Scotland trip: Highlands

Except for the Jacobite steam train in the Harry Potter post and the lake in the announcement post, you haven't seen much of the Highlands yet. Some people might wonder anyway, what is there to see in the Highlands? Well, this is answered quite easily: landscape, of course!

In Banavie, the tiny village where our hostel was, there's really not much to see. Maybe they were serious when naming the hostel "Chase The Wild Goose" - because you can't really do much else! It literally consists of a handful of houses, a hotel with a restaurant and the hostel. But it is actually possible that Saint Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, was born there. What a coincidence! xD

However, they have one "tourist attraction" in Banavie: Neptune's Staircase, a staircase lock on the canal. When we passed it on our way to a supermarket (finding a supermarket there is not the easiest task, just saying!), there were quite a few people standing around. But we were probably not the target group of this attraction, regarding our age ...

And what else is there to see in Banavie? Well, let me do a summary in pictures:

The Caledonian Canal

A "forest". Looked a bit bigger on the map ...

Stairs leading to nowhere?

No, actually, the stairs ended at a WW1 memorial and a quite nice viewpoint:

That's Banavie! (Quite green - due to the amount of rain, I guess...)

If you're wondering now: yes, Banavie is really small. Unlike all the villages in Ireland, it doesn't even have a pub. Or a supermarket. For both, you need to go to Caol, the neighbouring village. Fortunately, you only need to pass Banavie train station, Caol begins just behind. Let me demonstrate the dimensions on the map I consulted at the hostel:

When walking through Caol, there's also lot of landscape surrounding you - but a few more houses, all looking the same, I think:

Doesn't that remind you of Ireland? :-D

And there's actually a restaurant/pub. Exactly one, I think. ^^ Needless to say: we went there in the evening! (That's where I saw the Glenfinnan Viaduct and Jacobite pictures.)

When having passed the pub, you continue walking for some time, until you finally spot a sign pointing out the way to the shopping centre:

Before you get too excited: this "shopping centre" basically consists of Londis (a small supermarket), a boutique, a laundry place, two Chinese takeaways, an Indian takeaway - and an alcohol counselling. Anyway, we only needed a supermarket, so that was alright for us.

You might have seen it on the map already (it's called Community Centre there): the shopping centre is just next to a lake. To answer the questions from the announcement post: it's the Loch Linnhe. Loch means lake in Scottish English, obviously. And regarding the temperature, it was not really warm, which you might have guessed from my clothing on the picture. Maybe a bit more than 10 degrees?
Anyway, I wanted to go back to the lake later, when we didn't have to go grocery shopping, to take some more pictures. According to the others, I got every possible angle of the lake. :-P

They could be right - but it was just so beautiful! Next to the lake, there was also a playground with a few swings. I think I never saw swings with a better view than these! During the swinging session, the others established swinging selfies and videos, and also took other pictures while swinging ...

The anonymous swinging picture.

But there's more to do in the Highlands than swinging, of course. In the afternoon, we had already made our way to Inverlochy Castle, which you can see in the bottom right corner of the map picture. According to the internet, it's in Fort William, but in fact, it's more halfway between Banavie and Fort William. But since Fort William is not only the name of the town itself, but also of the region surrounding it, well ... (So e.g. Banavie is 4 km from Fort William, but also in Fort William, depending on what you're referring to.)
However, that's another direction when starting at the train station. But, of course, there are also mountains surrounding you:

That's what it looks like when it's not raining. However, it was raining all the way to the castle and back, I think. So I took this picture later on that day ...

The castle (ruin). To be honest, the landscape around it was more impressive. ^^

And maybe even more impressive: the view out of the hostel window after (!) we had returned:

So here's the blue sky now!

The next day, we took the bus to Fort William. If you're surprised by that, let me tell you something: yes, there is regular public transport in the region of Fort William - and it's actually better than the public transport in my German hometown!

When we arrived in Fort William town, it was raining again, of course ... But at some point, it stopped - at least for a while - and we got to enjoy the bit of civilisation in the middle of nowhere:

The High Street ...

... with the West Highland Museum (it's free!) ...

... and an ice cream shop (nope, it's never too cold for ice cream).

A church ...

... and another church, just next to it.

Since the surface of Loch Linnhe is a bit bigger than just a few square metres, you could also visit it in Fort William. Of course, I took some more pictures:

Afterwards, I really had every possible angle, I suppose. The rest of Fort William was the Jacobite / Hogwarts Express, I think.

We ended our stay in the Highlands with a cozy night in the hostel, playing Cluedo and Monopoly ...

As I mentioned before, there are only three trains from Banavie back to civilisation (Glasgow) per day. So we had to take the train at the quite nightly time of 7:17 a.m. Again, we couldn't sit together because of the annoying seat reserving system. So I had lots of fun when a family of father, mother and son entered the train in Fort William, one stop after Banavie. Unlike me, the son was wide awake, reading the Diary of a Wimpy Kid (out loud from time to time) and talking to his plush Haggis!

(sneaky picture from behind my green bag)

I'm ending the post with this picture, because what could be more Scottish than a plush Haggis...?

Scotland trip: Harry Potter sightseeing

The second one of the separate posts about the Scotland trip!

In comparison to London, there was a bit more Harry Potter sightseeing happening in Edinburgh. Sure, you couldn't visit any of the real filming locations in Edinburgh. For the people who want that and nothing else, London might be a better place to go. But for the fans of the books, Edinburgh is great! That's because J. K. Rowling actually was in Edinburgh when she wrote the books - all seven of them, I think. Naturally, she used some actual sites of Edinburgh, named differently, in the books. So you can visit the places J. K. really had in mind when writing the books!

Even if you just go to Edinburgh for "regular" sightseeing, you will inevitably be confronted with Harry Potter. We did the Free Walking Tour of Edinburgh first - and yes, they advertised it with "showing the real Hogwarts", for example! The next day, we also did the Potter Trail Tour. That's not an official Harry Potter tour but a tour organised by people who are Potter fans themselves, I suppose. Becky, our tour guide. at least looked like a real fan:

(She even had the Sorting Hat with her xD.)

 At the beginning, she handed out colourful wands we could use for the duration of the tour:

(Yes, mine was quite glittery.)

The Free Tour and the Potter Trail overlapped a bit, but this way I got the chance of taking more pictures of the places, so that was alright for me. And of course, Becky provided more inside and background information than Greg.

However, I'll just summarise what I remember from both tours. The Potter Trail started at Greyfriars Kirkyard - I told you you would hear about it again. :-P This graveyard is of high importance for more than one reason.
Firstly, it's the model of the graveyard occurring in the fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (remember the story with the portkey at the end of the Triwizard Tournament?). There's actually a grave where some Thomas Riddell senior and junior are buried. Of course, J. K. had to change the spelling a bit in order to make the "I am Lord Voldemort"-anagram work.

Secondly, the name giver of another character in Harry Potter is buried somewhere there:

William McGonagall is believed to be the world's (or at least Scotland's) worst poet. For some reason nobody understands, J. K. Rowling is a fan of him. Therefore, she wanted to have his name in her book - and so she named Minerva McGonagall, Hogwarts' Transfiguration professor, after him! (They don't really have much in common though.)

Next to Greyfriars Kirkyard, there's also the advertised "real" Hogwarts. In real life, it's a normal, although quite expensive, private school called George Heriot's School. But it actually does have four different colour-coded houses, just ask Wikipedia to confirm it!

(not taken during any of the tours, but on the way to a bar called Bar Bados xD)

However, J. K. Rowling didn't only get inspiration for Hogwarts from this school, but also from the University of Edinburgh. We only caught a glimpse of it during the tour: it looks quite magical - if you ignore the huge colourful posters regarding the festival (yes, it was literally everywhere) ...

The name of Harry Potter, at least the surname, is also connected to Edinburgh. Rumour has it that J. K. had already decided for "Potter", but wasn't exactly sure about her decision - until she saw Potterrow, a street in Edinburgh:

I swear, it's Potterrow, but they changed the name for the ever-present festival!

This way, Edinburgh seemed to have confirmed the name "Potter". About the name "Harry": nobody knows where that came from, I think. Could as well have been Harvey or so ...

The tour also covered the place where J. K. wrote the first Harry Potter novel. Unfortunately, the café that used to be there closed before the first book was published. So there's not really anything to see there anymore. But - surprise, surprise! - we encountered William McGonagall again nearby:

However, the café/restaurant where the second, third and fourth book were written, still exists. (After book four, J. K. became too famous to write in cafés, so she had to go to hotels instead. One hotel now calls the room where she finished the last book "The Harry Potter Suite" and rents it for £1000 per night!)

And they shamelessly call this place "the birthplace of Harry Potter". I mean, since the other café doesn't exist anymore, who would disagree? I guess the owner of the old café has been fuming with rage about this lost marketing opportunity ever since Harry Potter became famous ...

Since I had read about this place in a German magazine not too long ago, we had already been at The Elephant House two days before doing this tour. It's really a nice place, although a bit crowded (how comes? xD), and quite affordable. Of course, they advertise heavily in there:

But even though it's not the actual "birthplace of Harry Potter", it has something that makes it unique: its bathroom! Harry Potter fans from all over the world come here to write something on the walls (or elsewhere). I'm not kidding, just have a look at this incredible sight:

And just to make it clear: I only went to the ladies' bathroom, and only into one of three toilets!

Back to the tour: The tour didn't end in front of The Elephant House, but moved on to Victoria Street. Doesn't sound familiar, I guess, except for the fact that lots of places in Britain are named after Queen Victoria...? Well, yeah, but this street is actually the model for another street you might have heard of: Diagon Alley, the place for wizards to go shopping!

In this street, there's actually a sort of "magical" shop (witch tours of something like this). But unlike everybody else, they don't like being associated with Harry Potter. So if there are too many annoying Potter tourists, they put up a sign saying, "J. K. Rowling is banned from this place." :-D

I think, that's everything from Edinburgh now. But of course, that doesn't mean the Harry Potter sightseeing in Scotland was over! When we went to the Highlands, there was also a bit of Harry Potter feeling in the air. When we went to the only pub/restaurant near our hostel, you could already tell it from the pictures hanging on the walls:

The Glenfinnan Viaduct ...

... where a very special train goes!

That's right, you can find the real Hogwarts Express in the Highlands of Scotland! In reality, it's called The Jacobite and is running from Fort William to Mallaig and back every day.

(train journey: 2 hours and 11 minutes or so)

You can actually get tickets for the train, but it's quite popular (can't imagine why!), so you need to book early in advance. Anyway, we didn't take the train, but went to the train station in Fort William shortly before the train departed. And no, we were not the only people doing train sightseeing!

Here are a few impressions of the famous steam train to finish my incredibly fangirly post with! xD

Fun Fact: the train departed from platform 1, not 9 3/4. :-P