All Things Scottish, Day 12

For the next two days, the destination is The Isle of Skye, the third most populat tourist destination in Scotland after Edinburgh and Loch Ness. Given that I'm skipping both of those first two, I can't really avoid Skye now can I?

What Skye has going for it, is dramatic scenery in a relatively compact form. The weather on Friday was perfect, with sunny periods, broken clouds, a light breeze, and absoltely no rain. I had plans of doing some walking today as well, but unfortunately yesterday's Ben Nevis caused my right kneecap to become severly inflamed (this is from the descent, not the ascent.) So while walking flat or even up is fine, walking downhill is extremely painful -- I guess this is perhaps what arthritic pain is like?

Anyway I hope another day's rest makes it better, or at least more tolerable (perhaps with some Ibuprofen). So today was merely a scenic tour of the island with very limited excursions at the main pull-out/viewpoints. And the island is small enough that I did end up driving pretty much every scenic road and roadside viewpoint. And I also managed another visit to a distillery, this time the Talisker brand -- the only whisky produced (officially) on the isle.

I haven't had a chance to filter things yet but I'm hoping some good pictures turn out from today's effort -- the clouds, sun and mist were finally cooperating.

And driving through Portree for a quick stroll around lunchtime (as well as lunch itself) I observed a notice that said the Isle of Skye Pipe Bands was having their 50th Anniversary public performance at 8PM. So I made it a point to wander back to Portree in time for that, a distinctly Scottish experience!

In the end, it was over an hour of 4 bands peforming standards together -- over 70 pipers and drummers, two leaders, and a dozen Scottish girls dancing traditional dance as well. All awesome, and the perfect way to end the day...

I'm still not used to the fact that it stays light so late here -- so an 8PM concert was really still in bright light. In fact, it's past 11PM here right now, and it's still light enough to read by -- I'm sitting here on the roadside with my laptop, writing these updates, since only this little bit of the island seems to have data coverage for my mobile SIM card. The hotel in Broadford (which is the first dud of the trip so far) unfortunately doesn't have wifi. So things might be silent for few more days, unless I stop here again!