Inverness

April 27

Inverness: From the Scottish Gaelic: Inbhir Nis meaning "Mouth of the River Ness"; is a city in the Scottish Highlands. It is regarded as the capital of the Highlands and is the northernmost city in the United Kingdom. The waters from the infamous Loch Ness turn into a river that runs right through the town then empties into the ocean.

Inverness is one of Europe's fastest growing cities, with a quarter of the Highland population living in or around it, and is ranked fifth out of 189 British cities for its quality of life. In a recent survey carried out by property website Rightmove, Inverness is the happiest place to live in the UK.

After being in Inverness a short while I can sum it up in one word. Cold. Maybe that’s not a fair assessment. The city is about on the same latitude as Juneau, Alaska so it’s expected to be cold, but it’s also old, very interesting, somewhat charming, and someplace I’d like to get more familiar with. For being a city with an area population of 63 thousand it doesn’t seem any larger than Hot Springs and has a small-town charm about it.

We slept pretty late and didn’t get out of the apartment until after noon. We hit a souvenir shop next to our apartment and then walked the downtown area a short while before finding the Comfort Food Café. And although they did offer lots of great comfort foods, even for us, such as hamburgers and southern fried chicken, all four of us opted for the traditional full Scottish breakfast. Bryan and I cheated a little maybe and got the vegetarian version. The regular traditional breakfast comes with bacon and ham and blood pudding and haggis as well hash browns, potato wedges, baked beans, broiled tomatoes, fried eggs, bread and mushrooms, it was a lot of food.

After breakfast we waddled back out into the streets and wandered around a bit trying to figure out if we could make it back to the room or just lay down on the sidewalk for a quick nap. We walked around looking at the various shops. There were posters around advertising the coronation of King Charles III next weekend. Its an interesting time to be here. And one thing that I kept hearing constantly was almost everyone has these really funny accents.

We found a large indoor mall that was very modern and full of modern and familiar shops. And a few that were not so familiar, such as a chocolate shop called “Hotel Chocolat”. I was trying to figure out how to check-in and wondered if they had a weekly rate. Rob lost one of his cell phone holders, he carries two cell phones with him, so we visited several phone stores trying to find a new one. Not sure why he has two, he says it’s for work but I think he’s afraid he isn’t receiving enough spam calls. And he needed a new mouse so we spent time looking for that. I suppose you can never have enough mice on an overseas vacation. He found a really fancy one with lots of buttons so now he can do extra clicking anytime he wants.

Not much else to report today except it was drizzly rainy all day, just like it’s supposed to be in Scotland. Yesterday was unusually nice and clear so more people we out, probably because they were disoriented by the clear skies and didn’t know what to do. Today all was back to normal, all wet and cold and rainy so everyone seemed happy and back to their usual selves. Looking at the castle across the river it looked particularly clear, like it was meant to be viewed through a constant wet haze. 

We went out for a small dinner this evening at a restaurant for some ciders, loved and missed them from my last time in Scotland, and Jason and I split an order of haggis french fries in whisky sauce. Despite the odd sound it was absolutely delicious. I’m always up for trying something new and unique. Rob ordered chicken fingers. See, we are all back to normal today.

We hit the sack early again as we have an all day tour scheduled to the Northernmost parts of the highlands on Friday. So in my best Scottish accent I say: Let it rain mi Chap, our parade is doing just grrrreat! (I’m really gonna get it from Jason for butchering that accent, as usual).