Somewhere in all of this, I found out that the MAKS Air Show was in Moscow, Russia the same weekend. Russia is on my list of places to visit, and particularly Moscow - Dion had been there before, but had missed out on being able to do such things as Lenin's Mausoleum. The MAKS airshow is world famous, and they often wheel out old Soviet planes to put on display along with the latest in Russian and world plane technology - the TU-144 Concordski and one of the Buran Space Shuttle shells make an appearance. I figured there would be enough to keep us entertained for 4 days in Moscow, but for Russia to work we wouldn't be able to do Scotland the same weekend - maybe Scotland could be condensed into two days and done the weekend in between the Euradventure and Russia. In the end, Dion mentioned that any Russia trip ought to include St Petersberg as well and what it finally came down to was Scotland would surely be cheaper than Russia - especially given how much the Euradventure was starting to cost us. So Russia it wouldn't be, Scotland it would.
When we finally went to nail down Scotland, several problems arose. The original trip concept, as largely outlined above wasn't possible - because the London to Fort William Caledonian Sleeper train already had all the sleeping compartments (of all types) sold out. No way were we sleeping in seats. So this required a big re-think, and along the way it was also discovered that flights or any other means of transport out of Edinburgh was highly expensive on the Monday; and from Glasgow it was the same. Edinburgh itself was almost sold out of accommodation or anything else - the Fringe Festival was on that same weekend, making it very pricey to stay there. The sleeper train also went to Inverness, and arrived at a decent time in the morning (not super early like it did for Edinburgh or Glasgow) and with that, a visit to Loch Ness of Loch Ness Monster fame was possible (by this stage, Loch Lomond didn't sound a very interesting place to go for me - I was more interested in acquiring a bottle of the Whisky more than anything). In the end there were 6 options, 4 of which were slight variations of each other but involved flying into Edinburgh and catching the sleeper from Glasgow back to London; the other two involved catching the sleeper train to Inverness, and either staying in Edinburgh for two days and flying to London at quite a cost; or swapping one of the Edinburgh days for Belfast, Northern Ireland instead and flying back to London from there, which overall worked out cheaper than the previous option. Again, I had a preference, but put them all to Dion again for him to make the decision. The end verdict - the Belfast option, which was my preference too. Everything was then duly booked; and the whole trip took a back seat to the Euradventure.
Day 0 - The Caledonian Sleeper
Day 1 - Inverness, and Loch Ness
It had been a fairly busy day already, but we were not done yet. Nearby Drumnadrochit was the ruins of Urquhart Castle, which appeared to be only a short walk away. Waiting for a gap in the rain, we set off - and yes, we did get caught in a couple of very light showers. However we also saw the most brilliant, vivid rainbow ahead of us and then over Loch Ness. Urquhart Castle turned out to be probably a 30min walk, but we got there.
Day 2 - The Hogwarts Express, Across the Highlands and the Fringe
Day 3 - Battle for the Mountain and Further Shores
And what a view.
The climb down wasn't overly eventful except somewhere along the way, we hear the faint sounds of bagpipes (and not necessarily well played bagpipes). I guess someone had gone out on the hill to practice, where he wouldn't disturb a lot of people but it just seemed odd that you're in Scotland, you're taking in the scenery from the middle of a hill park and there's bagpipes playing the background like a backing track. The next stop when we were down was the National Museum of Scotland, as Dion wanted to show me Wylam Dilly, the 2nd oldest steam locomotive in the world and the sister of Puffing Billy which is in the Science Museum in London. This visit was ever only going to be brief, to only see that engine and not much else as time was becoming slightly scant for us - but the loco wasn't where Dion thought it would be. He asked where it was, only to be told that "due to industrial action that part of the museum was closed". Ok, that's odd but fine - although Dion seemed more annoyed about it than I was, but he's seen it before and I can always go back to Edinburgh. So we carried on heading back towards The Elephant House looking for lunch, except the line was long and we'd hit upon the idea we could really do with a milkshake - and The Elephant House didn't do milkshakes. Further down the road, we came across an Italian Gelato cafe that did milkshakes using their ice cream and boy, did those milkshakes hit the spot! By now it was time for me and Dion to look at heading to Edinburgh airport for the next part of our journey - to Belfast, Northern Ireland. We said goodbye to Sasha, who went to carry on looking at Fringe shows and we caught the bus out to the Airport as that was right there and convenient. We were already checked in for our Easyjet flight, but there was a problem with the terminal escalators - which seemed to be the only main way of getting to the gates - and they were roped off, and everyone instead was forced to join a queue to go up through some poky emergency stairs. Quite why they didn't let you walk up the sets of escalators while they weren't moving I don't know, maybe that was just too logical compared to the poky stairs. We ran into some slight problems at security, where my bag got pulled aside because I had some items that weren't in a clear plastic bag and needed to be re-screened (namely my sunscreen, deodorant and my hair clay which isn't a liquid but whatever - by the way, I've never had problems with these before). The guy packed them into a plastic bag, re-screened them and then we were on our way. Boarding was simple, and the flight relatively uneventful - but was notable as my first domestic flight within the UK. We landed at Belfast International Airport, caught the bus into the city centre, walked the few blocks to our accommodation; checked in, then set out again with the intent of a look-around the city but also to get some food as we hadn't had lunch and it was basically dinner time. We found a Wetherspoons, and decided to eat there - it was fair buzzing with people as well but it didn't take long for our food to come. We also had a few Guinesses, the first real time I've tried it since I've been in the UK - I know I wasn't in proper "Ireland" Ireland, but still why not? I was also struck by how smooth and pleasant it seemed compared to the NZ Guinness which I've had in the past, and Dad used to make which was a bit more chewy somehow. I know Dad tried really hard to get the NZ Guiness close to the real stuff but was hampered by Guiness refusing to give out the proper recipe. After dessert and the rest of our beer, we were pretty tired so decided to retreat back to the Hostel - where tiredness and sleep caught up with us and we had an early night.
Day 4 - Belfast, Titanic and London City
The Titanic Museum was quite good. It started off by telling the story of how Belfast came to be a big industrial city, with many industries; one of which was the shipbuilding industry and one of Harland & Wolff's biggest clients was the White Star Line, who had ambitious plans to build the biggest and most luxurious Transatlantic liners or passenger ships to compete with their rival, Cunard who had the smaller but much faster ships Lusitania and Mauretania. The first of these massive ships was the Olympic; which even while it was still being built, its sister ship began being constructed alongside. That ship was the Titanic, and after doing a sort of gondola ride showing aspects of the construction, you look outside a window at the actual spot where the Olympic and Titanic (and the later Britannic, the younger sister ship completed after Titanic sank) were built. It then details the first, and only voyage - the stop in Le Havre France, where the SS Nomadic brought out the passengers to the Titanic; the stop in Queenstown (Cobh) and then out into the Atlantic to meet its fate with the iceberg. During this, you even get to walk onto a recreated front of Titanic which is accessed from a door in a fake side of the hull - so you go into the black hull, and come out at the front of the boat where you can see water! After the sinking, you read about the aftermath, and what happened to some of the survivors - such as Bruce Ismay, the person in charge of White Star Line who managed to controversially get in one of the lifeboats; or some of the 3rd class passengers who managed to survive also. Then into a movie theatre to watch Robert Ballard talk about him discovering the Titanic wreck; then downstairs below the theatre, to watch an image of the wreck pass below your feel under a glass floor as the wreck was the last time it was photographed and surveyed, about 3 years ago. Here a guide also talks about the state of Titanic, and says that in recent years, an unknown type of crab has been found on Titanic that wasn't present during the discovery; testing has revealed its some sort of new species, and is actually eating away at Titanic's metal. They reckon with the accelerated damage the crab is causing combined with the usual rust and decay, the wreck will essentially cease to exist in 20-25 years. That seems weird, that the iconic Titanic might cease to exist in a couple of decades - but nothing lasts forever.
Summary
Belfast, and Northern Ireland in general was the other unexpected bonus of this trip. To be honest, I thought I would get to Ireland proper (Republic of Ireland) before I'd ever get to Northern Ireland, if I managed to get to Northern Ireland at all (its fair to say, it hasn't been high on my list) but that's not the way things have turned out. Belfast is interesting - it feels British, but also very not English if that makes sense without feeling Scottish or anything else. The biggest thing I wanted to do in Belfast was the Titanic Museum, which we did so that's a big tick off the list - but I would go back to Belfast for two reasons mostly, and pretty much only. What are those? well you can do day-trips from Belfast to the Giants Causeway, which seems to be about the only thing Northern Ireland has going for it in terms of a nature tourist attraction (probably a gross and appalling generalisation!); and the other thing is there are a myriad of Game of Thrones tours both in Belfast (where a lot of it is filmed) and further afield in the countryside where other things to do with the show are filmed. So really, both of those things could be done in a weekend visit - and would constitute about the only real desire I have to go back to Northern Ireland, aside from if some steam train thing happens there (although the only steam train group of interest runs trains in both Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland so to see the trains, I could visit Ireland rather than Northern Ireland). Of note too, having both visited Scotland and Northern Ireland now I have visited all 4 constituent parts of the United Kingdom - I live in England, and I visited Wales at Christmas.
In all - a great trip, but also the last of the big or semi-big adventures with Dion while he was over. We covered quite a distance, in a trip that ticked all of the requirements Dion set down and also ticked off other things for me personally. Oh and to help just figure out where was what, here's a map:
So that's that - but I have lots more blog posts to do, and catch up on! so stay tuned.