Ruined stone cottage.
Today we left Inverness behind to return to Edinburgh for 4 nights. Before we left the area, Brian asked me to take him to a small little store in a village about 10 miles from where we were staying. We drove down to the village and Brian made his purchase. It was a raining day, and we did not expect to do much of anything else. When we got to the store the store owner told me that the owner of the B&B we had been staying at had called him to let me know we forgot something. (The area is truly a group of small villages where all the business owners know each other). As we drove back, we noticed that the weather had cleared enough to see across the Loch to see the castle. We decided to stop and try for a couple of cross the Loch pictures.
Ruins as seen from the road.
While we were stopped Brian noticed an old ruined cottage on the opposite side of the road.
The boys walked across to take a look.
I took some pictures and we started back for the car.
I then did my imitation of Brian and thought I had lost the key to the car. (Not really a key, looks more like a garage door opener).
We had a short scare, and started to look for the key around the car, and started back over to the cottage.
I checked my pockets for the 5
th time and finally found the key sitting inside my wallet.
After we retrieved the item that was left at the B&B for the second time, we started back for Edinburgh. We had to drive back across the Cairngorm Mountains, and it was snowing pretty hard.
The snow did not appear to be sticking to the roadway, so I was not to concerned about getting stuck (we did not have chains). During the drive, Bobby asked me to stop so the boys could play in the snow. We did, and the boys had a great time.
A snowball fight, and rolling large piles of snow to start a snow man was part of the fun.
But alas, they could not restrain themselves and threw the large snow man size balls at each other.
I got in the act, but I had lost one of my gloves somewhere along the way, and the cold was just too much for my hands.
We returned to our drive towards Edinburgh. I soon saw a sign that pointed the way to the “Hermitage”. I was curious, because I knew there was a castle with that name, but I thought it was in a different part of the country. I was right.
Another angle.
This was a wilderness area. It was very beautiful. We took a walk back to an old stone bridge.
The boys had a great time. We found some really neat water falls. The boys had fun throwing pine cones into the rapids. When we were done, we stopped and chatted with an ice cream man that was set up in the parking lot.
We bought some hot dogs, a meat pie and some soup for lunch.
We finally made our way back into Edinburgh, were I had to find our next hotel. We are a few blocks from the Edinburgh Zoo, and about 2-3 miles from the city center. We made it up to our room, and received a pleasant surprise. I was expecting a single bed, and a set of bunk beds. Instead we were treated to 3 single beds. This hotel also has an indoor heated pool. The only disappointment is laundry facilities.
Stone bridge back in the Hermitage hiking area.
I thought they had some here, but they do not.
I will have to haul our dirty laundry to a coin laundry to do our wash.
We have a few days here. We are going to go see Edinburgh Castle (I am curious to see if Brian will still be awestruck by Urquardt Castle, once he sees this castle. It is huge, and is not a ruin. I think he will be impressed. Also on the itinerary is a trip to Roslyn Chapel. For those of you that have read The DaVinci Code, this is the chapel that is in the story at the very end.
Our stay at the Best Western Edinburgh Capital Hotel was relaxing and enjoyable. This hotel is not in the city center it is a few miles outside of the city in the Corstorphine area of the city. The Edinburgh Zoo is nearby (though we did not go, we go to the San Diego Zoo all the time and we just were not interested). Once again the main draw for this hotel was a swimming pool. The pool is part of a sports club that is attatched to the hotel. Hotel guest have use of the pool. The only draw back was the pool closed with sports club (which as a bit early in our opinion). The pool is an inside pool, and depending on the activity level, could get pretty noisey. There was an glassed in area near the staff desk where I could keep an eye on my little monsters, and not have to put up with the noise.
The hotel staff was pleasant and helpful. There is wireless internet access, but it did not work for most of my stay. The hotel must contract this to an outside vendor, as none of the staff were able to assist in difficulties in connecting (later found out the service was down, it was not my usually brillant tech skills).
The room was nice sized. I thought we were getting 2 queen size beds, but we ended up with a queen, a double and a futon type mattress on the floor. My youngest son liked the idea of the futon so we each had our own bed (and yes dad took the queen, it is good to be king!).
I still had the car I had rented for our trip to the Inverness area, so the fact that the hotel was a bit out of the city center was not a problem. The hotel had onsite, free parking. Having the car was really a good thing. It allowed us more freedom in our explorations.
