign apologizing for killing the good witches.

In this tour I was also to realize there was a lot more literary history in Scotland than I ever realized.

There use to be a man in this city who by day was a good man. Donated to the church, would help anyone. A model citizen. By night he was a druggie, gambler and spent time in hostels.

They say the book Jackal and Hyde was written off this man. The idea of good and evil. But our tour guide doesn’t agree. Every villain has a good counterpart. They don’t walk around the city during the day screaming “I’m a bad guy!” No, he thinks Jackal and Hyde (side note since I didn’t make it clear, it was written here in Scotland) was based on the city. In the tour we got to see both the good and bad about Edinburgh. Both Jackal and Hyde. That it is in this time the city is choosing which side they want to be. And now it was our choice to decide where we thought Edinburgh fell.

It was a phenomenal tour. And free! The guy was so passionate about this city and Scotland.

That’s one thing I’ve noticed about the Scottish. They are so proud of who they are and their Scottish background. More than proud, they are honest. Whether it’s good or bad, they own up to it all. I got that not only from this tour but every interaction with Scottish people here. It’s quite admirable the pride and love they have for their country. Good and bad included.

I loved the tour.

Afterwards it was raining again so we grabbed dinner from an Italian place and then tea from Starbucks and went back to the hostel. Holly and I had an early day the next day. Tour to the highlands that required an 8:15 leaving time.

In our hostel we have 8 beds again. This place is much nicer than Dublin’s hostel, I actually think it’s my favorite hostel so far on this trip. We have made friends with Raya, a 22 year old from New Zealand who lives in England nannying. She actually has a really cool story, especially in regards to traveling and what she is doing. Her Dad is from Boston, giving her duel citizenship so she completed University in Virginia. She’s very nice and has an insanely cool story, much more than I’ve explained now.

Yesterday the three of us woke up early to go to the farmers market. The receptionist at the hostel said there is one not too far on Saturdays that she loves so we decided that it sounded fun. We walk all the way to this farmers market at 9:30 in the morning only to find ourselves facing maybe 20 booths on each side of a walk way. Needless to say we were kind of let down. We walked through it, looked at everything and decided to go for breakfast. We found some pub and the food was quite good.

We decided to go do the free walking tour but when we got there, there were SO many people. They turned us away because there was just too many people. We decided we would try a different day and began to walk around the city again. There doesn’t seem too much to do here but shop. There are tours and such too, but the prices rip a hole in your pocket 1) because it’s touristy season and 2) because it’s all in pounds. And pounds are horrible.

We wander into this store called Primark. Oh, Primark. I think this store was placed on Earth because somebody hates me and makes me want to buy great things. This store would be so bad for me in the U.S. it’s like target meets Forever 21. It’s mostly clothes but cheap and so cute! We spent time in there, Raya left to meet up with some other friends and then Holly and I looked up some info about tours.

We all eventually meet back up at the hostel around 4. We go to get info about a highlands tour but we couldn’t decide which one. Loch Ness is popular because of the Loch Ness monster, but you can’t actually do much. Holly and I eventually settled on a West highlands tour for Monday. Unfortunately Raya will be leaving Monday. The three of us decided to do Mary Kings Close which is an underground tour of Edinburgh, the history a bit, visuals of how Edinburgh use to be and supposedly a bit scary! We booked it for 9:30 that night.

We had time to kill so we started to look for food when it started to rain. Now we were running around Scotland in the rain. We were looking to grab a bite to eat before the tour and live music, but we found the closest form of shelter instead and ate at a place called Maggie Dickons. We left there, headed back to the hostel to get pants and jackets because we were all in shorts as it was hot that morning and underground tours sound cold.

The tour wasn’t what we expected in terms of fear. The lady who recommended it to us made it seem much scarier. This just told of old stories and one ghost story about a girl named Annie who tugs on people’s shirts sometimes. Because we learned that and because Raya is a little bit of a nervous nelly, Holly and I later tugged on Raya’s shirt which actually turned out to be quite funny. She got a bit of a scare before realizing it was us. We weren’t able to take pictures on this tour, so I’ve got nothing to show!

It was really cool, learning about how the Black Plague worked and how it affected Scotland. There was some cool stuff but not what we had expected. That’s okay though, we had fun.

Since earlier we had struggled so much to find live music, we decided now it was only 10:30, so we would go grab a pint and try again. We were wandering around confused a bit because there didnt seem to be any people anywhere near us. Not like the night Holly and I came in. But it was a Saturday night. Confused, Holly asked a guy who was a bike taxi who pointed us to a different direction.

Boy we found people.

It was mostly clubs and dancing, not what we wanted. Everything here says they have live music but no place actually did. It made me miss Ireland so much. As we are walking past the place where we ate before headed down the hill, a guy comes up to Raya, from behind kind of places his hand on her back and says “hello miss, I’m not going to hurt you” very nicely and of course Raya jumps, Holly and I look over like what is going on to see the same guy jump when Raya jumped. We were all still kind of walking when this happened so it kind of looked like a movie how it all happened. I know typing this out, it sounds much creepier than it was. We were on a main street with loads of people around.

Back to my story, so I make the comment of “well that wasn’t creepy!” And we are joined by another guy. Everyone is kind of laughing now, the guy keeps apologizing, sorry for scaring Raya. We are calling him creepy as he is explaining he just wanted to talk to her. We keep walking down this hill and they’re asking what we’re doing and if we wanna join them to the club.

We talk about how we don’t know them so they take time to tell us their names and we spend about 15 minutes while they try to guess our names. They got Holly’s randomly first guess first try but took forever to get mine and Raya’s, clearly. But long story that sounds creepy and isn’t, short, we had just met Jordan and Stephen. Probably the two funniest Irishmen in Scotland. Yep, they were Irish.

They’re 20 and 20 something, I can’t remember, living in Scotland for a bit doing electrical work. The five of us ended up going back up the hill to an Irish pub for a pint. This place was packed! We had a blast. Met two girls from Texas, cowboy boots and all. The DJ played born in the USA and I’m pretty sure everyone who wasn’t born in the USA knew the words better than us Americans.

The DJ played loads of fun music and everyone was just dancing around. There were random people singing with us, dancing goofy, and Holly even got the two Irishman and some other random guy to sing along and to us a Westlife song. Now, Holly and I have no idea who Westlife is but from what we have gathered its basically an old British boy band equivalent to the backstreet boys.

It was a blast. No body cared how they look in this pub. Not a soul. After that place closed we ended up going to the club for a bit. Mind you, we were still in what we went to our tour in. So leather

Jackets, pants, cardigans. Raya was just in shorts and a t shirt! We stood out but it was good fun.

Walking home Stephen and Justin were asking if everyone was happy and we said yes. Then I ask if he’s happy. Just replies with “Yes I’m happy. We’re Irish, we’re always happy.” What a great life philosophy.

This picture was taken at 10:30 at night in Edinburgh.

To get to Edinburgh involved a bus to Belfast to catch a bus to the ferry to take a ferry to the boat. The boat to another bus to walking to our hostel.

Holly and I were VERY tired. We got on our bus and after some funny shenanigans, we were on our way. The drive up to Northern Ireland was gorgeous. It’s what I think of when I think of movies. Green grass and sheep on hillsides. Absolutely gorgeous. But British flags appeared and the differences between the North and South became evident.

We got on our “ferry” to Scotland. I say ferry in quotes because what they call a ferry is what I would call a mini cruise ship. This boat was unbelievable. Free iPads with free wifi to use. Xbox systems with Kinnect set up, free to use. Movie viewings, all free. All kinds of comfy seats and areas to relax.

We get to Scotland and the view is outstanding. So much more green and trees than Ireland I think. We get on our bus and the drive was a long the water and gorgeous. But because of this it was windy roads, so I thew my headphones in and shut my eyes to sleep. But before that I was listening to the Scottish people on the bus talk. I have to PAY attention when they talk. If I didn’t, it didnt even sound like English. Those accents man!

I wake up when we stop, as does Holly and everyone seems to be getting off. We get our bags and walk in to the bus station almost instantly to realize we are at the wrong station. We immediately turn around to watch our bus drive away.

Here we are again, finding ourselves in a transportation pickle.

In that moment a man I a uniform is passing us. Holly stops to ask him and clarify of we are in fact at the wrong place. He confirms it and tells us his bus is going to Edinburgh and thinks we can join his. In that moment another worker walks up eating a burger and asks what’s going on. Holly says we got off at the wrong stop, I say we’re tourists and he was so nice he said “ah! Don’t worry about that.” That bus driver tells that worker and the worker says “yeah, that should be fine. We can do that if they can each pay 100 pounds each” and he shoots a look at me. I could tell he was just kidding but I give him the face of yeah right. I look at Holly who has the kind of smile on that says “I can’t understand what he is saying but I don’t want to be rude.” She couldn’t understand his accent. Then the worker, driver and I all laugh. I say “point me in the right direction, I’d rather walk there” and then the worker laughing says “no, that should be fine, no problem. Maybe not 100 pounds but a kiss for the driver!” Holly understood that part. We all laughed, and Holly and I got back on track.

We get to Edinburgh at 10:30. We need wifi to get the directions to the Hostel. We are trying to connect. We also need to convert money because we have to pay the hostel in their local currency. That wasn’t happening that late. Tensions were a bit high. But eventually we got the directions to the hostel and just needed to find the starting point. So we are now walking out of the bus station, ready to pick a direction to walk when a man passes by and asks if we know where the bus station is. We laugh and say yes and point to where it is. As he begins to walk away, I say “hey wait, worth a shot, do you know where Princes street is?” he laughs and says yes. He points to it, says he has two maps, pulls them out, orients us and lets us keep the maps. What a nice guy!

It’s so late now but because Scotland is so North of the equator, it’s still very light out! It’s crazy. That’s when I took that above picture. We turn on princes street and there are people everywhere! A busy busy city. It was so exciting!

We make it to our hostel, check in, and leave to find food. End up eating pizza because it’s the only thing open and call it a night.

Today, our first full day, we do what we have been doing everywhere and just explored on foot! This morning in the hostel we made friends with Andrew from Utah and he joined us for the day. The buildings here are unbelievable. The architecture everywhere is gorgeous. I did some family research since I Scottish and found which clan my family belongs to, so that was awesome! We watched a street performer, went to dinner where the waitress thought my first name was a last name. After we ate, we went to a marker to buy water where the Scottish man behind the counter bopped me on the head with a plastic hammer after learning we were American and thanked us for not voting for Romney because he would have started world war three. I swear this happened.

Tomorrow we are going on a walking tour and to the farmers market tomorrow!