Fort William + Loch Ness

At the beginning of this week, Ryan had a few days off and so we took a little trip out to Fort William and Loch Ness.

Here are a few pictures if you'd like to see....


We left on Monday morning and headed towards Fort William, stopping on the way at Dalwhinnie Distillery where we tasted their whiskey and homemade chocolates.

It was our first distillery! In Italy, we used to stop at wineries on the side of the road if we were in the right area, so we figure that distilleries are to Scotland what wineries are to Italy.

When we got to Fort William, we dropped our bags off at the B&B (we stayed at St. Andrew's Guesthouse, which I would highly recommend) and headed to Glen Nevis. The Glen is wrapped around the southern part of Ben Nevis, the UK's highest mountain, and is full of walks and hikes and great scenery.

We did a great walk through the Nevis Gorge to Steall Meadows to see the waterfall...you can get to the foot of the falls by crossing the river on a cable suspended above the ground (and over a river!) which Ryan tried, obviously, and I opted out of.

The next morning, we headed to Urquhart Castle and Loch Ness....

...the drive was beautiful and ended up being one of our favorite parts of the trips. We stopped first at Urquhart Castle:

And then we were thinking of doing a boat trip around the lake (the castle sits right on Loch Ness), but since it was chilly, we decided instead to check out the Loch Ness Center & Exhibition which taught us all about the myth (or fact?!) of the Loch Ness monster.

Then a quick stop in Inverness for lunch (we went to Kitchen Brasserie and had great burgers) and we headed back to Kirkcaldy in the afternoon. We used to do overnight trips in Italy all the time - it's a fun way to see a new area without the big deal of a whole "trip" - so we were really happy to have this time to explore a different part of Scotland...and to check a few things off our growing list!

PS - Other overnights including Bassano del Grappa and the night we spent in an igloo....