Fraserburgh

We had to get up unreasonably early again the next day so that we could make it from Portsoy to Fraserburgh by 9:30. It was the day that we would be touring Fraserburgh Castle, which has belonged to Clan Fraser for centuries. The Lady Saltoun's daughter, the daughter's husband, and their two nearly-grown children all live in the castle just outside of town. The couple offered tours of their home, so that morning I found myself trooping across a pristine lawn and knocking on the front door of an ancient castle. The daughter's husband was going to be our guide, and I was expecting him to be as scary and important-looking as his mother-in-law. Turns out, I was wrong! He was so kind, and he didn't even seem to mind that we were invading his house and taking pictures and generally being the stereotypical American tourists. I was impressed that he knew so much about the castle just off the top of his head. While we stood on the roof and looked over the land, he was able to recite the history of Fraserburgh Castle from 1200 to the 1970's. Then he took us through the interior and showed us all the rooms (they have 13 bedrooms!!), and pointed out the centuries old stonework and walled up staircases. We went down into the basement, which might have been a dungeon 600 years ago but is now a playroom-turned-storage area.
I was insanely jealous of those kids.
Another cool thing about the castle was that there were hand-done paintings of Frasers lining every hallway. They weren't done by famous painters, but the older ones had to be really valuable. And for each painting of a Fraser, the husband knew the story of the subject's life. If I lived there, I could never remember all of that!
Of course, if I lived there, I probably wouldn't be able to remember where the front door was, either.
We thanked the couple about a million times, and then we hit the road again. And we drove. And drove. And drove. Until FINALLY we reached Inverness, where we had reservations at the Fraser Hotel. All the rooms are starting to run together in my head, but I think it was pretty nice. At about nine, we set out in search of a restaurant. We figured that no one would be eating dinner at nine on a Tuesday night. Boy, were we wrong! Every single place we went into had about a 20 minute wait, until finally we wound up at Pizza Express. Yeah, I came all the way to Scotland to eat pizza.
We had a long day of driving ahead of us, and I was really looking forward to getting even closer to England, so I quickly drifted off to sleep. Another day of driving, and I still wasn't dead. I might actually get out of here alive.
Love,
Kiera