NOWAT BRITANNIA 2017: INVERNESS & NESSIE & A.F.C.

“How’s the weather?”

“Cold & windy, But bright & sunny.”

“Shut the curtains, I'm sleeping in!”

And with that, she rolls over for more Nonny-Nonny.

Unlike her normal routine, she may have had one to many night caps and rolling out may be a bit of a chore. Which doesn’t matter, it’s only 8:30 and we don’t dock at Invergordon until 1PM, just in time to finish lunch and hustle off the ship to meet our tour to Loch Ness and Urquhart Castle.

Since we must meet TE10 for lunch at 12:30 in the main dining room, Chucky lets her sleep till 11:00 then starts the tug of war with her comforter till she gives in and lurches to the bathroom for her morning routine.

{play me}

As we pull into port, the lovely {sorta} strains of “Toss the Feathers” from the pipe & drum duo on the dock has her sticking her wet head out with:

“And that racket is?”

“Your special Welcome to Inverness.”

“Close the door, it hurts my ears.”

Oh yeah… it’s gonna be a rough day.

Lunch on a scale of 1-5 hit a high 2, since it seems they only have two menus for lunch and we got the same one we had the last time we all met for lunch here. And, trust me when I say that McDonalds does better cheese burgers.

Half of TE10 heads for the dock right after lunch to try and get some shopping in. Little do they know, it’s a hike off the pier and even longer hike to the small town with limited shops.

We4 take care of some front desk business and then see just how much time they have to follow the other half as they pass the pipe and drum kids with DL holding her ears… OK she wasn’t that rude but the look on her face tells HIM that she’s suffering a bit of Barotrauma in her Left ear and the pipe is killing her. But not enough to keep her and Donna from a quick pic with another Piper as he was walking up.

As we’re walking off the pier with a nice young local Security dude, he query’s if we’re going to the Loch.

We confirm that we are and he says,

“You'll be looking for Nessie, then?”

We tell him,

”Of Course, been any sightings lately?”

“Well, some Aussies saw her a few

days ago”

“And how many pints did that take?"

“Aye, they were closing the pub so

your guess is as good as mine.”

And with that he was off on his bike.

One look down the road and deciding it was too far and not enough time to do a tchotchke run, we headed back to stand in line for our bus until the rest of TE10 returned.

Passing Caledonian Stadium, It was an hour bus ride to Urquhart Castle, with a running dialogue from our guide on the local lore as we traveled across and then along Loch Ness, but just far enough to make any Nessie spotting difficult. However as noted in the last post, Barbara swears she saw his head just as he was ducking under the water as evidenced by the pic we posted yesterday, so you'll just have to take her word for it.

Upon arrival at the castle and with instructions on what to do after we spedt 1.5 hours wandering around, we marched into the reception to wait our turn for a video presentation on the history of the castle culminating in the curtains opening for a Dramatic view of the castle. Of course half the crowd jumped to the window for pics so we waited till they started to clear to take our shots and then headed down to explore.

We'll leave you with a few choice pics of the castle and some familiar folks and continue the rest of the day in the next post.