Pictures are here.

We had breakfast at the B&B with the two adorable labradors Molly & Jess, then headed for the train station to put our bags in the lockers there. Unfortunately, the lockers didn’t open until 10:30, and there was a tour we wanted to join at 10:30. We went to the tourist office to see if they have left luggage lockers as well. They didn’t open until 10. But the same tour company that would be conducting our tour had an earlier pickup for a different tour and we asked him if it’d be OK to leave our large bags on the bus and he said it wouldn’t be a problem. So we hung around until 10 and bought our tour tickets for the 10:30 Loch Ness cruise.

Since the bus picked up at the tourist info centre, we waited around some more. The driver let us put our big bags below the bus, and we were off. We drove down to a point on the north side of the loch, where we got on the boat to cruise to Urquhart Castle. It was originally a small fort on a hill out on a point near the loch, and was then expanded upon until it was a residence with a chapel and a large tower overlooking the loch. We got to spend about an hour at the castle ruins, going up into the tower and down into the storerooms.

Then we hopped onto the bus and headed to the Loch Ness Exhibit Centre, where we saw the history of Nessie sightings and what has been done to search for the monster. It was a very interesting, if somewhat cheesy exhibition.

Finally, back to Inverness where we checked with the tourist information center about Orkney and put our bags in the train station lockers and headed to the hostel to see about changing our jump-on/jump-off reservations. We weren’t able to get up to Orkney with any reasonable time – even if we drove, so we decided to spend more time on Skye instead. Unfortunately, there was no room for us on the bus, so we decided to take the train instead. So we made a few phone calls, and made sure we could still have a place to sleep and booked our tickets.

We went to Johnny Fox’s for a late lunch, and I had venison. It wasn’t as good as I remember my mom making it, but it was good. Brian tried a Guinness Pie.

After dinner, we jumped on the train to Culrain, where we walked uphill to Carbisdale Castle. The castle was a bit of a disappointment, and we had to have our bags out of the hostel by 2:30 because a school group was checking in. We settle in for the night, planning on catching the earlier train.