The West Highlands Way is the longest of the long distance Scottish walks, at 96 miles. Starting not far north of Glasgow, it climbs up into and through the Highlands and moorland of Scotland, the home of ‘Rob Roy’ MacGregor and the Highlanders who wound up battling for control of their own lands. Reading of […]

The Isle of Skye. The name alone has a bit of mystic to it. It has a reputation as a place of great dramatic beauty, and this is well warranted. Some areas are flat out spectacular. I rented a Fiat 500 (tiny little car!) in Inverness for four days, and drove down to the Isle […]

  I reached Inverness after a 3 ½ hour train ride north from Edinburgh. Inverness is a much less dramatic city than Edinburgh, relatively flat, lying along the banks of the River Ness (which empties Loch Ness). You see quite a number of villages and towns in Scotland that begin with ‘Inver’, because in Gaelic […]

Getting into Edinburgh from the airport is easy: you take the Airlink 100 bus outside the terminal (ticket office is there) to downtown. I stepped off the bus, walked 100 meters, and saw this: Saint John’s Cathedral, with the castle looming on the hill in the background. Spectacular. If you like rocky prominances and castles, […]

Dublin was my first destination as I started my first summer in Europe. I rented an apartment from AirBnB, which turned out to be in one of the older, run-down sections of Dublin near the Guiness brewery, and my initial impression was not too favorable.     An Irish pub band puts it this way: […]