Scotland!

I just got home from Scotland and I can say that it is by far the most beautiful thing that I have ever seen in my entire life!  A group of us, me, Renae, Emily, Anna and Rachel, left from London at 6:30 on Friday morning and took a train to Edinburgh.  It was a really pretty train ride and as we got closer to Edinburgh we got to see the North Sea.  When we got into Edinburgh, Robin, our tour guide, met the group by the train.  He had his kilt on and he loaded us all on a bus and we went on a bus tour of Edinburgh.  When we got out to look at a castle, he led us there by playing the bag pipes.  They are such a pretty instrument and it seemed like no matter where you were in the city, you could hear the bag pipes echoing in the distance.  We ended up staying at a bed and breakfast just outside the city center and it was too cute.  All of our beds had blue plaid comforters and we even had a skeleton key to get in and out of our rooms.  The breakfast was delicious too.  On day 2, we went on a tour of the Scottish Highlands.  It was absolutely gorgeous!  It was so strange though because when we left Edinburgh in the morning, it was raining, when we stopped just into the Highlands, it was snowing and at Loch Ness, it was sunny.  One of the first stops we made on the bus tour was to see hairy coos.  They are just cows that are super fuzzy and have big horns.  They are adorable.  The 2 that we got to see up close were named Heather and Hamish.  They are expecting a calf soon, but I'm sure the babies are even cuter.  The next time we stopped, we were in Glencoe.  There are 3 big mountains there, called the 3 sisters of Glencoe, and they are beautiful.  We also stopped at Loch Ness during our tour.  I kept on the lookout for Nessie, but I didn't catch a glimpse of her.  Peter, our tour guide and bus driver for the day, told us that the Loch is 700 feet deep and contains black holes where no one knows how deep it could be.  It was also eerily still on Loch Ness.  There was no movement at all, no birds, no fish, no nothing.  We even got to get into the Loch and it was so cold.  The top of the Loch stays at about 2 degrees Celsius throughout the year so I was glad that I only put my feet in.  On our final day in Scotland, we took a tour of the Edinburgh Castle.  It is located on a huge hill that overlooks the entire city so there were some great views.  We also got to walk through some war museums, restored parts of the original castle and see the Scottish crown jewels.