Day 3 started really early today.
We took breakfast at 6:30AM and left the hotel shortly after 7AM to get to the meeting point at the Royal Mile, Edinburgh, for the bus tour to Loch Ness & Highlands. We were there early (7:25AM) and as others were early as well we took off before the official start time (the others followed in different buses).
Our driver was a funny dude named Martin, telling us stories about the relevant sights we passed. Brilliant.

We passed Falkirk and took a break at Kilmahog to see/feed a Highland cow family and check out the gift shop. After the stop we were supposed to decide, if we later would go on a castle tour at Loch Ness or a boat tour or nothing of the mentioned. My friend and I decided to take the most expensive option: the castle tour + boat travel to the landing. We didn’t know yet that this would be a horrible decision *lol*

After the first break we drove up further, passing several Lochs up to Fort William and through the Rannoch Moor.

We drove through Glencoe and checked out the three sister mountains and passing the highest British mountain: Ben Nevis.
We passed Loch Lochy, Loch Oich and Fort Augustus up to Loch Ness and Urquhart Castle. Meanwhile it started to rain. Just a bit, nothing serious. We were instructed to be at a certain ship at a certain time (else the bus would leave without us) and our driver took off to bring the rest of our bus travelers to the boat meeting point.

We checked out the gift shop and went outside to visit the castle ruins… it started to pour down. Really. I put my rain jacket on, but boch my trousers and backpack were soaked >_<
At 3:30pm we entered the ship to be brought to the landing on the other side of the lake. The boat was filled with people, most of us being soaked.
Half an hour later we entered the gift shop at the Loch Ness base and soon traveled further to Inverness, where one of our travelers left the tour due to participating at a party there.

We saw Blair Castle and Loch Leven on our way back to Edinburgh. Our last break was in a small city named Pitlochry and had Whiskey Ice cream (3%, our driver was really sad he can’t have any). The queue to get this was a wee long but really worth trying it.

Finally we crossed the Firth of Forth before entering Edinburgh. We were back at the hotel at 9PM. What a long but funny day đŸ˜€

We started in Edinburgh when it was cloudy, rain at Loch Ness, suddenly sunny on our way back to Edinburgh – basically any possible weather at this time of the year *lol*

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