Scotland: The 12 hour bus tour

I slept quite well last night, for the most part. I think that I can contribute that to being exhausted. I did wake up at 3am when the people who were on a pub crawl got in. I looked at my phone, saw it was 3am and thought to myself "why are they coming home so early?" Yup friends the Netherlands has me thinking that getting in at 3am is early. Other than that - and the about 20 minutes I was awake because the guy sleeping in the bunk below me was snoring SO loud - I slept really well.

I got up at 6:30 so I would have time to shower and get to the bus pickup spot with plenty of time.

The bus left just after 8am and I was exhausted. I was lucky and got a seat right at the front, this was ideal for optimal sightseeing. Most of the trip was just driving around 'seeing.' This was alright as the countryside is very beautiful, unfortunately it rained all day so the windows were often covered with rain.

Some of the highlights:
We drove by Stirling Castle, which I will be going to see tomorrow. It is the second most visited castle here, after Edinburgh Castle.
We drove by the castle that you see in The Holy Grail.
We drove by the field and hills where William Wallace fought. (FFRRREEEEEEDOM!)

We stopped at Glen Coe which is a beautiful valley surrounded by stunning huge rolling mountains. It was really gorgeous.

We drove through a lot of beautiful scenery, unfortunately taking pictures from a bus doesn't really work that well, especially when windows are covered in rain. As such I didn't actually take too many pictures.

We stopped along Loch Ness and we took a boat ride, unfortunately it was so rainy and cold that I just sat in the covered part and couldn't see much due to foggy windows and rain clouds on the top of the mountains. The boat drives down and takes you past some ruins of a castle which is a really lovely sight, especially with a lovely backdrop. Due to the peat in the soil the water is really dark, think Guinness coloured. Sadly there were no sightings of Nessie. Better luck next time.

Basically we drove back from there. This trip was divided with a couple other stops, most of them were for things like snacks, coffee, and bathroom breaks. It was a great day, albeit it really long. It got quite excessive sitting in a bus that long, but it was nice to be able to see so much in one day.

We arrived back just after 8pm. I walked back to the hostel, stopping at Subway along the way.

I realize that this is not likely an interesting post to read but I can't really list things that I saw or did because mostly I just sat in a bus and looked out the window at what you would imagine Scotland to look like. So imagine Scotland, do you have it? Yup, that's what I saw. Rolling green hills topped with rain clouds, scattered with fluffy sheep, cordoned off by short stone walls. Adorable!