Ain't No Mountain High Enough

As I've gotten older this weird thing has happened every time I see a mountain or a large hill, I have this burning desire to be on top of it. I'm sure there is a cheesy analogy in there somewhere...I don't know when this started because I distinctly remember as a camper at Manito-Wish thinking that backpacking trips were the worst form of torture imaginable. Now I often find myself daydreaming about hiking or backpacking in the mountains out west. This is really unfortunate timing with my semi-debilitating knee osteoarthritis that makes ortho docs who look at my X-rays think I am 80 years old, but what can you do? It's a Hanks women trait I guess, tell us we can't do it and we want to do it even more.
 As soon as I arrived in Edinburgh the first thing that overwhelmed my entire attention were these beautiful hills (mountains?) right outside my bedroom window. I wanted/needed to see the view from the top. Finally last Friday I had a free afternoon and got to the top of Arthur's seat and it was incredible. The view can't be described and pictures don't do it justice.  I wandered around for about 2 hours taking in the beauty and feeling awed by the fact that these geologic creations were created by volcanoes and glaciers millions of years ago. Science is neat.

The climb to Arthur's seat

On the top!

Looking down

Namaste

View of Arthur's seat from the other side

What happens when glaciers move

The next day I had signed up for a day tour of the highlands and was not disappointed. I went through Haggis tours bc of many recommendations (look them up if you are ever here, fantastic!). The tour was called "Whisky and waterfalls."  I am pretty sure it was made for me.  I signed up without even reading the description.
We drove to Stirling to see the William Wallace monument and hear (once again) how historically inaccurate Braveheart was (all this talk of course made me want to watch it even more, so I did last night and I still like it and I never want my husband to cut his hair...ever. And also, more kilts). I did learn that although Mel Gibbson is maybe a little crazy, he is only a tenth of the crazy that William Wallace was. Apparently Wallace was actually married and had kids and a nice little farm. One day 2 English soldiers pissed him off so he killed them. Later he came home to find the sheriff of the town had locked Wallace's wife and kids inside their house and burned them alive. Wallace then hunted down the sheriff and boiled him alive. But to really drive the point home, Wallace skinned the sheriff's back and used the skin as a sheath for his sword. Yikes.

Me and William Wallace

Highland Cow!  This is Hamish 2.0.  I want him to come home with me real bad.

The story of Hamish 1.0

After learning all that I needed a drink, so we went up to the famous grouse distillery. As a science nerd and an aspiring whisky connoisseur   I love distillery tours. We learned that all of their whisky is hand made and even hand mashed, which is a million times harder than it sounds. Also, in the states we are only allowed to use a barrel for whisky once, then it's retired. So Famous Grouse buys all their lightly used barrels from Jim Beam. Famous Grouse is a blended whisky and the blender man who is in charge has to sniff about 600 whiskys a day. His nose is insured for 2 million pounds. I really wanted to ask what happens when he gets a cold and also..how do I get that job.

For Rocco - here's a job for you!

After the tour and a little lunch we headed on a very short hike to a beautiful waterfall.

I learned that in Scotland they don't have wishing wells, they have wishing logs.  There are woodland fairies in Scotland called Ghillie-Duhs (pronounced Gilly-Do) who basically prance around the forest and want money for wishes (another job I wouldn't mind).  So you are meant to hammer a coin into a log and hope that it is enough to please the Ghillie-Duhs so that they grant your wish.

Rings of coins for the Ghillie-Duhs

Then we stopped in Dunkeld, a small little town on the way home.  There was a nice cathedral that I briefly walked inside, but got anxious and left fairly quickly.  The view from the outside looking at the river was much better anyway...

We ended with a nice rainbow over the castle on our way back into town. 

I then ran home, stuffed some food in my mouth and then hopped on the next bus to make the night shift that evening.  Was up for 27 hours, but it was totally worth it!