liketoobike: May 31 - Inverness Scotland

Rented a car today so we could go out to Culloden Battlefield and also the Clava Cairns. Both were interesting and we were out in the fresh air enjoying the countryside. Culloden had a really good museum detailing the whole lead up to and including a video room presentation of the battle as it happened, like you were standing right in the middle of it... oh it was very realistic and bloody... those cannonballs they fired back then, only took out 2-4 people, oh anyway, not getting into too much detail but that battle in 1745 was the end of the clans having any control of scotland the brits took over from them on many of the Highlanders were hunted down and executed or forced to leave their land.

Good bit of history going on at that time the Brits were fighting the french and this was also right before the war for independence in the US. Clava Cairns are about 2000 years old those piles of round stones they thing were some sort of burial or sacred place for rituals, they had a center that went under the ground and only on the summer solstice the light would shine through the crack and illumiate the inside.

Then we went for a ride down along Loch Ness, rainy off and on so we came to the Lock Ness Experience or whatever they call it tourist trap place, right before Nessie World amusement park. No we didn't go in for anything there, there was about 3 tour buses full of people they were all over the place and we just used the toilets, with pictures of the Lock Ness Monster painted on the walls, looked at the yellow submarine the guy made to go looking for Nessie in 1979, a submarine designer from Georgia Tech, but he didn't find anything, oh there was a disturbance of some sort swirled the sub around down there... anyway, we did not pay to go in and find out the real story... lol... get out of there... so we decided we had seen enough of Loch Ness let's get back to town and go for dinner.

Following these excursions we did a little shopping at M&S and got goodies to eat and drink... took some rest then walked down to the city center to the Victorian Market and got some fish and ships, ...the Food Hall at the Victorian Market was a lively place they were setting up for some music about 8pm but we finished up a little before decided just get out of there too... walked around window shopped a little saw a violent encounter of a couple drunkards one bloodied face / head we happened to get in between them by accident just walking down the sidewalk was a ugly scene people shouting screaming one dude had to be restrained by his friend with a headlock around his neck... anyway, no one paid any attention to us so we just walked on.