We flew to Scotland overnight. The flight, fortunately, was uneventful. We quickly got out of the airport and went to Alamo rentals. After waiting for about a half hour, they gave us a car. As we were about to leave, there was some problem that they couldn't rent us that car. Then they gave us a different car, we drove off, but discovered there was no navigation on board, so we went back again. Finally we got a third car which was fine. By now we'd been in Scotland for over 2 hours, so we headed to our airbnb. The apartment is great and it's located on the outskirts of Edinburgh in a very scenic area called Dean Village.
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| Either I'm trying to sleep on the plane or I'm trying out for the lead in "Tommy" by The Who |
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| These signs are everywhere. |
Here are some pictures of the airbnb we rented. |
| kitchen (breakfast and snacks only) |
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| dining area |
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| second bedroom |
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| master bedroom |
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| living room |
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| Dean Village area (and next picture) |
I am a huge (some would say, correctly, obsessed) fan of the tv show Outlander and also the series of books it's based on. So, our first stop after dropping off our luggage, was to travel to Midhope Castle, aka Lallybroch, which is the family home of Jamie Fraser, the lead character of Outlander. It's a real important location in the show. They are currently about to continue filming there, and in fact, you can only look through the gate as they're preparing the site now. Tomorrow is the last day for a long time that it is even open to see at all, so we (I) decided to get there first. If you're an Outlander fan, you'll appreciate this. If not, you'll think I'm a nut.
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Approaching Lallybroch (as it's known in Outlander)
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We then drove about 15 minutes to Blackness Castle. This castle "played the part" of Fort William in Outlander. It's an old fort built in the 15th Century. It's known as "the ship that never sailed" due to the shape of one end of the fort that sticks out almost into the water. It kind of looks like a ship.
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| The left side of this fort looks kind of like the bow of a ship (this and next 6 pictures are from Blackness Castle) |
We stopped for a few minutes at a grocery store to pick up some breakfast foods, then home to shower and unpack. We luckily had a reservation for dinner as the restaurant was booked solid for the whole evening. Food was amazing! The restaurant was called Makar's Gourmet Mash. The menu had the usual mix of meats and fish, but they also had an assortment of interesting mashed potatoes. Each entree comes with whatever kind of mashed potato you liked!
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| Raspberry gin and tonic!! |
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| Haggis as an appetizer !! (Absolutely delish!) |
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My lamb shank
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| Our restaurant for tonight. |
