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Day 6: Finding our Car

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At breakfast, we got a disappointing email. Our car was back in Glasgow. It wasn’t all the way back at the airport, but it was still about an hour away. Once we got our car, we still had another 2 and half hour drive to our second hotel. By the time we read the email, it was already almost 9am. This didn’t leave us a lot of time to explore the town of Stirling, so we ate breakfast quickly. Aaron tried black pudding for the first time, which is basically a mix of sheep's blood, barely, and other spices. He’s still on the fence about the taste. 


The only thing we really had time to see was Stirling castle, which was great! It was basically a giant museum with lots of really interesting displays. It made us very aware of the fact that we don’t know much about Scottish history, so we added Braveheart, Mary Queen of the Scotts, and Highlander to our list of movies to watch. We’re pretty sure that should cover everything.



After a quick lunch at the castle’s cafe, we decided to get a cab to our rental car place instead of trying to navigate public transit back to Glasgow. The cab driver was quite the character. He brought up the most politically divisive topics he could think of, and threw out some pretty unbelievable facts about Scotland and his own life, all while swearing in his own unique Scottish way every few minutes. For the entire hour.


We were finally able to pick up our car with only a few more calls to our travel agent to clarify the booking details and we headed up to our next destination. The drive was two and a half hours of windy and wet roads with Aaron white knuckling everytime a local rally car driver passed on the right. We stopped off at Loch Lamond for a snack and then later at a scenic stop where we hiked down toward a small river and waterfall. Oddly enough, the highlands look a lot like south Iceland. We made it to our hotel in time for dinner overlooking another lake before heading to bed. We weren't able to explore Fort William due to the delays and our hotel was still pretty far from the city center, but it was a nice evening.



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