Tuesday, July 15th

The entry for Tuesday may be brief, instead of several small places to go and see, we had just a couple of big ones, so...

We slept in, had a leisurely breakfast at the cafe at the bus station - sounds worse than it was. I had a steak sleeve (or something like that) and it was this very tasty roast beef all cut up, in gravy, cooked in a delicious flaky pastry... two thumbs up! - and caught a bus to Culloden Battlefield. Unfortunately, the bus we caught was going to Culloden the town, rather than the battlefield... so the driver dropped us off and told us to wait, because the bus we needed would be coming by and we could take it to the battlefield.

So we waited for the bus... and waited.. while we wait, let me point out that Tuesday was St. Swithen's Day - I got this info from the UK edition of USA Today (does that make sense??) - and tradition goes that if it rains on St. Swithen's Day, it will rain for the next 40 days! So we were keeping an eye out for rain that day 'cause we did not want guaranteed rain for the next three days (as long as we'd be here :).

Anyway, the bus came and we rode to Culloden Battlefield. Culloden was the last battle fought in the British Isles. It was the battle where the Jacobites (people who thought that James the Something should be on the throne rather than George I (either the father or grandfather of the George who lost the American Revolution) fought to replace George with Bonny Prince Charlie (James' son). Lest I bore you, let me just say that they lost big, and thousands were slaughtered in about an hour and George Something was on the throne in 1776. We only had about an hour to tour the place, so we couldn't see the battle re-enactment or take the guided tour of the battleground, but I got a really cute apron covered with cartoon cats wearing tartan on it in the gift shop!

The plan for the afternoon was to take the bus back to the bus station and catch a bus to the place where we were going to catch the boat for our cruise around Loch Ness. Unfortunately, all that waiting for the bus two paragraphs ago threw a wrench in our works and we didn't make it in time. Tom was able to convince the lady behind the desk to switch our tickets to the 10 am cruise the next morning - he said that the words "Stupid Americans" were heard... So not only were we free for the afternoon, but we'd be taking a later train on Wednesday to Edinburgh.

How did we spend our free time? Well, like all good Americans, we hit the mall! :) Ok, well first we hit a Victorian Market (I found a Scottish flag for Gnarley and Holly found a nice chocolate shoppe!) But then we hit the mall.. mostly because it was someplace we could sit and kill some time before dinner - but Holly took advantage of the opportunity to find herself some sparkly sunglasses to replace those she'd lost back in Dublin on day one (she'd since been using my extra pair).

We had dinner at a local pub and then bussed it back to the hotel and relaxed, watching Romancing the Stone before hitting the sheets. Tomorrow... Loch Ness!