Sometimes you need a vacation from your vacation. Water, the desire for a rural landscape after all of the cities we’ve been in and a chance to cook for ourselves several days in a row led us to rent an Airbnb in Invergordon Scotland. We got off the boat from Amsterdam at Newcastle on Tyne, UK, rented a car and off we went to Invergordon. We could have flown or taken the train, but driving seemed so much more interesting.
As the above title suggests……we rested. We spent one whole cloudy, rainy chilly day inside our Airbnb reading, surfing the web, watching a little TV and eating our home cooked meals. I don’t think either of us actually went outside one time that day.
Invergordon is a pretty small village, but had a surprisingly well-stocked Co-op grocery store for most of our meal ingredients. The best thing we purchased was fish and eggs from a guy in a van. I saw a woman standing in line beside the blue van & asked what was happening. “He sells mostly fish, a few eggs and some things he gets locally.”, was her reply. Who DOESN’T want that? Erin made the best dinner that night ~ lemon sole with butter and lemon, tatties (steamed potatoes), and broccolini. This dinner ranks up there with the 3 best home cooked meals I’ve ever had. I think the lesson is to always buy stuff from the blue van in the alley!
We did get around to going to Inverness ~ an hour away by train. The first 48 hours of driving on the left-hand side of the road is challenging enough ~ a few drinks, driving after dark and probable rain showers made the train trip a good choice.
We had a soggy walk around Inverness where we read some history and ended up beside the River Ness (the one that comes out of Loch Ness). We smiled with friends and family outside a big church as a piper triumphantly led a graduating class of teachers outside and the faculty applauded their achievement. We looked for bullet marks in a building from when the British executed prisoners after the battle at nearby Culloden that ended hopes for Scottish independence. Finally, we ended up in The Malt Room for a whisky tasting. This place is recommended in Rick Steve’s Great Britain guide and it was everything the guidebook said it would be.
I now have a new reason to love whisky! My favorite was a local, Tomatin, that I highly recommend if you can find it at your local distributor of all things alcohol.
Whisky on board we stopped for dinner. Scottish food generally gets a bad rap, and I can see why if you want fresh vegetables or anything that is not hearty and filling with lots of butter, salt and meat. However, if you want steak and ale pie or fish and chips, you can consistently find quality ingredients and amazing flavors in almost any restaurant and/or pub you walk into. I expect the fish and chips to be good in the UK generally, but our experience in the UK in 2013 was a letdown so I wasn’t interested in trying them again. Erin’s fish and chips dish in Inverness was off the charts delicious, so maybe I’ll try again.
Our goal for the 4 days was to rest. Turns out I had been developing a cold, so these rest days came at exactly the right time. Driving to Invergordon, taking one day of site-seeing in Inverness then driving back to Newcastle to return our rental was the sum and total of our Scotland experience. Next week is another rental car to drive Ireland, which will be much busier than these four days have been. Bring on the Guinness and Red Breast, the Cliffs of Moher and the Dingle Peninsula!
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