Near Loch Ness, we stayed at a hotel called the Inverlochy Castle, which was super nice. Stefan and I had lots of fun there because they had a big 'rec room' with games and a snooker table (which is like an oversized pool table). They also had a jumbo set of lawn chess out on the front lawn, which I played with my mom and dad.

From there we headed for Loch Ness, and it seemed appropriate that it was a foggy and rainy day, since this is very typical Scottish weather. We thought it was good monster weather too.
 
We went to visit the Loch Ness Monster Exhibition Center where we saw a movie and displays on the different monster sightings throughout time and some research that's been done to try and find it. About 20 years ago they had a big effort to find clues about Nessie with a fleet of boats that scanned a large area of the lake with sonar to try to identify anything unusual below the surface of Loch Ness. They didn't find anything conclusive, but did have some unexplained signals, so people still debate whether Nessie exists.  
 
From there we headed to Gleneagles resort, where we spent a few nights. They had all kinds of cool stuff there, like a big swimming pool, a falconry center, and stables. But what it is really famous for, is golf. We played a lot of golf on their pitch 'n putt course and swam in the pool. We also checked out the hawks and falcons and other birds of prey they housed there.  It was really cool seeing them because a couple of them we had seen on safari in Africa. But that was at a distance.  Here we could get very close to them. They even had a couple of Peregrine Falcons, which are the fastest animals on earth (even faster than a cheetah!).
 
Since Scotland is really famous for golf, we also went to St. Andrews Old Course, which hosts the British Open every five years. My dad played one day and when he got back he said it was the most unique course he had ever been on. Another thing about the Old Course is that it is a public golf course and they are closed on Sundays, so people can walk around on it like a park, even with their dogs! 

But St. Andrews isn't all about golf. The town also had cool ruins of a castle and St. Andrews Cathedral, which has a big tower that we climbed to get a great view of the whole old city.  
 
We ended our time in Scotland in Edinburgh. We only had a day there and we spent it visiting the famous Edinburgh Castle. We took a tour and learned about its history. Then, we visited a big war memorial. At 1:00 pm we watched the guards set off a canon, which is a tradition that started hundreds of years ago. Back in the day, people on boats would listen for these canons to verify what time it was, which was really important for them so that they knew how much time they had until the tides changed. We also visited the dungeon in the castle, which is where they held prisoners of war. Seeing how people had to live in there was really interesting, just like the rest of the place.
 
Now we're off to Greece, so that's all for this blog.