With the wedding well behind us, we’re headed toward our one year anniversary – and our honeymoon!

Because we think it’s the most awesome thing ever, I’ll be writing about it here.  For this first post, our itinerary!

We fly into Dublin. It was cheaper, and plus, Dublin!
We’re staying the night in an ivy-covered Edwardian, and spending the day wandering around the city,

The next morning we hop a jet to Edinburgh, where we’ll pick up our rental car and probably hit Edinburgh Castle.  We got a Historic Scotland pass.  It covers lots of places.  We’re going to make REALLY good use of it.    We’re staying in another ivy-covered hotel, this one victorian.

In the morning, we’ll stop by Blackwood Crescent before we head south to Melrose and Dryburgh Abbeys.  From there, we’ll loop through the village of Blackwood that Chris gets his name from.  We’ll probably check out Bothwell Castle on our way to Glasgow.

In Glasgow we’ll check out Provand’s Lordship, the oldest building in the city and the only medieval house.  Queen Mary stayed there once.  Then we’ll see the sights and we’re staying at a modern but very pretty hotel.  😀

Then we’ll see Loch Lomond, Kilchurn Castle, and Balquhidder, where we’ll visit Rob Roy’s grave.  We’ll spend the next  two nights staying in a stone cottage on the shores of Loch Long.

While in Argyll, we’ll go to Dunans Castle, where I got Chris a lairdship.  We might pop over to the isle of skye one day, if we have the chance.  We’ll almost certainly check out the stone circle at Kilmartin Glen.

Then we’re off to Glencoe!  We couldn’t find a place to stay there, so we’re spending 3 nights in a lovely stone B&B in Ballachulish. That’ll be our base of operations for many highlands hijinks. We’ll see Eilean Donan Castle, Loch Ness, Urquhart Castle, and visit some of the speyside distilleries.

After that, we’re taking the ferry to the Isle of Lewis, where we’ll see the Arnol Blackhouse, the Callanish Stone Circle (that’s the one that Merida’s circle was based on in Brave) and stay in a working croft house.

When we come back to the main part of scotland, we’ll visit Balvenie Castle and maybe even the distillery, and then we are STAYING IN A CASTLE.  Broomhall Castle was built in the 1870s, but it’s super beautiful and we got a very fancy room.

The next day, we will go to an event celebrating (and recreating!) the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn, at which Dougie MacLean will be performing!  Yes, we’re flying across the atlantic to go to a renaissance faire.  But it’s going to be awesome.  We’ll also check out Colloden, the Wallace Monument, and Stirling Castle.

That night, we’re staying in my favorite of all our awesome accomodations.  Warthill Castle was built in the 14th century.  It’s still owned by the same family.  It’s GORGEOUS and the woman who runs it is super sweet – and she’s the mother of the actress who plays Ygritte on Game of Thrones.  How cool is that?

We haven’t got set plans for the next few days – but our last 3 nights in Scotland will be in Edinburgh at a cute little B&B.  We’ll hit Holyrood House, Molly King’s Close, and Arthur’s Seat.  We’ll do all the things from the list above that we didn’t get around to or deprioritized, or we’ll go see things we discovered along the way.

Eventually we’ll have to go home.  Unfortunately.  I’m sure we’ll be missing you all, by then, so we’ll probably be happy to come back, with stories and pictures and whisky for Peter.

We know this is an ambitious itinerary.  What do you think? Have we missed something really important and awesome that we should try to see instead of something we’ve got listed?