The Grand Scottish Misadventure

Otherwise known as the "nek minute" trip. See below:

This beauty of a video was introduced to us by Liz and Tim (our famous Australian friends). In case you have trouble understanding his "bogan" New Zealand accent, he is saying that he left his scooter outside the dairy (which I assume is like a convenience store). Feel free to watch this as many times as you want. And if you're ever feeling sad, you can come back and watch it again!

January 3, 2013:
On our train to Inverness we were forced to change train cars. We had been so excited to get a whole table to ourselves, but apparently the heating stopped working and the lights had half gone out. We had arranged for late check-in at the hostel and when we got there, the guy at reception gave us our key and then went to bed. We crept into our room, where the lights were already out and there were many people sleeping. As far as we could tell,  none of the beds were free.

One looked like it might not be occupied and it had a blanket and we managed to find another that didn't have a blanket, but that was definitely not being used. Talaira said that I could take the bed with a blanket and I was getting ready for bed when a guy came in and sat down on it. I awkwardly took my coat off of the bed and looked for something else. Over Talaira's bunk was a bed that was apparently free, but that someone had put all of their stuff on. There was no blanket or pillow. We glanced around trying to see if we could figure out who had taken our blankets, but it was dark and even though everyone should have been woken up by our various shufflings and conversations, everyone was pretending to be asleep.

Talaira didn't realize I didn't have a blanket, and I had already given her my towel to help keep her warm so I slept with no pillow, wearing my only sweater and covering my legs with my coat. Talaira wore her coat and slept under two towels. The heater hadn't been on all night either. It was easily the worst sleep of the trip. It was even worse than the time I had to sleep under the escalators on my way to Barcelona and all those times my pillows were stolen in our hostels on that trip in general.

January 4, 2013:
In turn, Talaira and I went down to reception as soon as we thought it had opened. Each of us asked if there were extra blankets. Talaira, who went first, was refused. I didn't realize she'd gone down already, and thankfully the man at reception felt worse for us the second time. As everyone else was getting up and going out for the day, we finally got to go to sleep. The man offered us a free night at the hostel, which we unfortunately didn't need.

We ate a self-indulgent lunch of mac & cheese, garlic bread, salad and a rocky road dessert with tea to make us feel better about our misfortunes and caught the bus to Loch Ness in order to catch our cruise of the lake at 4pm. The views from the bus were gorgeous and we caught glimpses of the lake, but when we got to the shop where we were supposed to meet for our tour, it was under construction. The man there was perplexed that we had a tour booked. He called in another woman who arrived at 3:30pm to tell us that their boat had broken down and in fact they had emailed all bookings on December 3 to cancel. We hadn't booked our tour until mid-December. At that point, all the other tours had done their last trip for the day and even the exhibition centre was closed for the day. I learned the hard way to always call in advance. To add insult to injury we had to wait two hours in the growing darkness for the next bus and we didn't even have a proper view of the lake while the sun set. Even the restaurants had closed. Our only option to pass the time was to make friends with the convenience store owner. Of course he knew someone who now lives in Toronto.

Back in Inverness, we bought some groceries. The hostel smelled like antisceptic and crackers. There was Big Bang Theory on in the common room so we watched an episode before bed. Surprisingly, Inverness is a noisy city at night time.

January 5, 2013:
At 5am, we left the hostel and made it to our bus just in time. Naturally, the bus broke down. They sent another one and we made it to the airport. Checking in was a catastrophe. I forgot the bottle of Argan Oil that Talaira had given me for Christmas was 110mL and there was a big hullabaloo about it. One of the men from security also felt the need to remove all of my liquids from the bag I have been using since I left Canada (apparently because it was too big) and to repack them into a different bag. We arrived in Stornoway on Isle of Lewis without further problem (except that our breakfast sandwiches from the airport were disgusting), but we couldn't understand a word our taxi driver said once we got there. He got so exasperated as we got out of the cab that he shouted "Take care!" at us.

We almost expected things to go wrong at this point. The bus station didn't open until 10am. It was 8am. We walked around the city for an hour (and saw the whole city), but thankfully there was a bus leaving for the Callanish Standing Stones at 9am. The viewing centre was closed. Reminiscent of Oxford, there was a handwritten sign on the door saying that the centre didn't reopen until January 8th. Talaira had checked the website to ensure it would be open. This was the only reason we had come to Isle of Lewis. I was all for going to see the stones anyway, because really, they're stones. How hard could it be to get to them or at least to get to see them? Talaira insisted this was trespassing and refused to go.

We stood near the bus station and started to worry about the bus schedules. There was one that was expected to come in ten minutes. The following one came four hours later. We cursed the bus driver for leaving two girls, obviously tourists, in the middle of nowhere if he had known the Stones wouldn't be open. We also hoped desperately that the bus we had just gotten off of hadn't just been really early. So, it was happily that we boarded the next bus back to Stornoway and we even caught a glimpse of the stones as we drove past.

When we got back to the city, we realized that in order to get to Isle of Skye (our next destination) by evening, we had to catch a ferry at 11:50am. The next bus leaving to get there left at 12:30pm. As we had to be to Skye by that evening, we opted to call a taxi. Our driver, "Muff" (we couldn't really make out his handwriting), promised to do his best to get us there. Thank goodness he was the most pleasant man in the world. He loved talking and he drove us as quickly as he could. My stomach is not the greatest when it comes to motion sickness, so we didn't get there a minute too soon. In fact, we got there two minutes too late. You know those classic movie scenes where the lover/best friend/random person arrives just as the ferry is pulling away? That pretty much sums it up. We went into the ferry station to see what the deal was. It was 11:48am. The woman told us in a matter-of-fact, you-should-have-known-better voice that the ferry boards 10 minutes before the printed departure. It didn't say this on any of the brochures and we had called and emailed multiple times before coming to the Isles to find out if we could book tickets in advance. We had no idea what the schedule for the ferries because the schedules online are completely incomprehensible. We were outraged because it wasn't even like we had pizza hut or broke any of our superstitious rules... we just have incredibly bad luck. This, we hoped, was our rock bottom.

We decided that we had paid for a £65 scenic tour of the Isle of Harris and Muff gave us a free trip back. We stopped for lunch and things were looking up when they started playing the Black Keys over the radio. We decided we actually felt kind of free. We had been following the plan now for 22 days and now we had no concrete plans. We cancelled all the things between Isle of Skye and Glasgow and opted to go back to Inverness for the night to see if we could cash in on the free stay we'd been offered before returning to Edinburgh (because we loved it so much).

We took the ferry and the bus (which were dangerous, stomach-wise) and "checked in" to the hostel. All the rooms were full, but they offered us the use of the common room and some blankets! We had dinner at a Chinese buffet next to the Ness River, realized how beautiful Inverness and secretly wished we had just stayed and tried to go back to Loch Ness or stayed in Inverness for the day. It's all water under the bridge... we met a Canadian, two "Kiwis" (New Zealanders), a South African and a Swede; had a lovely chat; watched Role Models and fell asleep for one of the best sleeps of the trip.

January 6, 2013:
We were dead, however, on the train in the morning. In our brief momens of wakefulness, we caught glimpses of the beautiful Cairngorm National Park and the Cairngorm mountains.

We checked into the Royal Mile Hostel in Edinburgh. Our room was called "The Fridge" and I got sleep in the bed called "Guinness". We showered, grateful to be lazy for a while, but the showers were quite high up and I got the idea in my head that it would be smart to jump out of the shower over my things and onto the floor. Except, it wasn't my feet that landed on the floor. It was my tailbone. Talaira was there to see it and it was quite funny a part from my bruised ego (and my bruised backside). We decided we had nothing left to lose and went to Pizza Hut for an amazing goat's cheese and pepper pizza. We watched The Hobbit, briefly met our roommates and went to bed. Thankfully, the "nek minute" saga had finished. Somehow, I don't think I will ever have a trip free of "What fresh hell?!" and "nek minute" moments, but that remains to be seen.