My last few days in Scotland Justin and I went up to Inverness, the city at the end of the Ness river. The first night we spent some time just exploring the city, ate a real good dinner and all of that. The city is pretty neat, and not completely tourist-centric. The center of town, on top of a hill overlooking the Ness river is this Inverness Castle. It’s actually a modern castle, I believe most of the construction took place in the 1800’s. It is used as a district court.

In the evening we climbed that hill to catch a different view of the city and see the sunset.

The next day we did something pretty foolish. We rented some bikes from a local convenience store, thinking we would bike up to Urqhardt Castle on Loch Ness. It’s about 40 miles round trip, and we figured we’d be fine… even though neither of us had biked in a long time. I figured it’s a big lake, so it couldn’t be too bad. Probably pretty flat. The route it turns out, was actually pure mountain biking… We rode along a ridge above the Loch! Wow though, such a crazy time. Here are some shots from the trip up. The first one is a shot going up the first mountain, where we almost quit, overlooking Inverness. Mile 3 or so…

Here’s some of the woods we were biking through:

After the first few hours we finally caught a view of the loch from the top of the ridge.

Biking down into town, off the ridge took about an hour by itself and that was mostly downhill. We caught our first view of our final destination, Urquhart Castle on Loch Ness. It’s in the center in the first picture, on that finger of land extending into the lake. The second one is a shot from the hill above Urquhart.

So that bike trip was a little to much for us! We got there around 3:30 in the afternoon, and everything in Scotland closes around 5 or 6, so we ended up taking a cab back. The next day we took the train back to Edinburgh, chilled out for the afternoon, and I left for Arusha, Tanzania that evening.

Thursday we visited the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and it was wild. I don’t really know what to say about this, so here is a lake:

Here are some pictures of Rhododendrons for my dad!

And finally some random shots of the gardens!

That’s all for the gardens. Today I took my first real train ride, from Edinburgh to Inverness, a town on the edge of Loch Ness. Train rides are sweeeeeet, saw some great views and what not, and I was sitting at a table and everything. It looks like tomorrow I’ll finally get my photo with Nessie!

The past week we spent in town. I saw a whole lot of the city, ate some fish and chips, went out a couple nights. Last night after dark we walked to the top of the hill the city’s observatory is on — absolutely beautiful! It doesn’t get completely dark at night during the summer here. That and the streetlights let me see the city a whole new way.

Anyway, we spent time just walking through the city as well as seeing specific sights. It’s really gorgeous here; most of the buildings adhere to a particular style, there are building codes regulating the hight of structures, and its unbelievably clean. So here is a pretty random assortment of what all I ran into. I’ll start with some random shots of streets I liked a lot. The first one is right outside Justin’s house, on the way to Arthur’s Seat.

This next is above Waverly Bridge, where I first got off the airport shuttle in Edinburgh.

Walking in town, we passed a couple parks, a few graveyards, and a lot of churches. Here are two churches I especially liked:

The graveyards are peppered randomly around the city, the oldest stone’s I saw were from the early 1800’s. Here’s a shot of one cemetery:

One of the specific sights we stopped at was an Admiral Nelson memorial. This was a stone tower, resembling a light house or something, on top of a hill overlooking the center of town.

It cost 3 pounds to climb this thing, so here are the first views I paid for. (The only ones, so far) The first is a shot over the top of the hill. The monument there, a Greek looking something-or-other, was absolutely gigantic. I’m not sure what it was a monument to. The second is a shot of the main drag in Edinburgh, Prince’s Street.

You can see the castle again in that photo, on the hill to the left of the street. Down in town I got a couple real good shots looking up the hill toward Edinburgh Castle.

And finally, a piece of statuary I liked a lot:

We also visited some museums, gardens and such. I’m saving a post about those in case we visit more. This weekend at some point we are going to try to get up to Lock Ness or the Island of Skye, hopefully that happens! I’ll put it all here, if it does!