![\"map7\"](\"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/1998\/06\/map7.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nInverness: 7:05 pm<\/p>\n
I decided to go to Orkney on a day trip which will delay my schedule by one measly day (the Ben will be Wednesday). My Orkney day will be expensive;<\/em>\u00a0I\u2019ll be \u2018blowing\u2019 the extra cash I\u2019ve got. Once I get that out of the way, I\u2019ll still be on my budget, but I won\u2019t be ahead anymore. Who cares? I\u2019ll only be here once! Besides two whole days of exploring Skye appeals to me. Now, if I could only get through to book the hostel! (I would have been \u2018stuck\u2019 on Skye Monday, anyways, since Haggis doesn\u2019t do the southern \u2018Skye-Edinburgh\u2019 circuit on Mondays. Neither does it do the northern \u2018Edinburgh-Skye\u2019 circuit on Sundays.)<\/p>\n 8:07 pm.<\/p>\n Well… I\u2019ve got my accommodation booked straight through to next Thursday morning! It\u2019s really<\/em> nerve wracking, spending all this cash so quickly. At least Skye and Fort William are only \u00a38.50 (no breakfast, of course). I figure that if I get some serious<\/em> non-perishable food shopping going, I\u2019ll be able to make up for my little folly of going up to Orkney.<\/p>\n I had a very lovely afternoon here in Inverness. I went up to the castle (blech!<\/em>) and ended up this awesome tour about the \u201945. (that\u2019s the Jacobite rebellion of 1745.) I was smart and asked if there was a student price. There was and I save a whole 30p\u00a0! Well, that\u2019s a chocolate bar here! (Speaking of chocolate, I don\u2019t recommend chocolate ice cream in Scotland. Every time I ordered it, I was disappointed. It didn\u2019t taste at all<\/em> like chocolate. \u2018Wall\u2019s\u2019 ice cream, the kind on a stick, has good chocolate, though.)<\/p>\n Anyhoo, the group was treated both congenially and as a troop enlisting in the army would have been treated. It was very interesting, the setting of the tour alone was worth the money (it began with a descent into a creepy cellar down damp stone steps and along candlelit walls!). Inverness itself has charming places, but it\u2019s not great. It\u2019s one place where I knew I\u2019d be disappointed, but hoped I wouldn\u2019t be. Still, from certain angles, the castle is stunning, and the bridges spanning the River Ness are pretty; one\u2019s a suspension bridge and it literally rocks as people walk across it. Back on the \u2018mainland,\u2019 one feels that one has been on a boat!<\/p>\n This trip is unlike any other I\u2019ve taken and this journal reflects this. I mean, I\u2019ve got bad<\/em> stuff in here like disappointment and discouragement! But there\u2019s triumph here, too. I want to remember all<\/em> of this trip.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This hostel is unbelievable<\/em>. It looks and feels like a 5-star hotel. Everything\u2019s carpeted and brand spanking new but… empty, I guess. The top bunks are high<\/em> up! I don\u2019t know whether to be claustrophobic and sleep up<\/em> there or whether to be \u2018heightaphobic\u2019 and sleep down<\/em> there! (During my stay, I only slept on a bottom bunk once and I didn\u2019t sleep too well! The best bunks were the ones without ladders, believe it or not! They were easy to crawl onto and get off of and had the best mattresses! Offhand, I remember them being in Perth and Kyleakin, but there might have been a few other places.) There aren\u2019t any keys, either. Instead we have those new-fangled magnetic card things. I hate \u2018em. (My first time in Glasgow I had keys. When I returned, they had *just* changed to magnetic cards!) We need them to go almost everywhere in this hostel (into our rooms and into the lounge\/laundry\/ common room area). And I think that both here and Glasgow got a special on really<\/em> ugly tartan carpeting! (although, like Glasgow itself, this carpet is growing on me, and I\u2019m becoming rather fond of it!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 10:02 AM 20 days to go… boohoo. I\u2019m really settling into this routine of packing and unpacking, settling in and moving on! At this time tomorrow, I\u2019ll have been gone a week. That\u2019s a QUARTER of my trip over, zip, done. I\u2019m glad I\u2019m getting into the \u2018stuff\u2019 I\u2019ve really wanted to see. I think […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[656,636,660,18,3,56],"tags":[853,663],"class_list":["post-10229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aviemore","category-europe","category-inverness","category-scotland","category-travel","category-uk","tag-accommodation","tag-castlesfortresses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10229\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}