This morning, we woke up early as we had to go visit the Wallace Monument before our long journey to Inverness. William Wallace, as you might know from the movie Braveheart, was a key figure in Scotland's History. He defeated the English in a key victory on Stirling Bridge and paved the way for Robert the Bruce to become the first king of the newly independent Scotland. Descendents of Bruce include all the James' figures and Mary, queen of Scots. Don't you just love how everything we saw all week was connected. It was pretty cool. I learned so much Scottish History....I don't typically enjoy history at all, but it is way more fun to learn when you are actually at all the historical sites where it all happened. Plus, Steve is a really good storyteller....and we had some great audio guides. :) The Wallace Monument is very similar to the Sir Walter Scott Monument in that it is a very tall building with LOTS of spiral stairs to climb. Luckily after about every 75 steps or so, there was a room to go into where you could see things. In one of the rooms, there are pictures of all of the many William Wallace monuments around the world. Did you know that there is one in Baltimore?? In another room they have a statue of Wallace and a projection of someone talking so it looks like the statue is really talking (a bit creepy)...anyway the statue tells you the entire story from Wallace's point of view. When we finally got to the top of the monument, we had a fantastic view of the city. In fact, we were able to see Stirling bridge and Stirling Castle from where we were standing. One of my favorite stories of the whole trip happened at this monument. We were in the gift shop (remember that all sites have a cafe and a gift shop!) looking at thimbles. We were telling the cashier that we were on our honeymoon and another of the workers overheard. After oohing and aahing appropriately, she asked us if we had eaten haggis yet. Steve has eaten haggis before and told her it was similar to mulligan stew or menudo...it just depends on what animal parts are included (haggis=sheep, mulligan stew=cow and menudo=pig). I of course refuse to try it and told her so. She agreed with me. Then she got all serious and asked "What's in gumbo? I have always wanted to try it but was afraid it was like haggis." :) I told her that gumbo was totally normal and she really needed to try some the next time she was in the States. It was too cute!! Here are some pictures from the monument.We have a video that we shot from atop the monument as well. As soon as I can, I will add that to the post. :)
Steve and in front of Wallace's actual sword. Can you imagine whipping that thing out from behind your back to fight. It was super long!!
Some key histrorical figures...
Sir Walter Scott...if you will remember he was a very famous poet...we climbed up his monument in Edinburgh on our first day there....
Robert the Bruce
John Knox...founder of Presbyterian Church....apparantly he is quite famous in Scotland. We did see where he was buried but there were lots of other things John Knox to see....we just didn't have enough time...I would have liked to have learned more about him...he is definitely on the list for our next trip! :)
Robert Burns....Big Time Poet from Scotland....apparantly he never really made it big while he was living, but today people have Robert Burns days where they dress in their Highland Tartan attire and read his poetry
Cool Stained Glass Window of William Wallace
Robert the Bruce
Who Knew?
The Famous Stirling Bridge
Stirling Castle as seen from the top of the Wallace Monument
We were even able to watch a game of football...
Beautiful Thistle...the national flower of Scotland. They weren't quite bloomed....most were just on the verge. We found this one on the climb up to the bottom of the monument. Steve tried to cut it off to bring home and press, but he couldn't get it cut...the stems were VERY prickly and would not break.
We also really liked these...they were everywhere...we think they might be foxglove???
After we left the William Wallace monument, we were on our way to Inverness. Inverness is the most northern point in Scotland that we visited and the biggest city in the Northern Highlands. The drive was absolutely beautiful and we stopped at different places along the way to see more cool things....oh to drive a car in Scotland. (FYI...for those of you have already read my past posts, the following three places probably sound familiar....you aren't seeing things, you have already seen these pictures....they were just on the wrong day....we actually saw these things on day FOUR on the way to Inverness not day three on the way to Stirling....in order to keep our trip chronological, I had to move them....just skip through them quickly (or look again...they are great pictures!) and Blair castle at the end is new :) ) The nice thing about having a car was that we were able to sightsee along the way. We used two different guide books to help us out...one a pretty generic book and the other by the famous Rick Steves. We have decided that Mr. Steves knows how to travel Europe. He told us about so many great things to do. As I am sure most of you know, I love ice cream. :) We discovered that Scotland ice cream is something special and we really liked it! On the way to Inverness, we saw a sign for the Stewart Tower Dairy Farm...a working farm that makes their own ice cream? We had to stop!!!! It was in the very quaint town of Perthshire. While there, we learned that the kids had just gotten out of school for their six week summer break...they go year round so it was definitely busy. We had a potty break, got some ice cream and enjoyed looking at all the animals at the farm. The baby goats were my favorite...they were so tiny that they could barely reach the food in their trough. :)
The great thing about Scotland is that anything even remotely touristy is written on a brown sign. We felt like if we saw something interesting, we would stop. Hence the dairy farm. Well, shortly after getting on the road again, we saw a sign for a Beatrix Potter exhibit. We missed the exit the first time around (the signs are really tricky) so we turned around and tried again. The exhibit was in a small little building in the town center of Dunkel. Apparantly Beatrix Potter spent time vacationing in Dunkel, Scotland when she was young to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city of London. She was also very into nature and had some really cool drawings of bats and bugs and other "green" things. She did a whole study on mushrooms even. Who knew. Anyhow, this little exhibit was really neat and had a lot of her original drawings. She also had a made up language when she was young and someone eventually figured it out so I was able to write my name using her language. It was weird writing Kasie Baird instead of Kasie Kline. :) We also got to dress up as Jeremy Fisher (the frog) and Mrs. Tiggy Winkle (the hedgehog)
While looking for the Beatrix Potter exhibit, we saw signs for something called The Hermitage. The building where the Beatrix Potter exhibit was had brochures of other things to see nearby (not surprisingly since EVERY touristy site had a cafe, a gift shop and a stand of brochures). We picked up the Hermitage one and decided it was definitely a must see so our last stop before Sterling was here. There was a beautiful waterfall here and just lots of great scenery....we really enjoyed walking and climbing around.
Some of you may know that Braden loves rocks. We promised him we would bring him back a rock from Scotland. We brought him a rock from this place. This is Steve digging in the river for the perfect rock. :)
After leaving the Hermitage, we decided to stop off at one more place...Blair Castle, home to the Duke and Duchess of Atholl. It was a beautiful castle with 30 rooms that we were able to tour. We weren't able to take pictures in any of the rooms except the Great Ballroom. But many of the things looked like stuff we took pictures of in Stirling Castle and Edinburgh Castle. We arrived at the castle pretty late...an hour before closing time so we weren't able to explore the grounds as much as we would have liked but we did enjoy exploring the castle. We met a very friendly guide there who knew lots about Texas. :)
By the time we left Blair Castle, it was about 5:30 so we knew we had to stop sightseeing and get to Inverness to check into our hotel. We had a little trouble finding our hotel, but once we did....it overlooked the canal, we checked in and then went to dinner at Johnny Foxes and walked around the city. There wasn't really much to do or see in the actual city of Inverness, but I will share with you a few pictures in the next day's post.
A picture of our hotel
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