Oban and Loch Ness

Hey everybody, look at me posting twice in roughly a week! Today we are skipping around Scotland a little bit because the reindeer center deserves its own post and I have to edit the video of feeding the reindeer (and it will give you all time to get as excited in anticipation as I was in person). So where we left off was in Edinburgh, and on Friday afternoon we took our bus to the sleepy little (summer) vacation town of Oban. Picturesque little town, but it still had a blockbuster video... don't get me wrong it was out of business but nothing had come in to replace it yet so you get the feel of the size and population of the town.

Friday and Saturday night we stayed in Oban and those were some of the most ridiculous yet fun nights I've had abroad. The Scottish people are very friendly and especially in a small town like that we ended up seeing some of the same people both nights (Friday night was karaoke and the average age of the bar was roughly 45... even after all of the IES kids showed up so that was interesting) so it's easy to say we left Oban with some new friends. There was a lot of sitting on buses that weekend because Oban is between and yet about 3 hours from everything else we were doing that weekend. Saturday morning we climbed the "tower" which was a shell of a colosseum-looking structure on the hill above the town, which is where most of my Oban photos were taken. There's not much more to say on Oban, other than the nights were fun and the days weren't really spent there. Saturday afternoon was the reindeer center and again that will be getting its own post so to close this out I'll talk about Loch Ness.

Loch Ness... I felt about Loch Ness how a lot of people (incorrectly) felt about Stonehenge. Once you get over the fact that it's the famous Loch Ness, and that there's no real Nessie (otherwise Jeremy Clarkson of River Monsters would have caught her obviously...) you're just on a lake in the Scottish Highlands. That's not to say that it wasn't beautiful and Urquhart Castle wasn't interesting, but I think my issue was the fact that we ended up driving like two and a half hours to then take a thirty minute boat ride and then just chill in the cafe above the castle ruins for roughly another two and a half hours. It was fun, and I'm glad we did it, but I could've done Loch Ness and Urquhart in about an hour. 

All said and done I left with some great memories and good pictures and the weekend will forever be a highlight of my semester here.