On Thursday, I explored what is referred to as New Town in Edinburgh. Long ago, Edinburgh was a filthy, smelly city, so the wealthier residents constructed a more pleasant place to live north of Edinburgh Castle. This part of town has wider streets and currently contains tons of shops, pubs, and restaurants. Among the many available, I visited El Barrio, Andersons, Garden Cafe, Hard Rock Cafe, Dirty d*** , and Thirsty 26. Unfortunately, I cannot recall the names ...

We visited Glen Coe where the Clan MacDonalds resided many, many years ago. The reason for their relocation was due to a massacre by the Clan Campbells. Throughout the entire tour, Will, our tour guide, would mention the Campbells and then hock, spit afterwards as a sign of dislike. I giggled every time, of course, because my childrens' paternal great-grandmother was a Campbell. I can't wait to tell them about their ancestry! Nothing to be proud of, but makes fo...

Our first stop was in a lovely town called Pitlochry. As you can probably tell from the photo, the architecture here is primarily Victorian. Pitlochry means "place by stones". Tourism is the main source of income for the Highlands, but other sources include farming, cattle, sheep, whisky distilleries, and fishing.

Above is a view from the boat tour of Loch Ness. No need to adjust the color on your monitor, the water actually appears to be black. This is because of the peet the falls down from the mountains. Even though it looks unappealing, we were assured that the peet actually sanitizes the water and it is drinkable. Loch Ness is about 3/4 miles wide and over 23 miles long. The average depth is 600 feet, but is at most 1000 feet deep. If emptied, all of the water from E...

On Friday we ventured to New Lanark, which was a self sufficient city long ago containing cotton mills, general store, school. The photo of the waterfall shown is of Clyde Falls, which is United Kindom's largest. It was quite a hike to get to, but was well worth the exercise. I estimate that it was about at least a mile since it took me about twenty minutes of power walking uphill. I was out of breath and sweaty profusely by the time I arrived, but the view was w...