Jul. 6th, 2011 | 05:33 pm
Now, back to the pictures. But don't get too excited, this tour was beyond BORING. I had wanted a chance to see the lake where Nessie lives so, we ended up picking a tour we knew pretty much nothing about. BIG MISTAKE. In my defense, the discription DID talk about Nessie and this pretty little town where we could "browse the shops" but it was the battlefield description I should have paid more attention to. Really, can "battlefield" mean anything but trouble?
Welcome to Ivergordon/Inverness Scotland
It turns out, the majority of this tour was focused on said "battlefield," the only problem with that (as far as I could see) was that the battle had taken place oh, four hundred years ago (give or take) which left us all staring at a bunch of grass for oh, two and a half hours. No, I'm not kidding. Nobody was happy about it, and many complained just not to our driver while we were in the middle of it.
To be fair, Culloden Moor was a huge battle for the Scots,altering their landscape in a huge way with the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie. This was the type of place you make children go on school trips so they can apprciate their history. There was little to look at save a few weapons and some gold pieces (although knowing the money had been in thier pockets over four hundred years ago held my attention for a minute.)
Honestly, being there kind of creeped me out, I half expected to see blood stains on the grass and though we told our tour guide "we aren't history bufsf." he proceeded to try to convert us, explaining the whole battle in detail (he no doubt wondered what we were doing at a battlefield with little to no interest in history) but I was waiting for the Lochness stop...
Anyway, here's some pics to mark the spot
smg.photobucket.com/albums/v624/CindyM99/U
See? I told you it was boring! Mom gave it the old "Thumbs Down" so we wouldn't forget how bad it was...
Here's me looking for Nessie as we zip past the lake. "Here Nessie!"
Inverness
LOL, As I upload the pictures, I'm remembering more details, we made a bit of an "escape" so we could at least spend an hour in the town of Inverness. We were supposed to have lunch at a frigging Ramada. As soon as we heard this, we knew we weren't going to bother (more on that later) so we took off the minute we got out of the bus, and started walking down toward the town centre. It was a beautiful/quaint town, and we would have loved to walk around for longer than we had. We were furious that this opportunity had been snatched from us, and actually put our complaint in writing when we got back to the ship.
After racing around to get a postcard (a must in every city we made it to) and nosing around a bit, we raced back to the hotel hoping to maybe snag some fries. We were starving, having only had some fruit we carried with us on the drive to Invergordon.
We got back ten minutes before the bus was due to leave and the hotel staff refused to give us anything outside of the meal which we were supposed to have eaten so, with ten minutes to go, they actually brought out cutlery and full plates of food. We shovelled some food down (we had been right to skip it) but the topper was when Mom asked for a gingerale and they haughtily informed us that only Coke was included. I mean hello? What's the difference? This day was turning into one big dud.
We did make it to Loch Ness but he flew past the lake without a second glance and when a girl asked if he were going to stop so she could get a lake photo the reply was "no time." This after we had spent hours looking out at a very plain horizon. Needless to say, it didn't go over well as passengers rolled their eyes and cursed the driver. But wait, we weren't done with the unpleasant surprises just yet. Our tour description had briefly touched on a place called Nessieland. Now being the naive traveller that I was, I was thinking that this meant a stop at the famous lake and if I was lucky, while I was going to solve the mystery right then and there and go home with a full sighting and a free trip back to Scotland as I had solved their greatest mystery. Okay, maybe not quite that far, but you get my drift:-)
It turns out, "Nessieland" was nothing more than a crappy gift shop. Another forty-five minutes wasted in a gift shop. Hello? If the driver thought his passengers were mad before, look out, but all we could do was joke about it, I mean we were completely stuck.
I remember he told us to be back on the bus for 4:45pm (it was currently 4pm and Mom piped up (very loudly) that we could be back by 4:04). Everyone laughed and one guy says "What's the matter with you? Get that wheelchair down, get the girl in it and have her back by 4:03! Hysterical. We ran into a few of the same people on the tours and this gentleman was one of my favourites. We seldom bothered with names (there were roughly 45 people on each bus) but he was a real card.
Oh, oh, oh speaking of gift shops, I'm forgetting that Cullden Moor had one, and the majority of us took refuge in there. Some of the stuff for sale was just bizarre so Mom and I couldn't stop laughing. We were pretty loud so this other guy from our bus wandered over saying "Since I see you have a sense of humour about this stuff, I just have to show you something..." He then proceeded to lead us over to a shelf and present me with some sort of wooden stick with a flat circle on the end . It was a porridge stirrer! I don't know if they used it back in the 1600's, but it certainly seemed like that was the only group that could have potentially used it! When we looked closer, we saw all kinds of stuff like that, completely useless knick knacks. If I hadn't already spent $318 on the damn tour, I would have bought something frivilous just to have a laugh over it years from now, but instead I'm tell you! Aren't you lucky? LOL
Our final stop on the tour from hell was a cute little town named Beauly. We were supposed to have time to get off the bus and look around. Surprise, surprise we only had ten minutes left and all the shops were closed since it was a Sunday anyway. So to recap, instead of hanging out in a cute little town, we were looking at porridge stirrers and plastic Loch Ness monsters. Yeah, this tour went well. I'll tell you right now, we got ALL of our money back! Yay!
Welcome to Ivergordon/Inverness Scotland
It turns out, the majority of this tour was focused on said "battlefield," the only problem with that (as far as I could see) was that the battle had taken place oh, four hundred years ago (give or take) which left us all staring at a bunch of grass for oh, two and a half hours. No, I'm not kidding. Nobody was happy about it, and many complained just not to our driver while we were in the middle of it.
To be fair, Culloden Moor was a huge battle for the Scots,altering their landscape in a huge way with the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie. This was the type of place you make children go on school trips so they can apprciate their history. There was little to look at save a few weapons and some gold pieces (although knowing the money had been in thier pockets over four hundred years ago held my attention for a minute.)
Honestly, being there kind of creeped me out, I half expected to see blood stains on the grass and though we told our tour guide "we aren't history bufsf." he proceeded to try to convert us, explaining the whole battle in detail (he no doubt wondered what we were doing at a battlefield with little to no interest in history) but I was waiting for the Lochness stop...
Anyway, here's some pics to mark the spot
smg.photobucket.com/albums/v624/CindyM99/U
See? I told you it was boring! Mom gave it the old "Thumbs Down" so we wouldn't forget how bad it was...
Here's me looking for Nessie as we zip past the lake. "Here Nessie!"
Inverness
LOL, As I upload the pictures, I'm remembering more details, we made a bit of an "escape" so we could at least spend an hour in the town of Inverness. We were supposed to have lunch at a frigging Ramada. As soon as we heard this, we knew we weren't going to bother (more on that later) so we took off the minute we got out of the bus, and started walking down toward the town centre. It was a beautiful/quaint town, and we would have loved to walk around for longer than we had. We were furious that this opportunity had been snatched from us, and actually put our complaint in writing when we got back to the ship.
After racing around to get a postcard (a must in every city we made it to) and nosing around a bit, we raced back to the hotel hoping to maybe snag some fries. We were starving, having only had some fruit we carried with us on the drive to Invergordon.
We got back ten minutes before the bus was due to leave and the hotel staff refused to give us anything outside of the meal which we were supposed to have eaten so, with ten minutes to go, they actually brought out cutlery and full plates of food. We shovelled some food down (we had been right to skip it) but the topper was when Mom asked for a gingerale and they haughtily informed us that only Coke was included. I mean hello? What's the difference? This day was turning into one big dud.
We did make it to Loch Ness but he flew past the lake without a second glance and when a girl asked if he were going to stop so she could get a lake photo the reply was "no time." This after we had spent hours looking out at a very plain horizon. Needless to say, it didn't go over well as passengers rolled their eyes and cursed the driver. But wait, we weren't done with the unpleasant surprises just yet. Our tour description had briefly touched on a place called Nessieland. Now being the naive traveller that I was, I was thinking that this meant a stop at the famous lake and if I was lucky, while I was going to solve the mystery right then and there and go home with a full sighting and a free trip back to Scotland as I had solved their greatest mystery. Okay, maybe not quite that far, but you get my drift:-)
It turns out, "Nessieland" was nothing more than a crappy gift shop. Another forty-five minutes wasted in a gift shop. Hello? If the driver thought his passengers were mad before, look out, but all we could do was joke about it, I mean we were completely stuck.
I remember he told us to be back on the bus for 4:45pm (it was currently 4pm and Mom piped up (very loudly) that we could be back by 4:04). Everyone laughed and one guy says "What's the matter with you? Get that wheelchair down, get the girl in it and have her back by 4:03! Hysterical. We ran into a few of the same people on the tours and this gentleman was one of my favourites. We seldom bothered with names (there were roughly 45 people on each bus) but he was a real card.
Oh, oh, oh speaking of gift shops, I'm forgetting that Cullden Moor had one, and the majority of us took refuge in there. Some of the stuff for sale was just bizarre so Mom and I couldn't stop laughing. We were pretty loud so this other guy from our bus wandered over saying "Since I see you have a sense of humour about this stuff, I just have to show you something..." He then proceeded to lead us over to a shelf and present me with some sort of wooden stick with a flat circle on the end . It was a porridge stirrer! I don't know if they used it back in the 1600's, but it certainly seemed like that was the only group that could have potentially used it! When we looked closer, we saw all kinds of stuff like that, completely useless knick knacks. If I hadn't already spent $318 on the damn tour, I would have bought something frivilous just to have a laugh over it years from now, but instead I'm tell you! Aren't you lucky? LOL
Our final stop on the tour from hell was a cute little town named Beauly. We were supposed to have time to get off the bus and look around. Surprise, surprise we only had ten minutes left and all the shops were closed since it was a Sunday anyway. So to recap, instead of hanging out in a cute little town, we were looking at porridge stirrers and plastic Loch Ness monsters. Yeah, this tour went well. I'll tell you right now, we got ALL of our money back! Yay!
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