The Land of More Sheep Than People

Rachel Torralba Lancaster University, England

Date

November 27, 2017

This weekend, a few of the friends I made here and I made our way to Edinburgh, Scotland. We took a train up on Friday after class and spent the night exploring the city. It kind of reminded me of London but with different architecture. There was a Ferris wheel (not as big as the London eye, but it was still there) by the river and the city was gorgeous. We climbed so many stairs before getting to our Airbnb that night. Everything seemed to be up or down a hill and we got a little lost along the way. We finally made it and were able to find a few pubs that were still open so we could grab dinner. We arrived in Scotland around seven so we thought that some places would still be open. It took us maybe an hour to find somewhere to eat, everything seemed to close so early!

We got up the next morning to go on the Loch Ness, Inverness, and the Highlands 2-day tour we booked through Rabbie’s tours (10/10 would highly recommend!). It was a small tour group of about 10 people. Our tour guide was amazing and knew a ton about Scotland. We spent the first day taking gorgeous pictures of everything. Scotland is gorgeous, especially in the Highlands.

We even got to go to Loch Ness, where the Loch Ness monster supposedly lives. We got there around sunset and it was amazing to see everything there. We didn’t see the Loch Ness monster, but there were a ton of ducks. I really don’t know why there are so many ducks here, even Lancaster has a million of them.

We passed more sheep than I could possibly count but we finally made it to Inverness where we spent the night at a hostel. It was a small town but everything seemed to be closed by the time we got there so getting dinner was a little bit of a struggle. We probably weren’t looking in the right place since everyone else seemed to have an easier time finding dinner.

The second half of our tour was less picturesque but still amazing. We learned a lot more about the history of Scotland. We also got to go to the mountains and see snow. I don’t know why it was so exciting to see snow since I’m from Minnesota and see it all the time in the winter but it was fun to travel to the top of the mountain and be around snow again.

I really enjoyed staying in Scotland and I would love to go back some day to see the Isle of Skye and visit some of the castles. Two days is definitely not enough time in Scotland!