Highland Fling - Day 1

This week we are taking a tour out of Edinburgh with Haggis tours of Northern Scotland and the highlands. Luckily we are only with a small tour of 11 people including us on one bus. So it's really neat because you get to know your tour mates really well. One Greek, Two Canadians (Us) and the rest are aussies funny enough. Our tour guide is Don who is a great funny guy and knows all the history quite well. 

Don and the Bus

The tour is great, Don gets to take us wherever he likes on the way to Oban, our first destination. So we first stopped in stirling which we had already seen but we saw some new things like the wallace monument. 

Don's knowledge of Scottish history makes the trip that much more enjoyable (for me at least). After stirling we went to an old church the Don had never been to before and explored it, very cool as well. History is everywhere!

We were ahead of schedule so we decided to stop at another castle along the way, Dunstaffnage castle. Don subtly suggested we could sneak into the castle without paying the four quid to get in. Everyone else got stopped trying to enter without paying but I sort of snuck in the back way and explored the castle on my own. Not worth the four quid but still very cool. 

Afterwards we headed off to Oban (yes the same oban where we will be staying the rest of this month). A very nice town, a lot bigger than aberfoyle that does a lot of fishing and where you can buy fresh caught fish and chips. We will definitely be doing that. Looks like a great town with lots to see around it. They also run ferrys to the nearby isle of mull where there are more castles and neat things to explore so we are planning on going there this month too. 

Went to our hostel for the night which was very nice and had a fully equipped kitchen which was really nice for cooking instead of having to spend the money eating out. Met an American girl at the hostel who was travelling by herself and became friends with lots of people in our group. So she asked Don if she could join the tour and we now have an even 12 member group! At night we all went as a group to the local pub/bar and saw some traditional scottish music and dancing. It was awesome! They taught us some dancing and also just did some performing for us. The group often sung in Gaelic which was really cool and they had bagpipes, a flute, piano, guitar and a fiddle. The music was awesome, you really felt like you were in Scotland after listening to them. Afterward we went to a different pub and got to know some our fellow tour members better. After the initial shock of us be married so young passed we got some great job ideas and recommendations from one of aussies who spent the last year living in London. Tomorrow we will be heading off to the Isle of Skye and Fort William which should be great!