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The events described occurred on May 25, 2009.

Unfortunately, the third day of our tour was another dreary day in Scotland. We were off to an early start from Portree, stopping at Eilean Donan Castle, Loch Ness, and a couple small towns on our way back to Edinburgh.

I was happy to have woken up early enough for breakfast, because the full Scottish breakfast was delicious. One egg (over easy (Unfortunately, she did not set me up for the “How do you like your eggs?” joke…)), sausage, bacon, black pudding (I don’t know if it’s a difference in Scottish/Irish style, or just the hotel, but the black pudding was not as good as I remember it being in Ireland.), toast, apple juice, and coffee. After breakfast, we met our driver outside and boarded the coach.

I was a bit concerned when I saw the coach, because the back window had been boarded over. I accidentally left my laptop on board the night before, and I was concerned that it may have been stolen. Luckily, some moron with a ladder in the back of his truck had just backed into the coach at a gas station the previous evening, and my computer was still safely where I left it. Whew.

We set off toward the mainland and were soon driving south. It’s been long enough now that I don’t remember the exact order of what we did this day, but I know we stopped for a tour of Eilean Donan Castle and its grounds. This was pretty interesting, as they had interpreters dressed in period clothes, but due to the delays of some of our crew (Surprisingly, the Indian family that had been the source of all our previous delays decided to stay on the bus, so they weren’t to blame this time.), we were there for far too long. We did see some pretty nice cars in the car park while we waited, though.

We eventually made it to Fort Augustus, where we saw Loch Ness. This was also our lunch break, so Tom and I found a pub where I had a steak pie, potato and leak soup, and a pint of Guinness. After lunch we wandered over to the loch, where I took pictures of Tom pretending that he spotted Nessie.

We realized that we might be a little late and so hustled back to the coach. Once again, we needn’t have worried, as we were the first ones back, despite the rain. This was getting frustrating, as we learned that morning that unless we kept on schedule, we were likely to miss the distillery tour scheduled for the afternoon.

After Fort Augustus, we continued south before finally driving by the distillery, which, by the time we arrived, had just closed. Infuriating, especially when we overheard the morons who had been delaying us all trip talking about how they weren’t interested in seeing it anyway.

In the afternoon, we had one final, legally-mandated stop where I paid to use the restroom. (Well worth it.) We finally pulled into Edinburgh around 7:30 p.m.

We had to return to the Hilton Grosvenor to collect our bags, and since they had a room available, we decided to stay there again for the night. They put us in a deluxe room due to my elite status, and we decided to drop by the hotel bar to grab a couple pints of Guinness (each). Bringing them back to our room, we ordered some Dominos pizza and soon hit the sack. We planned to be up fairly early to spend the next day exploring Edinburgh.