Generations Homestead: St. Conan's Kirk, Glenfinnan Viaduct, Fort William

Part 2 of day 5 - photos first, and a video at the end - after Inveraray Castle (last post) we headed to St Conan's Kirk to stretch our legs a bit. That was very beautiful, and the highlight was meeting a really nice woman who was patient with my beginner Scots Gaelic. Straight after that we drove to The Real Food Cafe for a nice lunch. PACKED with bicyclists, hikers, and bikers. Wonderful place!!! I hope to go back some time.

Bellies full, we drove on past our stay for the night (Fort William) to see the famous Glenfinnan Viaduct. Here are a few photos of that drive ... this was a very "other world" experience. Some parts of the highlands might as well have been Mars. I was so captivated that I kept forgetting to take photos and videos ... but they never do it justice anyway, right? Ben Nevis is the highest point, and this is the famous Glen Coe area which includes the famous Glencoe Village where there was a massacre in 1692.

At some point during this part of the journey, Corban and Megan discovered they LOST THEIR PASSPORTS!! EEEEK!! What a headache and a half. I felt so bad for them ... they spent a lot of time / hours on the phone trying to sort all of that out. Loooooong story short, by the time they had their passports cancelled (the children's were not cancelled yet), Megan realized that a man had private messaged her on FB the very day they lost the passports. HE FOUND THEM!! They had to spend part of their Friday meeting the guy back in Balloch to pick up their stuff from him, and part of Monday in London getting that all sorted out, but what a relief to have the passports AND the pile of cash returned. WOW!

Anyway ... back to Glenfinnan Viaduct. It was really neat to see in person and I "wish" we had had time to hike the trails. This is definitely a "hopefully some other time" spot. While there, I saw the "no squatting" sign on the bathroom stall door for the first time. LOL! Noted. Whew, I almost accidentally broke that rule. LOTS of foreigners (including us, of course) everywhere we went, so I assume this is an issue with certain people groups. If you ever encounter a modern toilet without a seat, that's probably why ... squatting on the porcelain rim instead of sitting on a plastic seat.

We stayed in Fort William this evening. A few days later I learned that we just missed a major bicycle race in Fort William, so I'm thankful we didn't run into that!! I've honestly never seen so many bicyclists in my life as we did while in the highlands and islands area.
While at Fort William, we stopped at a UK Aldi for the first time (I think???). It was FABULOUS! Much bigger than ours, and a massive selection of fresh things as well as things we do not see at ours (dry red lentils, for example). Here's some bread I took a photo of. I really wanted to do more photos and videos of the differences of INGREDIENTS used there vs. here ... much more conscious of the bad stuff over there.