Road Trip with the kids, Inverness

We had a lovely sleep in at our awesome hotel. Not only was is cheap and huge, we got an 11am checkout as well as a full english breakfast!! Nice way to start the day.

We left Aberdeen to head for Inverness. As it was only a short drive compared to the day before, we decided to take the scenic route. Looking at the map I would assume that the scenic route would be a lovely coastal road past many of the castles on the map. The day before we had followed a little of the coast and past a fairly decent castle. We figured it would be similar, but the GPS had other ideas. Apparently the 'scenic route' from Aberdeen to Inverness goes through every single lane, windy, farm road that zig zags, NOWHERE near the coast, yet takes 6 times as long as the highway!!!

Not long after leaving Aberdeen we went to a service station to get some fuel. While the others were inside getting snacks I was looking at a newspaper stand. I then noticed on the cover of every newspaper were stories about the hurricane due to hit west coast of Scotland over the next day or so. I thought about where we were going, and looked on the paper, it was basically exactly where it was supposed to hit!! We thought it would be fine, we just wanted to get there and see it!! Plus we had one night in Inverness before heading to the west coast and Isle of Skye. By the next morning we would know more about where the danger was.

When we eventually made it through the farms and back roads we came into Inverness. It was a pretty big town. We stopped at a shopping centre to get some lunch and look for an information centre for some advice. We didnt find an info centre, but we did find a Subway!!! After food, we decided to go and see Loch Ness that night so we could leave early the next day. We had pre booked a hostel for Inverness so there was no rush to get into town. We drove up towards loch ness and all of the touristy stuff started.

There were statues of Nessy everywhere and little souvenier shops. It was pretty cool. The Loch itself was pretty boring. It was just a gigantic lake! It was nice, there were pretty mountains surrounding and the sun was setting. People had warned us that it was nothing special, but you cant come all this way and not see Loch ness!! We went into a few of the souvenier shops and stopped at the statues. We tried on all the little monster hats and bought our postcards.

Once it started to get late we went back to town. We found our hostel, but we couldnt check in for another hour, so we went to the pub for a while. After a beer we checked into our hostel. At first it didnt look too bad, but after we got to the room we realised we were in for a long night.

On check in they gave us a set of sheets and told us we had to make our own beds, then strip it for them the next day. We opened the door to our room and there was a random guy lying on a bed. He had no bags or belongings. When we walked in he woke up and kicked over a cup on the floor. He ran out of the room, we assumed to get a cloth or something, but no, he was just leaving. We guess he wasnt sposed to be in the room. So we were left with whatever it was in that cup all over the floor. On closer inspection the fan was broken and noisy, there was rubbish everywhere, Laura had blood on one of her blankets. Dont even get me started on the toilets! Tom had a shower and almost needed counselling after it!! From then we decided to use the toilets at the pub downstairs instead. We had stayed in some pretty bad hostels, but this one took the cake - dropped it on the floor, and mashed it into our blankets!! lol

We decided not to hang around there for long. We went downstairs and had a look around town. We found a little italian restaurant to have dinner and it was awesome. It was cold and rainy in Inverness and the town itself was nothing too special. Kinda scary actually.

After dinner we were going to go back to the pub but Tim, laura and I decided we were just going to go and use the wifi for a bit. After a while we ended up at the pub for a bit, but the locals were a bit terrifying so we went back to our hostel of doom and attempted to sleep.

The next day we would be going to Isle of Skye and heading straight into this apparent 'hurricane', I needed my rest!!