Summer is a great season to travel around Europe. The weather is usually sunny and not too hot, so I decided to fly up to Scotland. To my surprise, it turned out to be much larger than I expected, so I only got the chance to visit the middle part this time. After landing in Edinburgh, I picked up the car and drove to a small town called Stirling. This is were the famous characters from Brave Heart are most celebrated, which apparently isn’t very historically accurate. There’s a statue of Robert the Bruce in front of Stirling castle and William Wallace has a monument just outside the main town, because it’s in Stirling that the Scottish defeated the English army in one of their most memorable wars that took place at Stirling bridge. The town itself is now a popular university town, but a very quiet one for some reason. Around 6 pm, the whole town was dead.

The next day I drove to Loch Lomond, which is part of Lomond national park. Loch means lake in Scotland, and Scotland has A LOT of Lochs, with the most famous one being Loch Ness, which was too far North for this trip and according to what I heard, not the most beautiful one. I managed to get to the Hostel at the lake early enough to hike up Ben Lomond, which is a mountain right at the Lake. Ben or Munro means mountain in Scotland and you will find a lot of Bens there as well as it’s the UK’s most mountainous country. The hike wasn’t too difficult and the view from the top was quite impressive. I spent the night at the lake and took off the next day to take the long route to the port town of Oban, through Glencoe, which is one of the most scenic stretches of road in Scotland. The landscapes were so impressive, that I must have stopped 20 times at the side of the road just to enjoy the view and take photos, which was no easy task. Quickly stopping to the side of the road while driving on the left side of the road, opposite to what I am used to, was tricky because I always had to think before stopping “ok, which side should I drive to”. Overtaking slow tractors and trucks on single lane roads was also a challenge. Oban is a sea side town that gives access via ferry to some of the west coast islands. Originally I planned only one night in Oban but met some fun people at the Hostel, who were planning to go to the Isle of Mull the next day, so I decided to join them and it was definitely worth it. We took the car on the ferry and drove around the island, which had several different landscapes to offer as well. At times it was quite rocky, then there were times were it was yellowish grass with lots of yellow flowers called “Gorse” (Ulex), then we found ourselves in some very green fields with waterfalls and lakes and finally we hit a beach with white sands and turquoise waters!
The island was main inhabitants: sheep and tourists.

I didn’t spend too much time in Glasgow but it seemed like a very lively city. And although it’s quite modern and industrial without too many beautiful old buildings, it was still fun to walk around and enjoy the great weather with the locals.

My final stop was Edinburgh, where I actually wanted to go to university a long long time ago. So it was kind of weird to finally be there. It’s a very popular student destination and the city was full of students and tourists. It boasts lots of beautiful architecture and of course the famous castle. I didn’t enter any of the castles in Scotland as they were all very expensive, which is something I appreciated even more about traveling in Germany. In Germany, it is almost usually free to enter palace and castle grounds and gardens and enjoy them, but to enter the main halls of the castle you need to pay a fee, which is a lot less than the fees in Scotland. Another great thing I enjoyed about Edinburgh was the very talented street musicians, who were on almost every street corner on Princess Street. I do regret not seeing more live music gigs at night though, so I will have to go back and see some next time.

That’s the mighty Stirling Castle high up in the background behind the mighty Stirling Cattle.

On the way to the castle.

Finally made it up.

Decided to chill outside with my man “The Bruce” after finding out how much it cost to go inside the castle.

Stirling’s old bridge… actually it the famous Bridge was originally made of wood and destroyed.

This was my “hostel” at Loch Lomond!

The view from the hostel.

On the way up Ben Lomond

The view from the very top.

Trying to capture the whole loch in one shot.

Found this great idea at the end of the way back down.

The water gets calmer as the sun sets.

Almost everywhere you look, you can find mountains…

… or lakes!

Perfect sunny day 🙂

Not a bad mirror shot 😉

Art?

The lakes here were huge, hence the boats.

Stalking Castle Stalker from afar.

Then stopped to have lunch here.

The beautiful sea side town of Oban.

Thought this was a colosseum, turned out to be a garden.

I really liked this idea at the Hostel in Oban.

I had some really great fresh sea food here.

It took us a while to find it, but we finally found the rock circle on the Isle of Mull. Theres are so many of these around scotland and England and till this day no one really know what they represent.

When in the UK, Look Right!

Calgary beach on the Isle of Mull.

Not a bad set up… love the Metallica quite on the white camper van. “Nothing else Matters”

The sun really came out in the late afternoon and the scenery was breathtaking all around us.

We stopped here for dinner at on of the bigger towns on the island.

Taking the road back to the ferry… and yes, there is only one lane all around the island, with passing points every 100 meters or so.

Had to wait for these guys to cross the road on my way to Glasgow.

One of the many highlights on the way in Inveraray.

One of these days I will get one too 🙂

Chilling with the locals in Glasgow.

A wedding in front of the Gallery of Moder Art… as you can see the sun was so hot, that someone put a hat on the statue 😛

The official town Unicorn.

I really liked the logo of the scottish national lottery.

These are the Princess Gardens in Edinburgh

This time I asked about the entrance fees before going up 😉

I hadn’t known this before because I’m not a Harry Potter fan, but apparently the writer was inspired and wrote most of the books here in the Cafes of Edinbrugh. This graffiti is an Ode to that.

One of the most popular Cafes is called Elephant House and if you go to the bathroom there you will see how thousands of Harry Potter fans have written thank you notes and quotes on the bathroom walls.

Lots of older buildings here in Edinburgh.

There is a small mountain in Edinburgh called Arthur’s seat, which you can climb up for some great views of the city. Unfortunately it was cloudy and only started to clear up on the way down.

These are the yellow Gorse flowers you can find all over Scotland (and apparently Ireland as well).

Found some ruins up there too.

Back down at the bottom of Arthur’s seat.

On the last day, I went on the free walking tour and one really cool thing were these tripping steps. The idea came after a lot of robberies were happening a long time ago and so as a form of alarm system, they introduced this very short step in their staircases. And the idea was that you knew your own house and knew were it was, so you could skip it. But a robber wouldn’t know and so if they try to come up at night, they would trip and fall down the stairs and you could hear them and wake up.

This was probably one of the most visited graves in Scotland. It’s the grave of a dog called Bobby, who after his owner died and was buried here, never left and stayed by his side till the dog also died. As you can see instead of flowers, kids have decided to leave drawings and sticks at Bobby’s grave.

There’s even a statue of Bobby, with a lucky nose!