Week in Review – March 15th, 2026

“Touring the Scottish Highlands”

Monday was a day of rest after all the wedding excitement. It was a typically cold and wet day and, as it turns out, a good example of what to expect for the rest of the week. I worked on train tickets from Stewarton to Edinburgh, and was pleased to find a route that didn’t involve changing from Central to Queen St stations in Glasgow – not really much fun with luggage for Scotland and Spain. That pleasure didn’t last long as I saw a news story showing a fire in Central station caused by a neighbouring vape shop. It did not look like trains would be running from there for a while. A call to British Rail was no help – they seemed to think it would all be good the next day. I knew it wouldn’t and so arranged a taxi to take us through to Queen St station where we could catch the train directly to Edinburgh.

Arriving in Edinburgh, we caught a taxi to the Apex hotel in the Grassmarket to meet up with the krewe (Denny, Anne, Todd and Lori.) We enjoyed lunch at the Beehive – directly across the street from what used to be the Heriot Watt university electrical engineering building (last visited by me, via this ramp, in 1985 to view my degree results pinned to the wall.)

Denny had to do some “work” in the afternoon and the rest of the group walked up to the Natural History museum, stopping to pat Greyfriars Bobby on the way.

What a lot of interesting and varied things in the museum. One attraction weighed you and then told you what animal you were closest to in heft. Our results – an ostrich, a penguin, an anteater, and a porpoise. I’m going to let you imagine who has which spirit animal.

I found an interesting creature in a space suit. Penguin or anteater?

We made our way up to the rooftop and enjoyed some great views of the Edinburgh skyline. Those white lines are the Hillend dry ski slope where I was able to break an ankle and a wrist during my university years.

Here’s the dome of the Usher Hall – an excellent music and performance venue where I saw several concerts – Joan Armatrading is the one that sticks with me, and also performed a piece for brass band, choir, and organ with a broken ankle (this one from some hooligans in Glasgow, not the dry ski slope.)

I like this picture of McD with the castle behind, although her face may give a wee hint of being a bit scunnered with the weather.

A pretty view down to the Balmoral hotel and firth.

We decided to walk down to the Balmoral and see if they had a nice lobby bar. Indeed they did and we enjoyed some fancy cocktails.

After a quick refresh at the hotel, we walked up the stairs to The Witchery for a fancy dinner in the ancient setting next to the castle esplanade.

I loved my red deer dinner:

After dinner we paid a visit to Deacon Brodie’s pub. The krewe had been on a catacombs tour the night before and were well versed in the two personalities, serving as the inspiration for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Wednesday started with a full cooked breakfast at the hotel. One of our group didn’t like the idea of baked beans on their breakfast plate. At least they were secured in a bowl rather than spilling around all the other goodies.

It was pouring as we tried to enjoy the view with our breakfast.

No reason to worry – as happened throughout our tour, the weather cleared up and the sun came out a few minutes later.

That allowed Denny to help me go and retrieve our rental van. We loaded up and I was successful in getting us out of Edinburgh with no major wrong side of the road drama. We drove past the kelpies at Falkirk:

Then past Stirling castle, before pulling in to Doune castle. This is where much of Monty Python and the Holy Grail was shot, as well as some of the scenes from Outlander.

We enjoyed the audio tour, although some were disappointed that the ramparts were closed for maintenance.

We had a walk around the castle area, down to the river and along the path. One of us tried hard to lose their phone on the excursion (not the one in this picture.)

It was a short drive to Callander (gateway to the Highlands) and a stop for lunch at an Indian restaurant that Denny had found.

I know, an interesting choice and Scotland does have some wonderful Indian restaurants. I enjoyed the murals in the tiny bar in front of the restaurant. “The Big Yin” (Billy Conolly) and the Irn Bru slogan:

We enjoyed the shopping in Callander for a while – I think everyone made a purchase of some kind – nice shirts for the boys.

The weather deteriorated pretty quickly as we left Callander for Glencoe. The photo stops in Glencoe were pretty quick affairs:

We navigated through the ever changing weather and ultimately arrived in Fort William. We tried The Geographer for dinner but alas it was fully booked on a Tuesday, outside of tourist season, in horrible weather – must be as good as the reviews say, or the only game in town. The Nevis bar across the street accommodated us nicely. I really liked the haggis nachos and Diana enjoyed some mussels.

The “Heilan Coo” had been the topic of much discussion on the drive and none had been spotted. Denny used his AI buddy, “Chad”, to find the best place to see some as we departed Fort William on Thursday morning.

Turns out the best place was in the Nevis valley, right around the corner from the hotel. We found some quickly and jumped out to take some pictures with Ben Nevis (tallest mountain in Scotland) in the misty clouds behind.

Next stop was the West Highland museum located in central Fort William. A small but interesting place. The thing I remember most was a video of a Model T Ford being driven up Ben Nevis.

We drove down the coast from Fort William towards Oban, stopping at the second castle featured in the Monty Python movie. It can’t be reached when the tide is in.

A very nice and casual lunch was had at the Poppy’s garden center outside of Oban. We decided that driving back to Fort William to spend the night was a bad idea and found the lovely Perle hotel on the waterfront in Oban.

We had planned a tour of the Oban distillery in the afternoon. Unfortunately, like other places, they were taking advantage of the low tourist season to make some upgrades – adding an elevator and other construction. This meant no tours. However, the very pleasant tasting room was open and we availed ourselves of that feature.

We stopped into the Oban Inn on the harbour and Anne got a recommendation for a seafood restaurant – EE-USK (Gaelic for fish?) – just around the corner on the waterfront. Anne secured us reservations and we had a lovely meal. I started with the scallop gratin and then had a three fish sampler – sea bass, sole, and hake. Diana had some briny oysters.

The view from the Oban harbour was something:

We made our way back to Edinburgh airport on Friday morning. I enjoyed a nice roll with egg and sausage from the cafe around the corner before starting the drive. We had a reservation at the Loch Fyne Oyster restaurant and got there a bit early. Denny suggested a walk amongst the tallest trees in Europe that were just around the loch.

We had a short walk and didn’t find the tallest trees – highly suspect to begin with. Inverary castle was closed for the season and so we couldn’t get in to take a look at that either.

Another excellent meal ensued at Loch Fyne oysters. Seafood and bacon soup, potato fritters, oysters Rockefeller, and salmon three or four ways. All delicious.

We drove on down to Loch Lomond, with an initial stop at Firkin point for some pretty views.

A little further down was Luss – a very busy place in the summer, but quiet when we stopped for a coffee.

Denny accompanied me to return the bus – can’t say I was totally sorry to get rid of it. Worked out well for us, just a bit of a work. An easy dinner at the Doubletree hotel was next, with great service from Bulgarian Vladimir. I posed for this picture that Denny enjoys:

We had a relatively early start on Saturday to catch our flight to Amsterdam and then Bilbao. We just missed the bus to San Sebastian on arrival at Bilbao – the ticket process was not self evident. We were quite travel weary on arrival at the apartment.

Sunday in San Sebastian began with pastries at an outstanding bakery around the corner from our apartment. Turns out there were many just as good in a very small radius.

Then we walked along the beach front, around the point, and arrived in Old Town.

Tour guide Denny selecting first pintxo stop

We sampled pintxos from three different places – all amazing and different. Denny had done the usual helpful research to guide us to the best options.