I stayed at the Benleva Hotel, a charming b&b (dogs welcome!) with a great central location in Drum. They are well known locally for their bar, which is pretty much full of locals all day long (and I do mean all day). On Friday night, I talked to a local woman who was Irish and had been to Connecticut and a lot of other places, including the Middle East. She was a nurse and told me how much better the healthcare system is here in the UK and how they recoil in horror that Americans only get two weeks vacation. Then again, they have a 60 hour work week here, but it still sounds like a fair trade. I dunno what I would do with 6 weeks off. Probably be a happier person, I guess.
The way people I’ve met have been talking, it’s clear that the world at large was pretty embarrassed (for Americans) that we had a president as retarded as the last guy. Also, people out here were not sure if Sarah Palin was supposed to be a joke or not. But they all feel bad for Obama because of all the stuff going on now that they feel really isn’t his fault. The more I read in the paper, the more I think that everyone at the SEC has been playing Spider Solitaire for the past ten years.
This lady also advised me not to have dinner at the Benleva, but instead to take a walk down to the Loch Ness Inn down the road. The Loch Ness Inn has a very cute logo but was way more expensive then the Benleva as far as accommodation, but the attached restaurant was really good, and reasonably priced.
There’s not much going on here in Drum apart from all the Loch Ness tourist centres competing for my attention. Up the road a bit is Urquhart Castle, where many of the Nessie sightings have occurred. I walked there (about 3.5 km away) Saturday morning. It was pretty neat. It’s a ruin, not a proper castle, but you can walk up the tower and stuff. There was also a very large gift shop.A few words about the loch: I could immediately see why so many people have said they’ve seen stuff in the loch. There are so many random factors that can cause you to see stuff. First and foremost are the waves. The loch has some serious chop, all the time. Little whitecaps top all the waves, and they go in various directions. Add to that schools of fish, swimming deer, sturgeons, eels migrating up from the Sargasso Sea (Loch Ness opens out to the ocean), floating tree trunks, and summer heat mirages and Loch Ness becomes the perfect place to see whatever kind of mysterious creature you're looking for.
I was supposed to go on a pony trek Saturday afternoon, but I decided instead to take it easy and do as little as possible (since I've had little time on this trip to JUST RELAX), so I hit up the better of the two Loch Ness centres. Their museum-quality multimedia presentation concludes that no, there probably isn’t a creature in the loch BUT THEN AGAIN WHO KNOWS. There are an obscene number of Nessie Beanie Babies in the gift shop (which I’m sure are now worth less than nothing), and if I had $200 I could have gotten a really nice kilt. I got a few neat souvenirs for you guys but sorry, they didn’t have any remote-controlled or even inflatable Loch Ness Monsters.After that I popped off for dinner down the street at the Loch Ness Inn again. Once dinner was finished, it was back to the Benleva for a few pints. A bunch of the regulars came storming in after bowling all afternoon and kept the place lively. Good bunch of people. Apparently a guy from Drum is stationed in Syria with the military and he’s getting married and a bunch of the locals are going out to Syria for the wedding like it’s no big deal. Syria! Sure, just pack a bag and go to Syria for the weekend. People in the UK just travel anywhere. Anyway, at around 10:00 it was off to bed.
Things I learned: I am not allergic to dogs (hooray!); I am too fat to go pony trekking anyway (how many people weigh less than 160 lbs?); Urquhart Castle was blown up on purpose.
Things I saw: a dreadlocked Scotsman named Alex; a museum-quality trebuchet; sheep; more kilts in one room than I ever thought I would see; the Loch Ness Monster; highland cows.
