Scotland trip: overview

So I had to think about how to organise my posts about the Scotland trip for a while. Since it was a full week and I took a looot of pictures, I don't think I can just cram all of them and the necessary context into one monstrous post. Therefore, I'll try to do an overview post first. I promise, I will try and keep it short, but somehow that never works out ...

I arrived at Edinburgh airport in the night of August 22nd. First thing I did in Scotland: getting wet, of course! It didn't really get better when I arrived in the city centre, and I actually got really wet on the way to the hostel. Didn't prevent me from taking the first few Edinburgh pictures, though:

Olaf had already arrived in Edinburgh the day before, but Sirkka and Laetitia only arrived on Sunday. Together we spent about four days in Edinburgh. Then we took the train to the Highlands, the region around Fort William, to be precise. We spent about two days near Fort William before going back to Edinburgh on Saturday morning, because my flight back home was on Saturday already (nope, Ryanair doesn't go from Frankfurt Hahn to Edinburgh and back every day ...).

In Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, there was a lot going on. Not only because it's a big city (second biggest in Scotland after Glasgow), but also because of the Fringe Festival. That's the biggest arts festival in the world, and we happened to go to Edinburgh for the third and last week of this annual festival. Due to the festival, everything was more crowded than usual, because there were street performers at every corner:

Even in the Tron Kirk, a converted church which is a bar now...

Additionally, there seemed to be stand-up comedy in literally every pub in the whole of Edinburgh! You couldn't go anywhere without having someone tell you that there would be "free stand-up comedy in XYZ pub, just starting in x minutes!" Eventually, we went to a pub near our hostel to see an Irish comedian. I wasn't too thrilled by what he said (it was all a bit superficial), but I still loved his Irish accent!

There was also the Military Tattoo going on at the castle of Edinburgh. I got a bit confused by the expression, which means parade in a military context. However, this is another event or series of events taking place in August. It's also part of the Edinburgh Festival. Basically, Edinburgh is a big festival in August. :-D
We didn't get tickets for the Tattoo, but we waited outside, together with a bunch of other people, to see the fireworks and to wait for the performers to come out and play their last song while marching through the street:

However, we didn't go to Edinburgh to see artists in the first place. At least I was there for sightseeing. So we did three tours (Historic Underground, Free Walking, and Potter Trail) and at least I visited the National Museum of Scotland, the Museum of Edinburgh, and the National Gallery of Scotland, all of which are free. We also walked around the city and visited some other places that were not covered by any of the tours. As you might realise now: that's way too much for only one post. That's why I decided to do a separate post about the amazing City of Edinburgh:

And as you might have guessed from the London Harry Potter post, there will also be a Scotland Harry Potter post! (Not exclusively Edinburgh, though.)

On Wednesday afternoon, we took the train to Banavie, an incredibly small village near Fort William. Going from Edinburgh Waverley to Glasgow Queen Street, changing there and then moving on to Fort William and Banavie took us about five hours. Due to the weird seat reserving system of ScotRail, we couldn't even sit together on the second train. But at least the view out of the window was really nice:

Train station in the middle of nowhere (yup, all the signs were in English and Scots).

At night, we finally arrived in Banavie and I could do another late check-in ... The hostel in no-man's land was actually quite nice - only the two (!) snoring guys in our room destroyed the peacefulness a bit ...
It didn't feel like you could do much in the Highlands, unless you wanted to climb Ben Nevis, the highest mountain of Scotland as well as the whole UK. I guess I don't really have to mention it, but: we didn't exactly feel like doing it. ^^ Additionally, it was raining a lot (well, that's the Highlands, I guess), which didn't really enhance the motivation of some people. Still, we found other stuff to do there, and I took quite some pictures of Loch Linne, the lake nearby, the mountains surrounding us, and the piece of civilisation we found: the High Street of Fort William! I finally got one of the Nessies I had been looking for in all souvenir stores I passed. I mean, yeah, they have them everywhere in Scotland, but I had decision problems:

You might see the problem?! ^^

And they even had a free museum in Fort William! xD However, due to the amount of pictures I took, there will be a separate post about the Highlands.

As I mentioned before, Banavie is really, really small. That means: there is a train station, indeed, but there are only three trains running in each direction (Mallaig and Glasgow) per day. That's why we had to take the train back to Edinburgh that left at 7:17 a.m. on Saturday, although my flight only departed around 6 p.m.

So we had some time left to enjoy the then even more crowded streets of Edinburgh (it was the last Saturday of the festival) and to have lunch before I had to go to the airport.

Summary for the "too long, didn't read"-people: nice trip to Scotland!