Fort William and Edinburgh

So far, Leah and I are both about 99% sure Scotland is our favorite place from this whole trip. It's a fierce competition, and we haven't seen Edinburgh yet, but this place is really really beautiful. The only downside of Scotland so far is that all public transportation (and most other things to boot) comes, is, or starts late.

We've spent the last few days hiking and exploring Fort William and the surrounding towns, and we finally finally both bought rain jackets. The weather actually held out for us to do that, which was awesome. On our 'explore Fort William' day, we also went on a short boat trip around the loch and saw a salmon farm, a mussel farm, and a seal colony! Seals are so WIGGLY! Actually so are salmon as it turns out. Mussels do not wiggle at all. 

On our hiking days, we stumbled upon something fabulous every day. 

On our first day, we went to the top of Cow Hill, which loomed small-ly over the back of the town and had a radio tower on top. There were signs for cows everyhwere, but we didn't see any. On the way down, we made our discovery for the day: A little path made of boards labeled 'Outlandia' led us off the main trail and through some particularly moist and mossy woods. At the end of the boardwalk was a queer little faux- tree house. It was perched on the side of the hill about 15 feet off the ground, supported by a section of tree trunk that had been bolted into a cement slab. It's only window was on the back (facing down the hill) and the door was frustratingly locked. We can only guess it was someone's teeny tiny vacation cabin.  From there we went down to patter around in a stony creek, and then splash around downstream in the same creek aka the most perfect swimming hole ever- waterfalls, grassy flat area, little weird whirlpool thing, and a deep part that you could dive into off some rocks /headfirst/!! (we did not do this- there was a group of Rowdy Youths nearby that were doing it. 

Our next hiking day was serendipity itself. Originally, we had planned on using one day to ride the Jacobite Train, aka the Harry Potter train, which goes from Fort William to Mallaig and would cross the viaduct that was pictured in the movies. Unfortunately, they were totally booked. Fortunately, we ended up (TOTALLY BY CHANCE)  riding a different train along the same track (and thus over the same viaduct) and then wandering through the (very very muddy) hills around the train station until we came across the viaduct itself. We took some pictures, then discovered that we were actually in the prime spot for watching the Jacobite Train go across, and it would be crossing in half an hour! (we learned this from some people who were gathered on the hillside for that express purpose.) It was almost definitely a cooler experience than riding the train itself, and cost like a fourth of the price of a Jacobite Train ticket. So lovely. Plus we got to hike around this extremely amazing valley, and then eat delicious desserts in a converted railway car restaurant before our return train,  so we pretty much won that day. 

Another day, we got ourselves out to  Arisaig (a very westerly little peninsula) and walked out along the coastline, which was covered in bright yellow and ochre seaweed. We also discovered a really old stone/brick house in the woods, which we expertly estimate to be over 100 years old. All the wood bits were totally gone, and trees, moss and ferns had moved in with a vengeance. It felt like a sunny, green, mysterious secret garden. It also had an old cast iron stove still built into the wall, and some sort of decorative stonework crest thing over the front door. 

Fort William itself was just perfect for us- it was not merely a hiking base like Innsbruck. We stayed a really great hostel (essentially a guest house with only six beds and a full real kitchen) which was run by a sweet couple. The husband/proprietor was an absolute hiking guru for the area, which made figuring out where to go much less of a headache. The town was filled with exactly the things we wanted: thrift stores, rain jacket stores (really), and sweater stores. We also got a healthy double dose of some Scottish culture, first by a street performance of Scottish dance and pipe band that featured really cute little dancing girls, and second by a ceilidh evening in a local bar/club/venue. 

We got to Edinburgh via a really cold bus ride, and our belief was confirmed! Scotland is the best. Edinburgh is a city that feels like a castle- filled with stone buildings, cool rooftops, stairs, tunnels, bridges, and more. There are quirky, interesting little shops everywhere, and delicious looking and smelling restaurants and pubs and cafes filling in all the rest of the space.

We planned to come during the festival Fringe, which is an enormous annual performing arts festival that runs for all of August and coincides with about five other festivals along the way. Since it's festival madness season here it's hard to tell what the city's like normally, but right now it's absolutely steeped in creativity and energy and artistic fervor. The streets are crawling with performers in full costume, and the Royal Mile on High Street (literally on a hill in the middle of the city) is jam packed during the day with performers sampling their shows and handing out fliers- we gathered an inch-thick pile of fliers in about an hour. Fringe is great and good and exciting but overwhelming- it deserves a lot more time than we were able to give it (the same could be said of Edinburgh itself). We were both sad to leave so soon, and it's the city that Leah wants to go back to the most.  Neither of us could stop thinking about how this place would be heaven for all the theater people we know (Evan, lord. It's crazy. You pretty much have to come here.)

Aside from simply breathing in the atmosphere, we did get to go to a few shows- we saw a couple 'real' shows (shows we had to get tickets and pay for) and a few free shows. Surprisingly, the free shows ended up being better than our ticketed choices (although our real top ticketed choices were sold out). 
 We started off with the craziest randomest wierdest possibly drunkest solo performer ever, and it got better from there. Our other shows included an a capella group, a science guy, a couple of comedy acts of varying success, a dance/spoken word piece, and a pretty simple circus. There was a huge variety of shows to choose from, but most of the free shows were comedy acts. 

Whew these posts are getting longer and longer, aren't they? Fortunately we are now in a hostel with computers, and you know what that means! (pictures) ((or, procrastination and feeling bad for not putting pictures up)). Hopefully the Dublin post will be up soon too- we're getting so close to the end of the trip! It'll be a race to be up to date by the time we're on the plane home... We're both really really really excited to head home, but we still have three cities left, and our next couple of days are packed full of plans here in Dublin. Cross your fingers for pictures and get excited because we're about to go see the Book of Kells!