Lovely, Lovely Scotland

Loch Ness

Hiking

We bought these ridiculous scottish tams. Yes, we know they look ridiculous, and we love them. There's a pom pom on the back of them too!

An old fortress

A painting of a Broch (fortress) staircase I did

On January 2nd, we started our tour of Scotland with MacBackpackers. It was so great. I'm not usually crazy about the guided tours, but this one was wonderful because we got to see so many places that we never would have if we hadn't been driven around in our little bus. There is so much natural beauty in Scotland...I've discovered that I like seeing the country way more than the city. It's so peaceful, and there were about 10 million scenes that took my breath away. I didn't have many expectations for Scotland, but even if I had high ones, this country would have surpassed them. Our tour guide was wonderful...he was quick and witty and told us all the best stories about Scotland. He even wore a kilt! Haha...authentic Scotsman alert! My only issue with the tour was that he talked all the time while he was driving...he told us umpteen stories about the land we were passing. But, as anyone that knows me knows...I cannot stay awake in vehicles. Cars, buses, trains, planes....they all put me into a coma. I literally fell asleep in between every stop on that bus. Everytime the bus would jerk to a stop though, I would get out, pose for some pictures with Mariette, look around, maybe draw a little...I was totally awake! But after 5 minutes of the gentle swaying of the bus, I would pass out again. I have vehicular narcolepsy. I swear.

We got to see Loch Ness, which was absolutely gorgeous...sigh. One of the prettiest lakes i've ever seen. We even had a Nessie sighting (see above)!!! We went up to the island of Skye...a northern island that was simply gorgeous. We saw rivers, climbed a giant hill, saw cliffs bordering the atlantic...any type of scenery imaginable, we saw it. We climbed up this massive hill to the base of this rock. I want to tell you guys the folktale of where this rock came from.

So once there was this giant. And we all know giants have lots of silver that humans are always trying to steal. Three beautiful maidens happened upon this giant, and wanted to steal his silver, so they started thinking how they could do this? Back then, god wanted to kill anyone who did sinful things on sunday, the day of rest, so the maidens thought that they would make this giant dance on sunday, and so god would smite him, and then they could steal his silver. So they start playing music for this giant around 11:45 pm at night, hoping he'll forget tomorrow is sunday, and dance. He dances for a little while, but as the clock gets closer to midnight, he sits down, cause he knows it's about to be sunday, so he knows he needs to stop dancing. So the maidens get together and say "what should we do?". Their solution is this: They strip down naked and start dancing all sultry around the giant, implying they'll have a foursome with him. He gets a massive boner thinking about it, and gets really riled up so he starts dancing. Just then the clock strikes midnight, and god looks down and says "say whaaaat?" and smites that giant, so he dies and he falls down with his boner still high in the air.

That's what the massive rock is that we hiked up to. A dead giant's penis. As aaron said, "Why doesn't america have any folk stories like that?". Valid question. I think we need some. Why isn't the grand canyon created from some folk story about a massive vagina or something? Huh? Huh?