Hello, and welcome back to your annual story time of Ben and Sarah’s international adventures! Keeping with the tradition of the last few years, Sarah and I visited with her family, this year going back to Scotland.
________________________________________________________
From Saturday, 21-December, 2019 all the way through to Saturday, 04-Jan, 2020
Part 1 – The overview, and photo highlights
The general framework of the trip is detailed below; we didn’t come into the trip with any major plans or goals, we were really looking forward to the time to relax after the busyness of 2019. It’d been a pretty amazing year, full of huge amounts of growth… but with that growth had come a number of challenges that left us fairly drained.
A visit to the Highlands was exactly what the doctor ordered.
Quick summary of our trip to Scotland!
- Leave Portland on Saturday, 21-December-2019
- Get stuck in San Francisco due to a delayed flight, and stay overnight at the super-posh Grand Hyatt while also getting to walk around the city and visit my cousin
- Arrive in Scotland on the 23rd… but unfortunately without our checked bags
- Explore Aberdeen for two days (Tuesday and Wednesday), getting to see the Art Museum, attend the midnight mass at St. Maccars, and even watch dolphins jumping in the surf outside of town
- Drive to the Isle of Skye, staying overnight at the BenLeva Inn on Loch Ness. We don’t see Nessie… but we do have a full can of Irn Bru (a type of soda) vanish, leaving only the pierced and empty can…
- We spent three full days on Skye, and had an excellent time exploring and photographing everything we could find. Some major adventure points were:
- We hiked up to the Storr (in the rain)
- Explored the town of Portree, and ate some extremely good Cullen Skink
- hiked the Quiraing route from the parking lot down to the town of Flogetty
- Walked out to the Fairy Pools
- Back in Aberdeen, we spent a day touring around the countryside, seeing standing stones and other amazing points of interest.
- We spent another day back in Aberdeen exploring the city – seeing Greta’s office, visiting shops, and walking through some amazing museums
