We woke up super early and made our way back down towards the train station. It was dark, but there was already a good amount of people out walking around. We found the bus stop and there was the most adorable little red bus waiting for us (they call it "the wee red bus"). Once everyone arrived we started the tour! Our tour guide was so sweet, and she knew so much about the history of Scotland.
Image from Heart of Scotland website |
When finally made it to Loch Ness, we had to pay for the boat ride ticket separate from our tour ticket, but our guide collected the money and got the tickets for us while we went to get lunch. The town we were in, Fort Augustus, was very small, there weren't a lot of options for us to choose from. There were also ducks everywhere! Afterwards, we went to get on the boat for the tour. It was the most surreal experience. I couldn't believe that we were actually in Scotland on this body of water that was so famous! Unfortunately, we didn't see Nessie, but they spent a lot of the tour explaining how that mysterious legend began, which was so interesting!
Once the tour was over, we all loaded back onto the bus to make our way back. It would take about 4 hours to get back to Edinburgh, and on the way we fell asleep a couple of times. I was still trying to recover from my jet lag! We made one last stop to buy some souvenirs and use the bathroom. The entire ride back our tour guide was telling us about Scottish legends and playing folk music, it was a lot of fun! After we got back to Edinburgh we bought some food to bring back to our apartment where we watched some more I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here! and then went to bed.
The next day, we planned to do a double decker bus tour of the city. It definitely helped us get acclimated with our surroundings and how to navigate where everything was located. We hopped off at Edinburgh Castle and did an audio tour there for a few hours. It was interesting because it wasn't like being in Buckingham Palace or Dublin Castle, it was all stone and felt very medieval. We got amazing 360 degree views of the city from up there too!
We were nervous about going to Edinburgh during the winter, but besides the one rainy day, the other two were beautiful! The only hard part to adjust to was that it got dark so early, so we had to squeeze all our sightseeing into a small window. We're so thankful we got to have the experience of traveling here together, we absolutely want to go back again, hopefully when it's a little warmer!