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Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Inverness, Scotland

The next morning, we awoke to yet more snow falling and worries of whether or not the highway would be open for us to get back to Glasgow. We left our hotel and headed down to Loch Ness, Scotland's famous loch(lake in Gaelic) that is located about sixteen miles outside of town. The loch is really quite large(2nd largest in Scotland) and is 23 miles long of fresh water. There was another castle right on the edge of the lake called Urquhart Castle, a castle left in ruins after a great fire hundreds of years ago. We wandered around the grounds, part of our castle pass, and enjoyed all the views of the loch and reading the history of the castle. After our search for "Nessie" ended in disappointment, we headed back through Inverness to a place north of the town on the coast called Fort George. The fort is one of the largest in Europe and was also one of the first built in Europe and houses the Black Watch, part of the Royal Regiment of Scotland. The fort reminded me of Fort Pulaski back home but without all of the canon holes. The weather continued to be uncooperative and the wind and rain proved to be too much so we decided to head on south to Stirling, our next stop on our castle tour. The drive through the snow was not quite as treacherous but it definitely provided its share of interesting moments as parts of the road were completely covered in snow. We had to detour through a small town because part of the highway was completely impassible but we managed to make it back to a part of the country where snow was not everywhere. We found a wonderful little road that was designated as a tourist route to Stirling so we followed it and were able to take some great pictures of other small towns in Scotland. Overall, the people were extremely nice and welcoming and most of the people we talked to seemed intent on one thing: that we enjoyed ourself in their country. We arrived in Stirling and relaxed in our hotel, which had some of the biggest rooms we've ever stayed in for such a cheap price.

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