Maria and Nate's European Adventures: Sep 8, 2009

Our last night in Scotland was a little unexpected. Our room in Portree was given up (that's a long story, so I'll spare you the details), so the first night we stayed in Portree, we had to sleep in a single room, which means we had to share a single bed, as in, for ONE person. That was not a pleasant night's sleep, especially when you're used to a King sized bed! The next evening we decided to go on to our next destination, hoping that we'd have better luck finding a hotel or b&b on the way there. We had no such luck. We saw the sign, No Vacancies, about 301 times.

But we continued on towards Loch Ness and tried to enjoy our evening. We had great views on the road and I even got to drive a little! It was really scary and unnatural to drive on the left side of the road. I didn't last that long because driving just shouldn't take that much concentration! So I handed the driving reins back over to Nate.

I hate this picture, but Nate thinks it's funny...

We stopped to take a few pictures of this castle. The setting was simply beautiful.

Back to the hotel search. We finally found a Holiday Inn and the parking lot was pretty empty... but we soon found out that there were no free rooms there either! The lady at the front desk tried calling around and she said there was nothing available in the area. I explained our situation to her and then asked what we should do... sleep in our car?! It was certainly looking that way until she said... "you know what, I get off in 30 minutes, why don't you come stay with me?" So I went back to the car to tell Nate the situation and he was a little skeptical of staying with strangers, but he agreed and it turned out just fine! They were a sweet family from Latvia, but had been in Scotland for over 5 years. Her 15 year old daughter just loved us (she was texting all her friends that Americans were staying at her house!) We stayed up late hanging out and talking with them. They kept saying how we sounded like actors from the American movies! (Haha) It was such a crazy, fun, and certainly, unexpected experience that we will never forget. It's too bad we forgot to take a picture with them because they were a great family to take us in like that and we were very grateful.

The next day, we went to the famous Loch Ness. You can't go to Scotland and not visit this place! Nate & I had always thought of the Loch Ness monster as a silly myth, but while we were there, we were actually keeping our eyes out for it!