Strolling through Scotland

After a week and a half walking around the cities and hills of Scotland, we have landed in Inverness, a lovely little Northwest town with the charm of the big capital Edinburgh in a much more manageable size. I can't put up any pictures yet (just six more nights until we'll have an apartment and an internet cable to call our own...) but here are a few highlights and surprises from what we've seen of Scotland so far (Edinburgh, Glasgow, The West Highland Way with two nights in Glencoe, Fort William, and now, Inverness):

At a small pub in Edinburgh we heard a band called Freddie and the Boys playing various stringed instruments with love and spirit, and spent our half hour trying to figure out which one was Freddie and who were his boys?

In Glasgow we stumbled into the West End Festival and the largest parade I've ever seen, including various belly dancers and unusual characters on stilts; in Edinburgh we stumbled into a Friday the 13th big screen showing of E.T. on the main plaza as a precursor to the film festival that was coming.

On the West Highland Way we walked through three days of mostly sun, beautiful lake and valley views, and then one horrendous morning of heavy rain and wind on an exposed plain which led us to our delightful hideaway of tiny Glencoe village. In Glencoe, after looking for it throughout perhaps seventeen rainshowers throughout the day, we found our huge rainbow spanning the one main street (there were two side streets). We ran out in front of the town restaraunt (yes, the town restaurant, the one and only) and got some pretty good pictures!

We watched Euro Cup soccer games in practically every major city in Scotland, getting continually stunned by Turkey's big comebacks and rooting for Spain in overtime.

We ate bread and cheese and apples and mint chocolate candy bars with views of the Atlantic Ocean, the Highland plains, various lochs, and now today, the River Ness.

We visited the oldest largest used book store I've ever seen - it had a copy of Harry Potter in ancient Greek in one of its dusty back shelves, if that gives the idea at all.

We saw LOTS of sheep, including some very cute brown ones and lots of babies, and even some of the highland cattle constantly pictured on postcards with huge long horns and shaggy heads. Plus two tinier than two fingers red frogs. Plus lots of scottie dogs. Plus one extremely poofy and proud cat guarding a Glencoe doorstep. Plus a white stallion in a lonely field under a mountain (it really was that picturesque)...

Love to everyone! Pictures to come very soon!