scotland trip

im doing e-commerce for my 2nd sem in mba. my professor say i need to b always active in blog writing...so planning to take his word. :-)

since i always write about travel, let me write about my latest trip to scotland...not latest in a sense as it is almost 2 months. me and my friends amal, vishnu n mithun(all 3 working in infy) hired a ford fiesta and startd on our 5 day trip. first day was all drivin....since i wasnt familiar with drivin here, i wondered huw it wud b to drive in expressways. but drivin in UK is really easy. u just need 2 knw the rules... we travelled through A1 highway, which take along the curvy north sea coast in scotland. the day ended aftr v reachd our hotel at edinburgh.

some of amals friend and my friend subin was planning to go to ireland. we also joined the plan - thier landcruiser was no match to our ford :-).... nyways we set for glasgow n from there took the beautiful coastal road along atlantic ocean. scottish villages r really beautiful n tgi sunny day. but wen v reachd the ferry point, whr u hav to catch ferry, v undrstd that v jus cant go with the day n come bck frm ireland. although the other team went to ireland, v planned to explore the sleepy coastal town of stanraer.

living in london, u see a cosmopolitan culture. in stranraer, u only see scotish people. v decided to taste scotish fud n went to a restraunt..the fud was gud; not only thier scotch is gud. frm stranraer we decided to take a forest route to return back to edinburgh.


next day v planned to explore edinburgh. v decided to go to edinburgh castle first... its a big castle and was there from 12th century onwards. the oldest building inside castle is st.margaret's chapel. incidently st.margaret was the queen of scotland and lived in this castle. the castle is on top of a small hill overllokin town. frm castle u cud see a panoramic view of edinburgh city and the firth of forth(bay) with its port. aftr seeing the castle, it became evening n v jus decided to get some late lunch. v tried italian variety today n fud was great, but expensive too!

next day early morning v set out to highlands... the real beauty of scotland is here.. its christmas day..due to winter its cold outside, but i was bit dejected as i cudnt see snowall around me.. but some mountain tops were covered in snow..v decided to climb one, but undrstd its not an easy task... so v decided to move on and head towards fort william...it is a sea side town surrounded by snow covered mountains.. a really different scene...frm here u can see ben nevis, UKs highest peak at 1343m.

we proceeded along lochness(lake) towards urquhart castle. but castle was closed n we took some pics outside castle.. although it was 4pm in evening, it was pitch dark.. v then went to the capital of highlands - inverness. v did a bit of ice skating there...trust me its not easy :-) frm there v startd journey back to edinburgh.

the next day- boxing day- when the high street shops offer u big discounts...v decided to do bit of shoppin n wandered through princess street, the commercial artery of edinburgh. by noon v decided to start our long journey back home.... it was again along drive..but was filled with memories of our trip.