Goodbye Ireland, Hello Scotland

Today we had to say goodbye to Ireland. We traveled from Belfast to the port, it took about 30 minutes. The hardest part was saying goodbye to our bus driver, John. He was one of the best bus drivers we have ever had!!

When we arrived at the port we had to take our luggage and put it on a conveyor belt and then we had to wait about an hour before we boarded the ferry. The boat was much larger than we expected.

Our trip across took 2.5 hours. At first we were really pleased that the ride was quite smooth but as we got further out the boat got to rocking but it was still fairly gentle.

When we arrived in Scotland our new driver was there to meet us. We were very excited to immediately get the feel that our new driver, Jim, was also going to be awesome!!!

We had a 2.5 hour drive to Glasgow. We took the scenic route along the ocean for the first part of the drive and we drive past Donald Trump’s Turnberry Golf Course.

We arrived at our hotel at 5:15. We are situated right in the centre of Glasgow and the buildings are magnificent! We are heading our for dinner soon.

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Loch Ness and Urquhart Castle

Monday We were treated on our final day to a later departure. We left the hotel at 10:00, which gave us a chance to go for one last walk in the area. Fort Augustus is a beautiful little village at the south end of Lock Ness. Our hotel was a unique and quaint place, my favourite of the whole tour. There is a series of locks in Fort Augustus joining the lakes. We watched as they lowered a group of boats through the locks. When we left the hotel we drove north along the shore of Loch Ness. The lake is 23 miles long and 745 feet deep. We watched for the Loch Ness monster but “apparently” she never surfaces on Mondays!! 😉 . Our first stop was at Urquhart Castle. We watched a movie that summarized the history of the castle. It was built up and destroyed several times before it was finally blown up and left in ruins. It sits in a lovely spot overlooking Loch Ness. We had time to explore the ruins of the castle and then we all went...

The Isle of Skye

If I had to describe today in one word, it would be “breathtaking “! We left from our hotel in Fort Augustus, which is situated at the south end of Loch Ness. We headed Northwest, towards the coast and crossed over to the Isle of Skye. The sky was a mix of sun and clouds but, somehow, we managed to keep the sun over top of us almost all the way. The scenery was amazing, I wish I could find an adequate way to describe it. The mountains are covered with ferns and heather that have turned to a copper brown. The trees are a mixture of green, orange and red and we often were driving beside one of the lochs (lakes). I did my best to capture pictures of the scenery. The Isle of Skye is so amazing!! We picked up a guide that lives on the island and she told us all about life on the island as we travelled along. It is remote and sparsely populated. We were driving up the east coast of the peninsula, heading for the Kilt Rock and Mealt...

Blarney

The wind was really howling this morning as a big storm was moving across Ireland. The good news is that it blew the clouds away and we got to drive in sunshine. It took us a little over two hours to reach Blarney Castle, just a short distance out of Cork. As I am sure you all know, Blarney Castle is famous for the Blarney Stone. The stone is located the top of the castle, which is 83’ off the ground. It involves getting into a line-up (about 45 minutes at this time of the year) and walking up the stairs to the top of the castle (open to the outside). When it is your turn to kiss the stone you need to lay down, on your back and then reach up with your head to actually kiss the stone. Just to make it a bit scarier, there is an opening that you can see all the way down to the ground. Legend says that kissing the Blarney Stone gives one eloquence and/ or the gift of the gab! Since I have already kissed the Blarney Stone t...

Ireland & Scotland

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