Well, I gave up on spending TOO much time on Canva and at least added a few pictures to my last post. We will see how far I get.
Surprise: I got totally locked out for two days from my WordPress apps on my iPad and phone. Finally logged in through Safari, deleted the post, and now all is well. Maybe.
I’m obsessive over my photos enough, I have them in Shutterfly, they don’t all have to be in this post though but I at least want one.
So, from my last post… I did wander home from the pub on the first day to grab the key to the second room and find two sleeping peeps.
J woke up and wanted to take a shower but nope, he had all the time to take a shower, it was my turn. The shower was challenging and I had to hold the shower head but I wasn’t washing my hair, so not the end of the world.
J took his shower and I closed my eyes for 20m. Didn’t sleep but it felt lovely to rest my eyes and know that I wasn’t going to suddenly sleep the afternoon away.
After he was done, he decided to walk over with Sam to her room but when they walked back, she was laughing because apparently the room was double the size of our current one and had a couch in it so… that was our room! I zipped everything up and we struggled upstairs. Got everything situated and went back down to pick up Sam and walk to our restaurant.
The restaurant was lovely. It was a 5m walk and had really amazing steaks. It was called Miller Steakhouse and I have to go back and leave a review. I had way too much wine, along with the glass before, but luckily I was fine the next morning. Since I had gelato earlier, I was “good” and had my safe foods. We had a nice time and the background music was playing a lot of Taylor Swift so Sam and I were pleased.
It was raining on the way home and all the lights were shining in the wet street and it was so nice to walk in the city and know we were in Scotland.
The night was okay. I was literally sleeping by 8:10pm and my eyes popped open at midnight. Again at 1am, then from 2-330ish I was up, again around 5, and then 7… and at some point I thought about just getting up and going to the gym but then it was 745 and too late! 12 hours relaxing in bed was lovely though so I’ll take it as a win. We had room service scheduled and got ready and walked over to our car rental.
It was a nice walk. A little long but it was a brisk morning and it my bag wanted to not roll a few times, whatever, I made it.
The night before J had suggested he was not comfortable driving through London and if I could drive first and he would drive once we got to Loch Lomand, that would be preferable. That was no problem, I was a little surprised because I thought he would want to drive but I was up for the adventure.
I was thrilled, literally thrilled, to be driving in our UK car.
There were lots of chants of “Left, left” as I drove through the city. It wasn’t super terrifying but it was a little weird getting used to.
We finally hit the actual highway which was much better. It was weird getting used to the “slow” lane being on the left but one thing about Scotland is that these people USE the right (fast!) lane as passing ONLY. Once they passed people, they got back over super quickly and let the fast cars through.
One of the signs we saw on the road said something like, “Frustration causes accidents” and I really tried to hunt for it in Google (for like 20 seconds) to remind myself but I couldn’t find it but it made us laugh.
As we were getting closer to Loch Lomand, which is a national park, J started hunting for a restaurant. He was not finding anything as quickly as I liked and I was about to pass through the town so I pulled over and looked up Google maps. Immediately a restaurant called to me. It looked adorable in the pictures and was called Duck Bay. I headed there and it WAS adorable.
It was one of those restaurants that insanely decorates for every single holiday and you can only be mesmerized by how much time and effort they put into it. That said, Easter is coming up, and the amount of Easter eggs, carrots, and bunnies was magnificent. It looked out to Loch Lomand, which is the biggest freshwater Loch in Scotland, and there were some people on Seadoos out there. It was so cold, I think they were crazy, but they were going in circles spraying each other and it was entertaining to watch.
I had a delicious salmon with veggies, and the pair had fish & chips which they declared was fantastic. It was a nice break. We took some fun photos outside and then jumped back in the car.
Tangent, as we were sitting at lunch, I looked at J and said, I think I’ll drive the rest of the way. And he said, “I think I will enjoy watching you drive.” Haha. There was no way that I just spent 30m getting used to the left side only to have someone else do the same thing.
The drive to Glencoe was beautiful and also slightly terrifying.
First, to get to Duck Bay we had to make a right turn against on-coming traffic and the traffic was insane. It was a two-lane road (so one lane of traffic coming out way) but it was a non-stop parade of cars which I suspect were people coming home from vacation and back into Glasgow and Edinburgh. I knew I would have to come back out and make a right through the same mess.
That always gives me the biggest jolt of anxiety and it didn’t help that both Sam and J were like, “Ahhh!” When I did it and even though I had TONS of room, the car coming from the left had HIS turn signal blinker on, I think all the cars around us were freaking J and Sam out. Which I get.
But it was FINE!!
But then we had about 30 minutes of the smallest, tiniest 2 lane road that huge TRUCKS and BUSSES were BLOWING by us going the other way. Being in the “right” side of the car, driving on the “left” side of the road and my depth perception of where the car was on the road was mixed up, in an unfamiliar car… anyway, that was fun.
But that said, my biggest anxiety was still that turn into oncoming traffic! During those small roads, I just kept singing to the radio and Sam and J did pretty good not freaking out too much. J just kept joking to Sam that she should, “roll down the window and lick the wall” because I swear we were less than an inch away from the wall… on the left side… but from my perspective, we were an inch away on the right side from the crazy cars doing 60mph on a two lane road with walls on either side!
Don’t get me started on the 60mph through these roads and then it’s all, “Slow!”. Like, CHANGE the speed limit, Scotland! Why do you show 60 or 50 and then say just go slow?
Once we got past that, it was so nice. The Scottish Highlands are gorgeous! Oh, the hills, the little lakes (lochs!)… I need to add the videos that J was taking. I will do that. At some point.
We arrived at Glencoe and our house was adorable. SO CUTE. It would have been so nice to spend a few days there. There was not much to do in Glencoe specifically but the house overlooked Loch Leven and it was so peaceful.
We went on a walk by the Loch. Not really great walking paths but we found a swing, which was so fun. There were bridges, murky sea stuff, and people cheerfully waving and saying hello in their Scottish accents. The walk and the scenery was really perfect. Sam later said it was her favorite day.
Delightful!
Comments on this entry are closed.