Goodbye Scotland… hello London!

In Fort William, we spent the night in jail! Nah… like I said in my previous post, the hotel we stayed at used to serve as a prison. Haha. That was kind of fun. Our room was really small, but comfortable enough for one night. After sleeping in our “cell”, we got a hearty breakfast then we did some souvenir shopping. Since we only packed what we could carry in a backpack, we’ve had to be smart about our souvenir shopping. Mostly I’ve just gotten little trinkets to put on my shelves back home, or postcards. My photographs are gonna be my souvenirs too! After spending money to our satisfaction, we decided to get back on the road and head toward our next and last destination in Scotland, Balloch / Loch Lomond.

We drove through Glencoe, which is supposed to be beautiful and one of the best parts of Scotland… but we couldn’t see anything! It had started to rain when we left Fort William, and it was super cloudy/foggy. It’s a shame, because what little we could see was indeed beautiful. Guess I’ll have to come back to Scotland another time… you won’t need to twist my arm much at all to convince me of that!

Anyway, along our route, we stopped at Inveraray Castle to check it out. I had a chuckle once we got inside because I hadn’t realized this was the same castle used for filming Downton Abbey! We got our tickets, got inside and went to the first room and I noticed a photograph of a character from Downton Abbey, and I was like, huh, that’s weird. Then we saw another… so we were like wait a minute, is this the castle? Turns out, yup! It is! We enjoyed looking around the different rooms and the grounds! There was a beautiful garden and a nice little trail path to walk around the grounds.

After the castle, Kiley found that there was a jail (museum) in town we could check out – I guess we wanted to continue with the incarceration theme a bit longer… it’s actually a museum about the prison that operated in the building – they had an escape room too, and I’m not gonna lie and say I wasn’t tempted … but it was a little pricey for just the two of us.

I actually ended up getting locked up… for a few minutes! Anyway, there was an old prison, then a new prison, an old courtroom, and some outdoor ‘airing yards’ they used for prisoners that we could look at. Interesting bit of history! It was fascinating going through the old cells and seeing what the living conditions were like…

Me in the process of realizing I was actually locked into this cell…

After finishing up at the jail, we headed to Balloch, driving through the Trossachs National Park. Our hotel was near Loch Lomond, and it seemed like a nice little town to spend a night in! We were pretty tired after our day in castles and jails, though, so we had dinner in the pub below our room and hung out in the hotel for the evening.

The next morning dawned our last day in Scotland! We had to be back in Edinburgh by late afternoon to return the car and get on our train to London. But first, we had two stops to make!

First, we visited Stirling Castle in Stirling. I guess I should count how many castles we’ve visited so far on this adventure – not just in Scotland, but all over! Feels like at least 15 now. But at any rate, I enjoyed this castle! I especially liked seeing the Stirling Heads – a collection of portraits carved into wood – they were originally intended to adorn the ceiling of one of the king’s audience chambers. We saw a replica on the ceiling in the royal palace, furnished as it would have been back in the day… as well as the original heads on display in an exhibit nearby.

After the castle, we decided to make a quick stop to check out the Kelpies in Falkirk. Kelpies have a big part in Scottish mythology. Kelpies are strong horses with seaweed or kelp around the hooves that lurk around or in water – the lakes or rivers in Scotland. They also are believed to trap unsuspecting people and drown them. If you grab onto their manes, your hands will become trapped and you won’t be able to get off! These sculptures are massive. The largest horse sculptures in the world, apparently. They were neat to see in person! I had seen photographs before and thought that would be interesting to see someday and now I can say I have!

Before long, it was time to get going, so we grabbed a quick lunch and made the rest of the trip back to Edinburgh. We were happy to drop off the car and be done with driving on the left side of the road! Even though we still have a few more days ahead of us in a city that also drives on the wrong side of the road – we caught a train to London after dropping off the car. It was a long ride, but we made it to our airbnb without any problems. We grabbed a quick dinner from a place a few minutes away from our airbnb and went to bed!

Today (June 26) was a very warm day in London. We woke up early, but lazed around a bit. I did a load of laundry then we decided to set off for the Tower of London. We figured out a route, jumped onto the Tube and off we went! We arrived a little earlier than our timed entry tickets would let us in, so we took the opportunity to check out the Tower Bridge and a gift shop nearby.

I have been to the Tower of London before, but I thought it was something Kiley should see too! Especially since the Crown Jewels are housed there. We enjoyed our time there despite it being pretty crowded and H O T. Not even close to the temps in Nebraska/Iowa, so not really comparing… but it was still hot and air conditioning isn’t as commonplace as it is in the US! I’m still tickled at the fact that they have a moving walkway in one part of the Crown Jewels vault so people are forced to move on instead of lingering and causing bottlenecks.

We spent several hours in the Tower checking all the exhibits out… then we decided to get lunch at a BBQ place nearby! The food was delicious and surprisingly good for “Kansas City BBQ” this far away from Kansas City.

After eating our fill, we walked to St. Paul’s Cathedral to check it out. Another place I’ve been to before, but thought it was worth checking out again. It’s a beautiful cathedral and I enjoyed the crypts as well. We decided to skip climbing the dome because we were feeling low on energy. Probably the heat and this whole trip catching up to us…

We stopped at the grocery store to get some drinks and snacks then headed back to the airbnb for some rest. We ended up watching several episodes of Outlander in a row 😁

Tomorrow it’ll be cooler and hopefully we can cross more things off our list. We have tickets booked for the Churchill War Rooms and we’re hoping to check out Westminster Abbey, see Big Ben, and possibly do a walk by of Buckingham Palace!

More later…