Our most northern stop in the UK was Inverness, Scotland.  There was nothing specific from a photographic or tourism viewpoint that brought us here.  We used Inverness as a base to drive even further north into the Highlands and dine in the town of Tongue.  Of course we also wanted to explore Loch Ness as another one of those tourist ‘must-see’ places.  The above photo was taken from a lunch spot we discovered on the much less touristy east side of Loch Ness.  On the west side, restaurants seem to be around every curve in the road, but on this side, we were just about to give up on finding any restaurant when we found a real gem with the view above.

Inverness is a town bursting at the seams with flowers. The buildings are not at all vibrant as they are in Ireland, but they try to make up for it in great flower gardens.   Flower pots hang from posts and are in every corner of the many public parks and bridges that cross the River Ness.  The thumbnail photos below were taken on a single morning walk around the town with the iPhone.  While living in California many years ago, we planted the same flowers found in Scotland, but our flowers would get totally consumed by snails.  Oddly, in this wet climate of Scotland, I never saw any evidence of snails eating plants, or even a single snail.  How can that be?  One gardener told me he grows his beautiful flowers only by using copious quantities of snail poison pellets.  With condominiums for rent in this area scarce, we opted to stay in a B&B, where the delightful owner sounded much like the Robin Williams’ character, Mrs. Doubtfire.

Typical countryside around Inverness

Inverness provided us with more very good and spicy hot Indian cuisine.  It also seemed appropriate to have my third and final sampling of haggis, this time with a whiskey sauce in a bar that has been in business for almost 175 years.  I cannot say the whiskey sauce added much to the haggis, but this third batch was very similar to the previous two.  The Guinness is an important part of working up the courage to have a plate of sheep organs, lungs, heart, entrails and of course, the esophagus.  No wonder they call it offal!