Fort William, Scotland

I wanted to say a bit more about this lovely town.  This was a very quaint town that my stepdaughter knew about from one of her old Vine connections.  We were able to rent a real house, upstairs and downstairs with three full bedrooms and two bathrooms.  It had a fully usable kitchen and a comfy living room to hang out in.  Up on a fairly steep hill from the nearby Loch, though.  We walked down to the grocery and the Main street for shopping, and then took taxis home most of the time.

Fort William is a great little town, with lovely shops, the nearby Loch/Lake, and it serves as a jumping off point for summer "tramps" or hikes through the Scottish Highlands.  It's a wet, lush, green place with brilliant blue skies and about five different types of rain.   You get your misty, your foggy, your regular, the big drops, and sideways with wind.  That raincoat from Eastbourne, UK came in very, very handy.

When it's raining, and you're shopping, it's hard to hold packages as well as an umbrella, but we did have plenty of those as well, mostly because of the baby in the stroller.  Even in his raincoat, sitting in the stroller could get pretty wet.

One day we rented a car and drove the 1.5 hours up to Loch Ness, to say we'd been there.  It's close to Inverness, which was a nice shopping area where we picked up some hats, scarves and gloves.