The four of us took the bus to Waverly Train Station this morning to pick up our rental car for the next part of our adventure. R and I dropped a couple bags off at Excess Baggage inside the station to pick up when we return. Since the four of us are going to be driving and not staying in the same place more than two nights, we opted to store souvenirs, clothing, and shoes we won’t need for this part of the trip. Personally, I am a huge proponent of Excess Baggage because your possessions are kept safe and you don’t have to wrangle them around. This is a great way to offload some baggage for more mobile portions of your trip or to take advantage of a longer layover and explore a new city. 

The Pasty Shop is located in the station and near Excess Baggage which provided a delicious hot breakfast of pasties! Both the steak and potato and chicken and mushroom pasties are delightful. There was a queue for rental car pick up though we didn’t have to wait too long. It allowed us enough time to finish off our breakfast pasties before loading everything into the Volvo SUV we’ll be driving for the next few days. Today is a bit car heavy as we are driving from Edinburgh to Inverness. Despite the gorgeous scenery, a stop or two is needed to break up the drive and we decided to stop near Pitlochry.

Iain Burnett Highland Chocolatier is a delightful stopping point to pick up some sweet treats and break up the drive. The chocolate shop is worth a walkthrough to select a few truffles, pralines, chocolate covered fruits, or chocolate nibs to take home. There are also tea, whisky, champagne, and coffee pairing options in addition to a guided chocolate tasting. Any pairing or tasting event should be booked in advance but no reservations are needed for the chocolate shop. 

We arrived in Inverness and went straight to Tesco to pick up some snacks, drinks, and breakfast items before checking in to the AirBnB. We chose Esco Bar for a Mexican-inspired dinner. I say Mexican-inspired because what we ate was not Mexican, British, or American food. That is not to say that the food was bad. The food was decent, just not Mexican. (In fairness my expectations were fairly low given that only a few thousand miles separate Scotland and Mexico.) 

After dinner, we were feeling a lazy evening in so we settled down with a bottle of wine, a couple snacks, and watch The Glass Onion. I generally do quite poorly with lazy evenings in while on vacation … I’m more of a how much can we cram into each day kind of vacation person (much to R’s chagrin). That being said, the benefit of traveling with friends who live halfway around the world is that spending quality time laughing and hanging out is natural and easy. Plus we all had a good night of sleep and woke up feeling ready for the day.