Last Day in Edinburgh and GOOD NEWS!

So last night after Becky and I met up we just hung out, did laundry, and talked shop. We had a lot of legwork to do for the rest of our trip, but we managed to get all of our hotels booked and double checked all of our plans for the rest of the trip! I'll give the itinerary at the end of the post. After that we called it a night, heading back to the hotel to pack our bags so we could get up and check out in the morning - quite a task, as we had basically exploded all over the dorm room by the end of the week.

This morning we headed to breakfast and then carted all of our bags over to the reception area, where they have a luggage room we stored everything in. We were walking down the central drag towards the city center, browsing a few charity stores: think Goodwill but with a lot more and cooler stuff, there's a half dozen or so of them we've run into in Edinburgh. My phone rang, I answered, and it turned out to be the police.

Becky's wallet had been turned in! It even still had all of the cash inside! So we recovered our lost cash. The only irreplaceable loss is the second British Heritage Pass we bought to replace her lost one, as they are non-refundable. They won't refund it even though we haven't even picked it up yet! So I guess we'll go pick it up and then try and sell it to someone for less than face value. We caught a bus to the police station, got the wallet, then took a cab to the Enterprise site and picked up our rental car.

We got there right on time, but our car wasn't ready for some reason, so we had to sit and wait. We didn't mind too much though, because we got to watch one of the funniest customer-employee interactions I've ever seen. A group of Spanish tourists was having considerable trouble driving their rented van. They couldn't even get it out of the parking lot without burning up the clutch - the entire place smelled terrible. The counter agent was having an intense argument with them almost the entire half hour we were waiting on our car.

They insisted that the car was "bad," and he insisted that the car was fine and the problem was that they couldn't drive a standard transmission. They took offense, got a little belligerent, and so he informed them that their options were to pay for 1 day's rental on their van to cover the cost of checkup and repair and take their business elsewhere, or to switch to an automatic transmission vehicle for 5 pounds extra per day. They demanded a different manual transmission van, insisting that the problem was with the vehicle. Everyone involved got incredibly frustrated with everyone else and the same 5 sentences were repeated about a hundred times, much to the amusement of everyone in the building (Including the rest of the rental agents, who we shared many amused looks with).

Then the REAL adventure began - driving on the wrong side of the road. I have to say, as apprehensive as I was about it, it wasn't too bad. We made our way back to the dorms and got a day pass to park the car on campus until we needed to leave town, then grabbed some lunch: pizza in the park! Good times. Becky headed to the last session of the conference and I headed back to the computer lab on campus to print out directions and such. So here I am! Once she's done we have one or two more stops in the city to make, then it's on to Stirling. Here's the rough sketch of the rest of our stay:

Friday night: Drive to Stirling

Saturday: Visit the Wallace Monument, Bannockburn battlefield, Stirling Castle, and Old Stirling Bridge battlefield all in Stirling. Then head to Arbroath to visit Arbroath Abbey, then head up to Aberdeen and stay there Saturday night.

Sunday: Hit a castle or two around Aberdeen, then do the Whisky Trail! Most distilleries are located in Speyside, a triangle-shaped region kind of in between Inverness and Aberdeen. Drive to a small town near Inverness, stay there.

Monday: Wake up EARLY! Hit Culloden battlefield, Fort George, another distillery, visit Inverness itself if we have things there we want to do, then head down and visit Loch Ness, including Urquhart Castle and/or the MacBean clan monument (I promised a friend I'd go, as he is from Clan MacBean). Drive to Ft William and stay there (Southern end of Loch Ness).

Tuesday: Drive to the Isle of Skye and see the sights. We don't have much of an itinerary for the day, just sightseeing around the island. Drive to Oban and stay the night.

Wednesday: Take the ferry to the Isle of Mull, the McVey 's ancestral homeland (McVeys are a sept of Clan MacLean of Duart, traditionally they were the physicians to the chiefs!). In a stroke of pure blind luck, the CHIEF of CLAN MacLEAN, Sir Lachlan MacLean, is giving a personal tour of the castle that night! So Becky and I are signed up to go. Needless to say I am incredibly and ridiculously excited about this. Afterwards we'll be staying on the island.

Thursday: Get up to catch the first ferry back to mainland Scotland, then drive to the legendarily beautiful Loch Lomond. Clan Buchanan's ancestral homeland is here, which is my clan on my mother's side (Bohannon). Afterwards we'll head to our last hotel, near Glasgow Airport, and probably drop the rental car off a bit early so we don't have to worry about it in the morning.

Friday: Our flight back to the States leaves at 7am :(


There you have it!

A few notes from Becky:
-Just got back from the conference. Rachel Mayberry was totally worth the wait. I'll be giving a detailed explanation of her new research as best I can at some point. I was enthralled and ... she is likely presenting at a conference in Boston in the fall for all you Boston folks so we'll have to keep checking. She was FANTASTIC. I could sense my PhD clock ticking!
-In response to Abby's comment about more videos - I couldn't agree more. We were having some technical difficulties and will hopefully update with more soon. These include:
-Dave giving us a history channel-style tour of the underground tunnels at the St. Andrew's castle
- our fun on the mountain ... then my unhappiness on the mountain ... then surviving the mountain!
-you too can experience the barrel ride ... but only about 45 seconds before I fell asleep and hit the power button :)
Maybe we'll have a vlog update soon! :)
-Linda / Fiona --- If you can use the Heritage Pass on your trip, please let me know ASAP!
-This place in insane ... I am so glad we are leaving today. The festival has every aspect of this beautiful city in chaos. Maybe fun for some but I'm ready for part two! See you soon!! :)