We drove through more isolated and austere wilderness as we left Eilean Donal Castle to the northeast and watched as the scenery transitioned to forested valleys between low mountains with new lochs around every bend.
Loch Ness sits in the center of the country along a giant fault that runs southwest to northeast as if God took a giant axe and had tried to chop Scotland in half. Somewhere along the way people figured out with just a little bit of effort, they could connect the lochs along this fault with a series of canals and cut of a few hundred miles of transit through rough seas around the north coast of Scotland. There were a series of locks at the southern end of Loch Ness that entertained us for a while inbetween our fish and chips lunch.
We then tried really hard to spot Nessie in the lake as we drove to the main town on its shores. We visited a nice museum that laid out all the evidence for Nessie over the years from the original eye witness accounts of a huge creature crossing the road in front of a car to the famous black and white silouhette of a nect and head of a sea monster. Callum was pretty convinced that Nessie was out there after watching all the videos.
We didn't linger too long as the loch was not nearly as scenic the Isle of Skye we had just departed that morning. We continued on the main road up to Inverness and then hooked south to make it to Aviemore and our hotel before dinner time.
Aviemore is a national park in Scotland with skiing and other adventure activities in its forested mountains. We were staying at a large Hilton resort that included a nice restaurant and a children's play zone with childcare each night for dinner. We enjoyed the more relaxed atmosphere as we didn't really have too much to do in the area, just chill.
We did manage to visit an open air folk museum that took us through history seeing how Scottish people lived over the centuries...and it was pretty bleak. Even a hundred years ago many people outside the large cities were just barely eeking out an existence with the poor soil and short growing season in the summer
Onward we pushed to our last stop on the tour, Edinburgh. We had found a nice Airbnb in the north part of town along the harbor, and we decided we wanted to sneak in a quick bit of sight seeing before checking in. So we swung by the Rosslyn Chapel just south of town for a quick see.
It was made famous by Dan Brown's popular book The Da Vinci Code with all of his fanciful embellishments on the hidden meanings of its cryptic carvings and decorations. I can say that you could definitely let your imagination run wild inside the chapel as there was hardly a square inch of stone that was not intricately carved.
The kids enjoyed all the interactive exhibits in the gift shop and behaved well during our fascinating guided tour. We then made our way to the flat and had a bit of adventure figuring out parking. Tyler got a little lost and entered the apartment building from the wrong set of stairs. He found a flat on the same floor with the same number and tried unsuccessfully to open the door. A quite peeved man opened the door to Tyler's great surprise and wanted to know what he was doing.
The next day we had lined up a private tour of Edinburgh castle from a friend of a friend at Tyler's job. He brought us in for free and gave us a really nice one hour blitz around the ancient structure at the top of hill in Edinburgh.
It was a blustery and cold rainy day and we lurched from shelter to shelter as we took in the brooding city shrouded in fog and mist.
We meandered our way down the main street past ancient merchant houses and gothic churches to arrive at Hollyrood Palace, the Queen's estate in the city.
It was a really fun tour complete with a ruined abbey at the end.
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