After an excellent breakfast at Smiddy's we drove North to Urquhart Castle. In typical Scottish fashion, the day rotated from being misty to being clear and bright, and we got some spectacular views of Loch Ness from the castle.
Wayne and I had not been to Urquhart since 1998, before the visitor's center was built. It is quite a different experience now. The castle is an extensive walk from the car park, but the visitor's center offered Mom an electro-cart for driving the path. This made the whole castle much more accessible for us, which was a huge help. (Generally, throughout the trip, I was impressed at how many places offered us special accommodation without our requesting it, assisting Mom in getting to see the wide array of things we were touring. Most impressive!) At one point during our tour of the castle, Jo and Mom had climbed to a high point on the pathway, when suddenly a violent wind picked up, and we found ourselves stopped at that point, clinging to each other to stay upright. Wayne and Dad finally came along and helped us make it to the shelter of a tower, where we waited out the winds. While in the tower, we noticed several young ladies in spike heels taking the open metal-rail stairways up the tower - we couldn't quite figure out how they could do that, much less why they'd come to a castle in spikes. After lunch at the castle (where Jo was bad and had a cream scone for lunch and followed that with more millionaire shortbread) we headed West towards Skye.
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We stopped at Eilean Donan Castle for a quick tour, and were surprised and amazed to have the docent recognize that Wayne had been there before. (Again, we hadn't been there since 1998. He let us in for free. The only thing we can figure is that we must have not been supposed to climb onto the battlements as we did in 1998, and he saw us up there and remembered Wayne's face. We only figured this out when we found that the door to those stairs was locked this time. Other than that, our previous tour hadn't included anything remarkable except for a long conversation we had with a John Morrison, who wasn't there this time.) The most remarkable thing about this tour was that the guide in one room was a cornucopia of knowledge, knowing all kinds of things about furniture, knives, woods, etc. Dad bought a hat at Eilean Donan that he wore most of the rest of the trip, and that looked great on him.
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From here, we drove across the bridge to Skye and to an old favorite B&B on
Skye, The Gables at Portree. When we arrived, the hostess offered us tea,
and we had tea and Christmas cake while we relaxed, overlooking the view of
the Portree and behind that, the Old Man of Storr.
We had dinner at a pizza place at the Portree Hotel, where the restaurant was sorely lacking in servers and it took forever.
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