weekend in inverness

well, i'm having a lazy sunday night in back in forres with my partner-in-crime claire. we had a great weekend in the very very pretty city of inverness where we tore it up at a scottish wedding. i was the random drunk canadian that every wedding needs.

the morning after the wedding, neither of us could stand the sight of white wine.

the rest of the weekend was filled with shopping, walking around inverness, and joinverness events.

i think i'm a great shopping influence on claire. i talked her into buying the iphone she's been wanting, and i also convinced her to get a great purse at monsoon today.

i did some shopping myself. it's so easy to forget about the conversion when you are exposed to great clothes in uk stores. everything here just looks so much nicer, and i haven't even hit london yet!

also, the book buying situation here rocks. at waterstone's, they have a great 3 for 2 deal, which i was totally going to resist, but claire talked me into it.

last night, after going out for a delicious indian curry, claire and i decided to go see the hangover instead of drinking more, 'cuz well, see the white wine comment above. it's a crazy funny movie, if you haven't seen it yet. at least we didn't wake up that morning with a tiger in our bathroom, but there were plenty of cupcakes in our room that claire had nicked from the wedding.

today we met up with the joinees at loch ness for a lovely picnic. the most random part of the picnic was when the fridge dudes we'd met up with (two guys who are walking with fridges down scotland to raise money for charity) managed to get some people to take the fridges across loch ness in their speed boat. i never thought i'd live to see the day when i'd see two fridges loaded into a speedboat at loch ness, but there you go.

other points of randomness: i thought i'd face less of a language barrier here than i did in france, but it was pretty cool when claire was talking about something else and said "hit the bin" which i thought was maybe a uk saying for "turn off the lights" so i did. however, i think it's claire's and my new mission to take over the world with hit the bin.

and yes, i'm taking lots of pictures and will post them when i'm at home. expect many vacay picture posts in a week's time. i unfortch had a really cool 10 second video of the eiffel tower sparkling that i accidentally deleted at the wedding. damned camera is not drunk proof. hopefully i can figure out how to retrieve it at home... *fingers crossed* really though, that's the worst that has happened to me on this trip except for the wasp sting that i got at versailles, and my encounter with a stinging nettle today at loch ness. and... it just means that i'll have to go back to paris and sit on the steps of the pantheon to get that shot again.

oh, and word from home is that my dad is rather fond of rilo and i won't have to worry about bringing her back to toronto because my parents are going to steal my cat. hmmmm, maybe i'll have to come back with a boquet of stinging nettles to retrieve my dear cat.

what's next on tap? well, tomorrow we are going to the beach and doing more cool stuff in the highlands, then on tuesday we're driving to liverpool, and making it to london (via stratford) on wednesday. then lots of partying in london up 'til my departure day on sunday.

hope you all are having lots of fun too, 'cuz i know i am! claire is completely not remedial (our new fave term) as a hostess, that's for sure!