The Matt and Tracey Tours

Aloha,

Matt and I are still here in Glasgow, loving the scenery, people, traveling... everything. Yesterday we wanted to go on a tour to Loch Lomond, but they had all been booked. This did not stop us from touring Loch Lomond. We mapped out the area, hopped on a city bus, and under an hour later we were there. The way things turned out, our bus stop was along a random highway and the driver pointed *that way* to where we wanted to be. It wasn't too complicated to get there. We went down a steep slope that I decided to run down... and then couldn't stop myself from running until the ground had flattened out a bit. It was pretty funny. We spent the day hiking trails, walking along the loch, checking out various shops and seen absolutely everything we could have seen in the area. It was a great day and many great photos will be posted. The one unfortunate experience though was that Matt and I both did something to our right foot. It is still bothering both of us now. Myself a bit more as I try to limp my way to all the new sites and keep up with Matt.

Today was the same deal: tours booked, expensive, or just not that interesting. So we decided it was castle touring day. We went back to the bus station, got an explorer pass (good for traveling all of Scotland for 3 days) and started hopping on and off buses again. First we went to Stirling castle after briefly stopping at a store called "Matt". We had a guided tour of by a hilarious man who pointed and shouted at Matt, using him as a character in the story he was telling. There will of course be pictures of the castle as well. Next we went to Dune castle - the castle where Monty Python was filmed. Unfortunately the castle was closed for the day so we only wandered around outside of it and in the forested area behind it. I'll leave Matt to talk about the castles if he feels like it later because he is more knowledgeable of them.

Tomorrow we are carpooling with a guy from Glasgow in order to reach Isle of Skye - A 5 1/2 hour trip to the place some of my ancestors were from. He wants to pick us up at the bus station at 6am so it will be a bright and early morning. We have a hotel near the bus station in mind so we can bus back home the next day- however this time we didn't book in advance because we decided to see if there is anything cheaper in the area that is not posted online (there usually is a cheaper place we pass on the way to the place we booked). Aside from that, there were no sold out days for the hotel we looked at and I know of about 4 more reasonably priced ones in the area if that one doesn't work out as planned. Our driver is a hilarious person who is always joking so I'm really looking forward to the journey. He also wants to leave sooner than the buses are running which means more time to explore the island. In Skye, we will either book a tour- or more likely- hop on buses again to see anything of interest we find in the brochures.We will also book a tour for Glasgow and surrounding areas for the 30th when we are back in Glasgow since our bus to London doesn't come until 11pm.

Anyhow, I'm off to throw the last pieces of luggage together in order to be ready to travel tomorrow. Bye for now!