We had a final breakfast at the Raeburn and prepared to leave Edinburgh. Susan bid a farewell to the giant walk in closet, and then we caught a cab to a rental car place outside the city

This was the day I had been nervous about for our whole trip. I've driven on the wrong side of the road before, and my daily driver is a stick shift, but I've never had to do both at the same time with all the controls reversed. The rest of our vacation was depending on me to figure that out so it was time to get good.

There's no test to drive in Scotland if you have a license in any other country, so they handed me a key without mentioning that I'd walked up to the counter and greeted them with a "Howdy." After several minutes making sure I probably wouldn't kill us right away, we started on our way to Falkirk.

Driving here turns out to not be a big deal except for 3 things:

1. Speed limits are implied by the road type you're on, so you have to know if you're on an M, A, B, or some other road type. Signs only get posted for the roads that are the exception to the rule.
2. The roads here can be very narrow. In a bunch of places we drove today we had to yield to trucks who were taking up part of our lane. Combined with the blind corners all along Loch Lomond this was the largest hazard we faced.
3. My foot getting stuck on the steering column roughly one out of every 10 times I needed to shift. Our Ford Fiesta is not built to be operated while wearing boots, and it is not a party to drive.

Falkirk was just a few minutes away because everything in this country is just a few minutes away. We stopped at Helix Park to check out the Kelpies and have a very windy picnic of Tesco sandwiches. We thought about popping over to the Falkirk Wheel but I was still pretty nervous about in-city driving so we continued on to Stirling.

At some point during our drive, Susan asked me why I'd worked Stirling into our itinerary and I honestly couldn't remember. I knew I wanted to see the site of the Battle of Stirling Bridge and I remembered it was very important historically but I think I only learned about that from Age of Empires II. Regardless, we stopped at a parking spot 100ft from the bridge and started just wandering around Stirling.

The site of the Battle of Stirling Bridge is unremarkable. The bridge that made the battle successful was strategically sunk during the battle in the 13th century (leading to a huge victory for Scots over the English). If you've heard of William Wallace, this was one of his major victories . The "new" bridge was built in the 15th century and has no real historical significance.

We crossed the bridge of no particular significance and looked for a walking path. We followed a path up a small hill that was apparently used for executions at some point in history and appreciated the view for a bit.

We didn't have any real plans after the disappointing bridge, but we saw signs for a Stirling Castle. Our knowledge of Scottish history isn't great (there's a lot to cover) so somehow we missed that there's a massive castle in Stirling. We followed some signs and hiked up to the castle. Touring the outside gate was free, but going inside was £16 each. I was skeptical that it was worth it but fortunately my better half reminded me that we were on vacation and we should go for it.

Susan was right as usual. Stirling Castle is stunning.

This had been a working castle for hundreds of years, from before the time of William Wallace (12th century) until the 1800s, but more importantly to me it had been one of the main castles of the Stewarts. From Robert II (14th century) through to Mary Queen of Scots (16th century), Stewarts had lived in and ruled from this castle.

We took one final picture here and walked back to the car, then headed off to Oban.

Our route to Oban went by way of Loch Lomond, which is about twice as long as the direct route. This caused our Google Maps app no end of confusion, and it suggested we take a faster route about 6 times during the journey. Apparently they've never taken the slower route just for the pleasure of the journey. Susan suspects their employees' spouses are missing out on something.

The drive was beautiful but not really conducive to taking pictures, and our time at Stirling Castle meant we were running behind if we wanted any food in Oban. We enjoyed the scenery and tried to relax while driving down narrow winding roads at 50mph. We arrived just before they were closing an access road for the night, so it's a good thing we rushed a bit.

Oban is a pretty seaside town built on a hillside overlooking a bay. There are more pleasure craft here than I expected, and we got to watch a few boats sail into the bay . I especially appreciated seeing their complex set of navigational buoys blinking at night. We'll see if we can get some better pictures tomorrow.

We'd missed the window to tour Oban Distillery, but we know how whisky is made - we're much more interested in tasting it. After checking in with our hotel we went to their bar and asked to see their whisky list. The bartender recommended Oban (ya think?) but when I asked for what varieties they had, he said they only carried Oban 14. You know, the kind you can buy in Safeway. I think it's understandable that I was a little put off by this.

We walked down to the distillery hoping there might be any other bar open. Turns out there's a bar on the same block as Oban, and they carried the whole Oban line, except they were sold out of Oban 14 (you know, the kind you can buy in Safeway). That didn't bother us but it does make me wonder.

Susan got the Oban Little Bay and I tried the Distiller's Edition. Both were rich and smooth, but the Little Bay was like drinking smoky chocolate. We'll have to see if we can taste some more varieties on a tour tomorrow, but I suspect there will be a bottle of Oban Little Bay flying home with us.