{"id":6442,"date":"2017-07-28T09:00:35","date_gmt":"2017-07-28T16:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?p=6442"},"modified":"2017-07-28T00:20:25","modified_gmt":"2017-07-28T07:20:25","slug":"you-take-the-lowlands-ill-take-the-highlands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?p=6442","title":{"rendered":"You Take the Lowlands, I’ll Take the Highlands"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Orkney Islands<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Skara Brae<\/p><\/div>\n

As we circle northeast around the top of Iceland through the Arctic Circle<\/strong>, there is an \u2018Honorary Viking\u2019<\/strong> ceremony on board where one can be baptized with the waters from the Arctic Circle. Since I hadn\u2019t been a Viking fan since the days of scrambling quarterback, Fran Tarkington<\/strong>, I decided to sleep in. As we headed to the Orkney Islands<\/strong> we were reminded once again that they are not part of Hawaiian Island chain, as the day was dark and gray with a slight sprinkle for good measure.<\/p>\n

There are about 70 Orkney islands<\/strong>, of which 20 are inhabited and they belong to Scotland<\/strong>. It is mostly farmland for sheep and cattle where both trees and sunny days are a rarity, but they do have hairy pigs and all the school children are taught to play the fiddle. This is stuff you won\u2019t find even in an Einstein edition of a trivia game.<\/p>\n

The tour meandered through the gentle rolling landscape into the Neolithic Heartland of Orkney<\/strong>, stopping at the \u2018Standing Stones of Stenness\u2019<\/strong> and the \u2018Ring of Brodgar\u2019<\/strong> a huge ceremonial circle of stone dating back almost 5,000 years<\/strong>, Stonehenge-like structures built before Stonehenge<\/strong>, and oh yeah . . .<\/p>\n

At Skara Brae<\/strong> there are dwellings half in and half out of the ground that were made of stone and inhabited between the years 3180 and 2500 B.C<\/u><\/strong>.!!\u00a0\u00a0 That\u2019s older than the pyramids<\/strong>! It was discovered that these ground dwellings had furniture of stone which was placed in the exact same place in every dwelling. (I\u2019m sure Linda would have changed the furniture out several times had she been living there), and oh yeah . . .<\/p>\n

Amazing historical venues, great picture-taking opportunities, and oh yeah . . .<\/p>\n

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Stones of Stenness<\/p><\/div>\n

We didn\u2019t take that tour; we took the tour to the Highland Park Distillery<\/strong>! While Scotch whiskey does have an interesting and storied past here, I think we got on the wrong bus. As a result, I may not know much about the Neolithic<\/strong> period of this part of the world, but if you need to know anything about barley, peat or the whiskey aging process, I\u2019m your man!<\/p>\n

We were lucky to get back on the right ship before it sailed!<\/p>\n

Inverness, Northern Scotland<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Urquhart Castle on Loch Ness<\/p><\/div>\n

We did get on the right bus this time and headed to see Nessie<\/strong>, the Loch Ness monster<\/strong>. Our guide had confessed to seeing Nessie on several occasions and all but guaranteed that we would see her today. We drove through some beautiful countryside and some quaint little villages on the way Loch Ness.<\/strong> The trip was amplified by beautiful weather and trees, something we\u2019d seen neither of for days. The Scottish Highlands<\/strong> were gorgeous on this day! At Loch Ness<\/strong>, we not only caught our glimpse of Nessie,<\/strong> but got to learn a good deal about Scottish history (we learned that both Braveheart<\/strong> and Macbeth<\/strong> took liberties with the historical facts). We spent a good deal of time exploring the grounds of Urquhart Castle<\/strong>, which is on Loch Ness<\/strong>, very interesting.<\/p>\n

The Scottish people were extremely gracious, had a good sense of humor and didn\u2019t talk so strangely that we couldn\u2019t understand them. Loved Scotland!<\/p>\n

Linda and I got a bit of good news as we were leaving Inverness<\/strong>, our name had been pulled for the lottery, which meant we have a tee time at St. Andrews<\/strong> for tomorrow!<\/p>\n

Fore!!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Orkney Islands As we circle northeast around the top of Iceland through the Arctic Circle, there is an \u2018Honorary Viking\u2019 ceremony on board where one can be baptized with the waters from the Arctic Circle. Since I hadn\u2019t been … read more<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6445,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[813],"tags":[102,2586,2592,2588,2591,2595,2587,2590,2060,2593,2594,2589],"class_list":["post-6442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel","tag-braveheart","tag-loch-ness","tag-loch-ness-monster","tag-macbeth","tag-nessie","tag-orkney-islands","tag-scottish-highlands","tag-skara-brae","tag-st-andrews","tag-standing-stones-of-stenness","tag-stonehenge","tag-urquhart-castle"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/urquart.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p31aN0-1FU","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6442"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6455,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6442\/revisions\/6455"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}