The Isle of My Mom (Skye)

This weekend I went to the Isle of Skye. I went with the International Student Society with at least 100 other international students. The weekend started at 8am when we met at the main gate on campus to get on the bus. We started our journey and stopped at this pretty lake thing with mountains around it. The mountains had snow on top of them! It was pretty cold.

As we continued into the highlands, the mountains got bigger, the sun came out, and the views out the windows became awesomely awesome! As we kept going, the driver and student leading us on the trip let us stop at all these view points to take pictures.

Around lunch time we stopped at this cute little town called Fort William.

We wandered around and found this amazing soap store called the Highland Soap Company. The lady who owns the store makes all of the soap and lotion herself a couple miles outside of the town. We went up and down the street and found some lunch at a little cafe. After spending a lot of time in the soap shop and running back to the bus because we were 5 minutes late, we continued farther into the highlands.

Out of the bus window I saw a bunch of pine trees. Some of them were the normal green, but others were a more yellow color. It didn't seem like there was any reasonable organization of the trees. It wasn't like they were all in a cluster in an area without water. It looked more like aliens had turned some of the trees a different color to write out a message or something.

Our last stop before we reached the Island was at Eilean Donan Castle. This was one of the classic castles that you see when you Google "Scotland" and was just as pretty in person. We didn't get the chance to go into the castle because it costs money and we didn't have enough money to make it worth the short time we were there.
When we finally got to the island and to Portree, where our hostel was, the sun was starting to set. With the weather being as beautiful as it was, we got to see the sunset over the Cullin mountain range.

We also got to see the row of colorful houses that are on all the Isle of Skye websites and books and stuff. It was weird seeing the houses in person and not just on post cards or wikipedia.

After a night of rain, a sports bar, and "Snakes and Ladders" we decided to only sleep a little bit so we could see the sunrise. It wasn't terrible since the sun didn't start coming up until close to 7:30am.

It was raining when we left the hostel, but as the sun started to rise, the rain stopped, and the sky turned pink. It was such a pretty morning!

As the sun kept coming up we wandered up to this little clearing where the highland games are played! It was by a cliff, so we had a great view for the rest of the morning.

We left the island around 10 and began to head back through the highlands. Our first stop before crossing back over was a little fishing town, Uig. It was the only place with a store open on a Sunday. It was connected to a gas station but they had postcards!

After a couple hours on the bus we stopped by a little town next to Loch Ness. I didn't see the monster, but I have faith she was there.

Around 7pm we got back on campus. I wish we had had more time to spend on the island, but I'm glad I got to see the highlands and the sun set and rise on Skye. Overall, it was definitely a fun trip. Now it's time to recover before Paris on Thursday!