We took advantage of Scotland's wild camping laws and Eric's extensive camping gear collection to spend our first full day and night in the mist of Glen Etive. Hiking up a hill in the highlands, I learned, is a sport. The numerous hills are called Munros - named for an 1800s surveyor - and climbing them is referred to as "bagging a munro." And people do this for fun. Ok...it was fun, especially since I wasn't carrying one of the two 40-pound packs that Nate and Eric porter-ed up the hill. Once we reached a height above the clouds, we pitched our tents. It was admittedly pretty amazing to watch the clouds roll under our feet and hear nothing but the wind pass through the hills. It helped that Eric brought whiskey so that we could keep warm with what the locals call a "wee dram". We had the whole place to ourselves. This, it turned out, was a very good thing since there were no bushes or trees to hide behind for a wee...well, wee. We'd wander off into the cover of the mist and hope that a stray hiker or sheep didn't come along when nature called.

Last on our adventure was Edinburgh, a labyrinth of cobblestone archways, alleyways, and staircases that would rival a M.C. Escher drawing. Nearly every narrow stone street brings to mind Diagon Alley filled with cauldron and wand shops. It's no wonder J.K. Rowling garnered so much inspiration from this place. She sat in a coffee shop (you can too, along with the hoards of other Harry Potter fans!) in the center of town to write the novels. There is even an old cemetery nearby with names that appear in the novels. In reality, of course, the tourist shops lining the streets carry very little in the way of letter-carrying fowl. The inventory is more along the lines of hilariously inappropriate Trump toys, which one shopkeeper told us occasionally prompts an angry reprimand from American tourists.