Inverness, Scotland

 Returning to my trip last year: We spent our second day in Scotland touring the small town of Inverness--the closest town to our castle cottage.  It was strange coming from the heat and humidity of Japan to the cool, dry climate of Scotland.  It rained on and off throughout the week we were there, but the temperature rarely got warmer than sweatshirt weather.

We found a parking garage a few blocks away from the Inverness castle, and hoofed it from there.  The city of Inverness is pretty small, and we spent a lot of time wandering and shopping for souvenirs. 

This local "paper" changed each day and each caption was pretty funny.  It was posted right outside the parking garage

A picture of a random house.  I just liked the look of it.

Inverness City:

Can't visit Scotland and not have bagpipes, right?

I was trying to photo-bomb her selfie--it was kind of a theme throughout the trip.  We all tried to photo-bomb each others selfies.  Nikki, especially, was adept at getting mine.

Cheesy smile from me--Nikki looks less than amused.  Alex and Jamie are oblivious.  To the left is the hillside to Inverness Castle.  It was set right in town, which was unusual for most of the castles we saw.

Taking a picture of the castle

We walked up to the castle and it has a beautiful overlook of the city. 

Inverness Castle:

Selfie with the Castle!

 

 

Just because we are all spazz's, we compared how incredibly pale we all are--and what's crazy is that Emily was the darkest of us all.  I am the third arm down.

Random sticker on a light post--but I like it.  Inverness Castle is in the background.

Some American flavor thrown in--we wandered through a mall and saw these very American restaurants in the food court. 

Walking along the city we found this interesting gem:

Emily found Mountain Dew.  Help us all.  There were a lot of known "candy" items, but there were more than a few that none of us had ever seen or heard of.  Since we are all native Californians, maybe some items are just available on the east coast?

We stumbled upon this graveyard and old church.  The graveyard also had a nice view of the city,

The view:

Spring

We've been spending lots of time outside enjoying the unusually warm spring weather.  It seems as though the days just fly by. 

River is all about spending time outside.  She is funny, just walking around, exploring the yard.  She throws a tantrum whenever it is time to come inside.  She's gotten pretty good at tantrums lately.

Kai is really enjoying school, and I think we are finally getting him back onto a day/night schedule--for the last several months, he has been awake most the night and sleeping the morning away.  He is finally sleeping at night and getting up in the morning time.  Cross your fingers it will continue! 

Zuri is excited about her upcoming birthday.  She has been on countdown mode for the last month.  She has also invited pretty much everyone she comes in contact with to her birthday party.  Funny kid.