A sojourn through the lochs
We awoke to a lovely breakfast of eggs and bacon and fruit. For David, he sampled black pudding, a Scottish specialty, which is essentially pig’s blood sausage. The flavour transported him back to Colorado and his grandmother’s blood sausage. After chatting with Kat, the owner, and some Aussie guests about the general state of world affairs (as is customary with such international gatherings). We were soon on our way, up the only road that ventures further into the Highlands. We drove through the Rest and Be Thankful Pass and through some amazing countryside. The clouds and fog had rolled in, evoking perhaps a more traditional sense of Scottish ambiance, with its moody hills and lochs. We passed through Inverary, a cute little town known for its castle and jail. About an hour in to our travels, I realized my directions indicated we should have turned off nearer to Inverary, so we turned around and went back. I must’ve had a major planning fail, in that I hadn’t written down the specific directions to the professor’s house we were going to visit, just Google-mapped the postal code she provided. We darted in to the Tourist Info centre to use their internet and discovered Google Map had failed and put us about 4 towns away. With the right directions, we plowed on through the winding roads until we came to Lochgilphead at last, a gorgeous town on the edge of a loch. Even with more specific directions (“go up the hill just until it crests, and the name of the house is marked with a wooden plaque”), we were still wandering aimlessly, until finally we saw Caroline come running down the street to grab us.
After exchanging pleasantries, D and Caroline had a good chat about his thesis and his work on Thai. D’s prospects for going to the University of Edinburgh looked better and better. She kindly fed us mushroom soup and homemade bread, before we had to head out if we were going to make it back to drop off the car before closing. D made his way quickly through the winding roads, although I was increasingly gaining a headache, so I tried to sleep for a good chunk of the journey. Unfortunately, we hit rush hour traffic going through Glasgow and slow traffic into Edinburgh, with some seriously nightmarish roundabout/intersections that were not the best planned out. After getting lost in a maze of construction detours, we finally found the rental place, about 45 minutes after closing. Luckily, there appeared to be a key drop box, so we parked the car out front and left the keys in the box. A quick cab ride home and a pizza capped off the evening of a very long day.
