"feel the rhythm, feel the ride, get on down, it's bobsled time"

we had a short wait in glasgow so we stopped for a cup of tea at the famous willow tea rooms, designed by charles rennie macintosh. next we were on to oban. our first day we decided to spilt up and do our own thing. jules saw highland cows, some castles, and standing rocks by landrover. erica saw the islands of mull, iona, and staffa, by boat and bus. the next day we went on a tour of the oban whisky distillery, climbed up to and explored mccrae's tower, and then decided to do some retail therapy (we tried on matching dresses).

we headed north for the isle of skye, making our main location the small town of portree. our first day we took a hike while singing songs from joseph and the amazing technicolour dreamcoat. we also explored the town, and while trying to find the aros centre, a wrong turn took us to a marine store, where the manager who had plenty of children was kind enough to give us a ride to where we were trying to get. we decided to be brave and rent a car so we could see more of the island than we would be able to see without a car. our route took us to the old man of storr, kilt rock, the quiraing (where we did a 2 hour hike up and around a mountain), duntulm castle, the museum of island life, and dunvegan castle. at night we played trivial pursuit with dennis and jim (our mountain climbing buddies from wales). the last day was spent doing nothing.

our next stop was inverness. we arrived early in the day and headed straight for the culloden battlefield. since erica was there last they built a multimillion £ visitors facility and we were provided with gps navigated audio guides. back in inverness, we were hungry, and decided it was time to try haggis. that night we decided to celebrate julia's fake birthday. we met up with some people we had met at the hostel and danced the night away at johnny foxes. sometime over the course of the night we were invited and accepted the invitation to jump in loch ness the next morning, on camera. it was cold. after warming up we headed for drumnadrochit, where we saw urquhart castle, and some lame nessy exhibitions. while waiting for the bus we were ambushed by an irish looking fellow, who turned out to be a lonely amerian named justin. he had booked a romantic bike tour with his girlfriend. too bad she broke up with him a week before they left. we invited him to inverness and promised to show him a fun night. we went out to hootenany. it was a hoot. some of the people we met those nights will be in edinburgh when we arrive there in a few days so the party shall continue!

we went to pitlochry. all we did was laundry. and watched cool runnings.

all for now