Castle, cliff jumping and a sneaky rental car return

Hello again folks! Sean here again to tell you a bit about what we were up to thus far, and I know I have quite some catching up to do so let me get to it.

Last we left you we had just finished a wonderful day of hiking fun and topped it off with a great meal in town, well unfortunately for us due to weather we had to resolves ourselves to a bit more indoor activity. But don't you worry trusty blog reader, we still made the most of it and enjoyed our day. 

Of course our day started with another lovely Scottish breakfast and good conversation with our Austrian friends. But due to the misty weather and rain in the forecast we decided to go check out the local castle (Dunvegan) and its' amazing gardens. We arrived with no rain as of yet so we checked out the gardens first. The gardens included forested gardens, walled gardens and a circle garden all of which were extremely impressive. As I walked the gardens I kept thinking that Mike Dibella would have been in heaven a bit and would have found himself quite inspired. The castle itself was very nice but extremely different from the last we saw. This was mostly because the castle was lived in by the family who owned it until quite recently. Both castle had a wonderful story and history that, unfortunately would be too complex to write here on the blog (guess you'll have to visit). 

After our Castle tour we ran into some bad weather (luckily this was expected), so we sent on to the city of Portree for a bit of shopping. We first went to the B&B to walk to the city (in case we decided to have a few pints) and found ourself soaked once we got to the city. Since we were dripping wet our first priority was to find warmth and food. After circling the entire city we were able to find a tucked away restaurant with room for us. There we each had our first meal of fish and chips, which was good, but to be honest, not the best I've ever had; although we were both just very happy to be in a warm place. Since we still had quite a bit of rain after lunch we went straight into the shops for a bit of souvenir shopping. We were able to find most of what we were looking for and from there went straight to the local grocery. Because we had a fairly late lunch we just bought a bit of bread and meat for some late night sandwiches for our dinner. The rest of our day was spent relaxing at the B&B and watching British reality television; to which we both very much enjoyed poking fun at the people we were watching (one of our guilty pleasures I suppose haha). 

Our following morning brought, luckily, nice weather again so we decided that after our check out we would head to the local Fairly Pools for another hike. This hike was probably our easiest yet, but it took us along an awesome continuous stream of pools and waterfalls. While we were walking the hike we saw some folks jumping in the pools, swimming in the pools and dipping their hair in the pools; while we were wondering why such the activity(because it was obviously freezing cold) we over heard from some hikers mention that if you were to get in the Fairy Pools you would be granted eternal beauty. While Noortje and I continued our walk we knew that at least she (especially she) would not need the promise of eternal beauty, but we both thought that we may regret not taking the chance to take a dip in some of the most clear and beautiful pools we've ever seen. So on our way back we got in the pools. I decided to go first and experienced my first time cliff jumping; I would be lying if I said I wasn't a bit nervous but I knew I would regret not doing the jump (see pictures). I actually was only going to do it twice but while I was waiting for Noortje to dry off from her swim and get in a good position for a picture I saw that I was attracting some crowds to watch me jump, so being the showmen I am I ended up jumping 5 times to satisfy the crowds (guess I am still a ham). We ended the hike all wet and full of energy from our swim, and began our long drive towards Inverness for a overnight stay on our way to Edinburgh. 

Once we got to Inverness (our first real city) we realized this was our most "posh" B&B. Not that our other B&B's weren't amazing but at this one we had conveniences  such as a fridge and fan in the room, and quite a lot of options for breakfast, other than the traditional Scottish breakfast, which Noortje was extremely happy with. But the evening prior to that we had a wonderful dinner at local pub named Hootenanny which had great food and great local brews. After we had some full tummy's, we decided to walk it off a bit and took a stroll along the river and across some local Islands. Once our stomachs had settled we headed back to Hootenanny where they had some excellent live music, traditional music on the first floor and nice rock on the second (think Mumford and Sons combined with Kings of Lion). Our night ended when I spotted a nice big daddy longlegger spider climbing on the wall that Noortje happen to be sitting by; while I tried to hide what I spotted, Noortje can apparently read me too well and said "Fuck that's your spider face" and knew right away what was up, haha. No worries though as we were both spent and could use a nice nights sleep, leaving us back at the B&B around 11:00. 

Our following day consisted mostly of formalities. We had a long drive to Edinburgh along which went a bit along Loch Ness, which wasn't too impressive since we think Nessi may have moved (see pictures). We found our apartment for the next couple of days, thanks to Air B&B, and took the rental back to the airport. We were a bit of trickers when it came to this though, but this may need some explanation.

So although I got on alright with driving on the left side of the road, we did have some instantness where I was a bit nervous and found myself getting too close too the left, fearing getting too near traffic on the right. Because of this we saw at one point it seemed I went too far left and may have hit a tree or bush or something - although it was dark when we picked up the car and didn't check it very well to begin with. However, it seemed we had a tiny dent in the passenger door and this very much scared me that we would be charged for the damages. So to hide this little guy, we found some nice mud and made it look like we drove through some nasty weather, making the mud mask any imperfections in the rental. While dropping off the car, we got a bit of a sweat worked up while the worker throughly inspected the car. When he came upon the hidden dent all he did was mention the bit of fun we must of had driving through some mud and that was that. 

Since we had our little close call of who know how much we would have been charged for our dent, we've just done a little strolling through the city to get our bearings and have had our first home cooked (by Noortje the best) meal at our rented apartment. Life has been good so far and will continue to be to when we further explore the city tomorrow. 

Catch up with you later and thanks for reading.