I tried to come up with a wittier headline than that but it really says it all. The Isle of Skye is drop-dead gorgeous. Of course, there are some who would find a tropical island with lots of sun much more to their liking but for me, give me Scotland.

Move to Skye Friday

I almost forgot that the last post only got you to the end of a very long Thursday. On Friday we were up, fed and on the road…leaving Oban by 9:30 to drive north and a little west to the ferry at Mallaig. On the way, we drove through some lovely countryside and stopped for a few photographs. We stopped for lunch in Mallaig just before we boarded the ferry. Here’s a map of our drive on Friday.

We had done our research on a number of Scotland travel groups on Facebook and one thing we had learned was you better have ferry reservations before you go or you aren’t getting on. We had ours and there were a few cars behind us who didn’t make our trip. They got to wait and hope they could get on the next boat two hours later. Below are our final shots from the mainland and the village of Mallaig. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

The ferry ride took about 45 minutes and then we arrived in Armadale…finally on the Isle of Skye. We stopped briefly to visit Armadale Castle and Gardens where we had our best example of Scottish weather yet. We entered the castle grounds and walked a very short distance to the castle itself. I shot about 15 photos. At this point I had been looking out to sea and at the castle in beautiful, warm sunlight.  I told Kathleen to wait for a couple of minutes while I went out to shoot the castle from in front of the lawn. In the time it took me to reach the front of the lawn and turn around to shoot the photos (about two minutes) a huge rain squall moved in and I yelled at Kathleen to get back to the entrance or get soaked and I took the shots and ran. In less than those 120 seconds it went from beautiful sunshine to POURING rain. By the time we got back to the entrance gift shop, we were soaked.

From Armadale we drove north to our home for our three days on Skye, the Balintoy Bed and Breakfast. The three nights are the longest consecutive stay on the trip (until the cruise next week) and we are glad they are here at this very small bed and breakfast. The owner Gillian has been wonderful pre-trip with lots of very valuable info. Things like telling me that if we didn’t book tables for our three nights here we would not get into any restaurant and would be forced to eat dinners from food stands…if we were lucky. She was so right. I had made reservations for all three nights and at every place we have been (we are on our third morning as I write this) there have been signs saying, “Sorry, we are booked full!”

The Balintoy also has the largest room we have had on this trip so we get to spread out a little. The breakfasts are excellent and light. We needed a couple of days of granola, fruit and yogurt instead of the protein-heavy Scottish breakfasts in Glasgow and Oban. We were also able to get some laundry done. We have been out for more than a week now and there were a few things that needed washing to get us through until we board Viking Venus on the 14th. Kathleen had found the Skye Laundry Service online before we left. They pick up a good-sized, full bag of laundry and return it to you clean and folded the next day for only £20. Quite the deal for a busy traveler. Ours was picked up yesterday and we will get it back today. Until then we are touring naked ?. Not really. I wanted to see if you are still paying attention.

We had dinner at The Antlers Inn which is located inside the Portree Hotel in downtown Portree (the largest town on Skye) and made our plans for our drive around the island on Saturday.

I want to stop for a moment to say that not only have we had great food here in Scotland but the people in the restaurants have been awesome. The servers have taken VERY good care of us, the other patrons have been fun to either watch or talk to and all our dining experiences have been outstanding. For instance, The Antlers Inn had superb background music. We asked our server what it was and she said she loved it too but wasn’t sure. She rushed off to ask her manager who came out and we had five minutes of discussion about the music. That kind of thing. People just being people. That’s what travel is all about. But we do have to admit that many times we have needed subtitles on this trip. Scots have one of my favorite accents but the farther out from the cities you go, the deeper it gets and sometimes we will just look at each other and smile. I know that this means that one day I will end up eating haggis or blood pudding but I would rather do that than insult someone by asking them to repeat it four times, or to slow down. We usually get it by the third ?.

See you tomorrow (or maybe later today) with the story of our first FULL day on Skye. It was beautiful.

I come more to Scotland than I ever used to, so I feel more connected to it, more part of the zeitgeist. You know when you realize you have a choice and I’m choosing my homeland. It’s funny: when you get older these things creep up to you.  —Allen Cumming