Perthshire

Alison, the couchsurfer who showed me around on Tuesday invited me to join her and her Aussie girlfriends on a road trip--a girls day. She wanted to show them some of the highlands and has adopted me as her little sister and wanted to bring me too. We started as Scotland's smallest whiskey distillery. It was really adorable. They showed us where the barley comes in, how they distill it, which part of the alcohol they actually use. And they gave us a glass of whiskey for the tour, nice way to start the day. Then we went to the falls of Bruar and ate lunch there. After lunch we went to a few small stops...a few lochs and little paths. Out last stop before really getting into the hills--where the roads are single stone lanes and the sheep really do just stand in the middle of the road--was Queen's View. Queen Victoria visited and decided it was gorgeous. And it is. Maybe one of the prettiest views I have ever seen. We drove through the hills, stopped and had tea and scones, saw lots of castles, high land cows--here spelled coos--saw the grave of Rob Roy, the palace where Mary Queen of Scots was born and the oldest living thing in Europe, a tree called the Ewe, over 5,000 years old. We had dinner at a little chip shop and I ate haggis. I kind of knew it was made of gross stuff but I didn't let Alison tell me till I had digested it a little. It's sheep heart, liver and lungs with onions and stuff. It was good, a cross between hash and sausage. I'm never eating it again though.
Anyway, it was 12 full hours start to finish and a great tour. We went places that buses can't go because the roads are so small and saw some things that no one could have shown me unless they had lived her 34 years.



Queen's View
Sheep in the Road Tea and Scones