The photo of a highland cow from a couple posts ago was taken on the Isle of Skye, which is off the north-western coast of Scotland.
Sarah: I named the cow, or "coo" as they say in Scotland, Hamish. Just in case you were wondering.....
Our trip to Skye was our first independent journey, so we were excited (and somewhat nervous). We left Edinburgh at the buttcrack of dawn - 5 am. We stopped in Glasgow, changed buses, and then went onwards to Ft. William. We passed through Glencoe on the way.
In Ft. William we had just enough time to grab some food and before boarding the Jacobite Steam Train. (aka the Hogwarts Express)
Yes! It is the same train featured in multiple Harry Potter films. It was beautiful, and it was the longest train trip that I have ever taken. The trip took us to Mallaig, on the north-western coast of mainland Scotland.
From what we had time to see, Mallaig is a smallish town with just a few shops and a dock. We thought we had a lot of time before our ferry left for Skye, but we dilly-dallied and as we were getting coffee we realized it was time to board. So we ran to the ferry, even with our sizeable travel backpacks.
Sarah: ahem...we were late because Zach need to buy gloves.
So after we boarded the ferry, we had time to drink the coffee that almost made us miss the boat. It was terrible, probably the worst coffee we've ever had. We have since learned that unless you're at Starbucks or Costa, Scotland is not the place to get excellent coffee.
Here's the ferry:
Once we got to Skye, I rejoiced. I was so nervous that we wouldn't be able to catch all of our various buses/trains/ferries, but we did. It was relieving to just walk for a while, so we walked... and walked... and walked. We hiked it through the castle and castle-gardens in Armadale, which were gorgeous.
Here's Armadale castle, featuring Britain at its best: a red mini parked next to a castle.
After the castle, we walked/hiked along the shore of southern Skye for... a long time. We were trying to catch a bus to Broadford -- where our hostel was. I was happy to trek.
But the bus never came, so we kept walking, and walking, and walking. We finally found a real bus stop, and we decided to hedge our bets and hope a bus came soon. It did, thankfully. Later, we looked on a map and figured out that we trekked HALFWAY to Broadford, which would have been a thirty minute drive, so the walk took us multiple hours. It would have been perfect except Sarah was sick. I'll let her say more about that.Sarah: I'll let this picture speak for itself.
Regardless, it was beautiful. We saw several massive mountains, that we named Narnia, and we also met a large, outgoing pig.We finally made it to the Broadford Youth Hostel around dinner time. The town was pretty small, but quite scenic. We could see the sea from our window. The hostel was actually excellent; it was clean and safe and the staff was friendly. The next morning, we ran through wind, rain and sickness to catch the bus to Portree. The bus stop wasn't as close as I had thought.
We made it on the bus, though, which took us to Portree, the mini-capital of Skye. We had time to explore the town centre and eat a true Scottish meal. I had haggis, neaps, and tatties, and Sarah had a true Scottish breakfast -- black pudding, tomato, beans, fried egg, toast, sausage, mushrooms, and bacon.
Sarah: I ate it all too. All of it.
I'll let you digest that for now,
Zach
