Ed and I took the time to go to Scotland.  We thought it would be a shame to be in the UK for three years and not see Scotland.  We got in on the Autumn colours but wished we could have seen the Highlands with the heather in it's pink bloom.  Most of the Highland mountains are covered with heather and when we were there it was all brown.  Still very beautiful however. 

We flew to Glasgow on a Monday evening, spent the night there and the next morning rented a car.  We drove up through the Highlands to the Isle of Skye.  This is a small island off the West coast of northern Scotland.  This is the scenery along the way before we got to Skye.

There are plenty of Loch's (lakes) along the way to stop and look at.

We would have liked to take a ride on a steam train that was advertised but we didn't have a lot of time and we were having trouble finding the station.  Supposedly it's similar to the kind of train in the Harry Potter films.

You can go over a bridge to get to the Isle of Skye but we would have had to drive further north and we wanted to take the ferry. Here the ferry is coming in to port to pick us up.We spent the night in the town of Portree which is the capital of Skye.  This is the harbour.

The next few pictures are of our drive around the Isle of Skye.

This is Inverness castle.  We drove from Skye through the Highlands to the city of Inverness.  Our hotel was on the river Ness across from this castle.This is Loch Ness at the north end.  We drove along the East side of this beautiful lake that in some places is as deep as 750 feet.  We saw no sign of 'Nessie' as they refer to the Loch Ness monster.Some beautiful areas to take walks on the way between Inverness and Edinburgh.Edinburgh....a beautiful city.Edinburgh castle.  Edinburgh is pronounced Edinbura. Weird.

We stopped at a distillery and took a tour and learned how single malt whiskey is made.  There were distillerys all over the place!