Faroe Islands & Scotland! On The Road.

Photo from Unicar, the agency we rented our car from for our week in the Faroe Islands.

I 've been driving for almost 40 years and have done my fair share of driving overseas - most recently in Russia.  So I am very comfortable with having to adjust my driving style to match whatever the road or traffic conditions or driving laws are in the country that I am going to be doing a self drive road trip in.  If you really want to get a good sense of what driving in is like in any country, just search for driving videos on YouTube.  I think pretty much every traveler has posted up a video of themselves driving on a trip.  Nothing beats watching a video to get a good sense of road and traffic conditions!

Traipsing Through the Trossachs.

The A82 passing through Glencoe.
(Photo by Stuart MacInnes. Licensed under CC BY 2.0) 

We will be picking up our rental car at the airport and Glasgow and for the next 2.5 weeks will be driving around Scotland, including a route that will take us to the highlands and via a loop through the Outer and Inner Hebrides will bring us back to the highlands and then Glasgow.

Scotland's City of Art and Architecture. Glasgow.

Shadow Hand Puppets, Cowcaddens Underpass. Street Mural by Rogue One (aka Bobby McNamara) in collaboration with Art Pistol.
(Photo from the City Centre Mural Trail website.)

We will arrive into Glasgow by train from Aberdeen after spending a week in Shetland and Orkney.  I started researching Glasgow by looking for Airbnb apartments for us to stay in and noticed that there weren't all that many tourist sites to see that were not either castles or palaces or gardens.  Not that I don't like castles, palaces or gardens but Scotland is so full of these that coming to Glasgow to just see more did not thrill me one bit. 

Scotland! The Shetland and Orkney Islands.

St. Ninian's Isle and the tombolo connecting it to the mainland, Shetland Islands
(Photo by ThomWi. Licensed under Public Domain)

When I first started giving thought to the itinerary for this trip, I turned to the country's official tourism website for ideas.  By the way, that website is so informative that that is pretty much the primary website I used to plan this trip.  Another very useful website is Historic Environment Scotland which provides a lot of information on historic sites (there are lots!) throughout Scotland.