My husband and I will be visiting Scotland in May for about 10 days. On the current itinerary, we will be visiting the following cities: Glasgow, Isle of Arran, Fort William, Isle of Skye, Inverness, and Edinburgh. We will be spending a couple nights at each place and hoping to visit some castles, distilleries, and breweries. We would also love to eat some good Scottish grub and hike the Scottish country side! We were hoping to hike Ben Nevis or Ben Lomond but are open to other suggestions!

Any must sees in any of those cities? Or in between on a drive? Any top castles, restaurants, distilleries or hikes?

Anything off the beaten path would be awesome too!

see my post on your other thread (not quite sure why you started a new one)

There is no such thing as a 'must see' other than what an individual defines as such.

Some people 'must see' the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, Canada. I can give it a miss.

I consider your itinerary overly ambitious for just 10 days and that assumes you mean you have 10 full days, not including your arrival and departure day. I also don't understand your math. With 6 places listed, how can you spend 'a couple of nights at each place' if you only have 10 nights? 6x2=12 still doesn't it?

I also don't see where in your math you are allowing for travel time. You aren't going to spend any more than 1 full day anywhere.

>>assumes you mean you have 10 full days, <<

they don't - see the other thread . . .

Please see other thread " Driving in Scotland on opposite side"

I looked at the other thread already but it is no clearer. Why are you telling me to look at it cee828? What has it got to do with the questions I asked you?

If you list 6 places and write, 'a couple of nights at each place', that requires 12 nights, how does writing 11 nights in your other thread make that math work?

Not counting your arrival and departure day, how many full days will you have on the ground? That's all that matters and you have not said on either of your threads.

People flying from N. America to Europe often even count from the their departure day when in fact it takes them an overnight flight to get there which means they lose 2 days just getting there. Leave NYC on day 1 and arrive in Glasgow on day 2. Day 3 is the first day they actually have as a full day on the ground.

People often count a day in which they are moving between stops, as a day spent in 1 or the other of those 2 places. Some people even count them as a day spent in both places! That's a good trick. A day spent moving is a day more or less lost and shouldn't be counted as a day in either place.

So it is up to the person asking, to make it clear exactly how many days they will have on the ground, not including arrival/departure days. The person reading cannot use a crystal ball to see just how any individual is counting their days.

What I know is this. If you list 6 places, you will have an arrival day, departure day and 5 moving days. That is 7 days which will not be full days spent in any place. So even IF you have 12 days including arrival/departure days, that is up to 58% of your time lost to travel days. Does that sound like best use of time to you?

I would never spend more than 25% of my total time on travel days. I prefer to spend even less, like 10%. The only travel days I cannot avoid are the arrival and departure days. To limit my loss to 10%, that means I have to have a total of 20 days. To limit it to 25% I need to have only 8 days.

Do the math with some different combinations and see how it affects the percentage of time you are losing to travel days. For some people it can be quite an eye opener.

"There is no such thing as a 'must see' other than what an individual defines as such"--

This is the single soundest piece of travel advice I've seen on this or any other travel forum! Thanks, Dogeared.

Doesn't mean you shouldn't read a travel guide or three while planning for your trip, but it does mean that only you know what your interests are.

However, a couple of comments on Dogeared's second reply:

First, budget your time by the nite--that will tell you how many full days you have, and will help when it comes to booking lodging.

Second, I don't agree that a day in transit is a day lost. Agree if the day in transit is spent flying, but if you are motoring or taking the train, then the day in transit can be just as good as a day staying somewhere. Better, even, if you are from the auto-mad US and your idea of a good time is to drive from, say, Atlanta to Boston.

I'm assuming you will be bringing the necessary gear for climbing either Ben Nevis or Ben Lomond? Both are serious mountains and even in May, the weather can change quickly becoming cold and wet. Factor in wind chill, and temperatures can feel very cold.

Climbing either of these is going to take a good chunk out of the day.

Huh? It seems my last response was removed for some reason and I have no idea why.

Dwdvagamundo, I wanted to ask you to explain to me why you say count nights. I've come across people saying that before but to me it makes on difference. Every day has a corresponding night and vice versa, so it should make no difference whatsoever which you count.

Where I see people going wrong is in not counting travel time separately. So they count 2 days or nights in X, then 3 in Y, etc. as if they teleported from one place to the other.

Dogeared--I recommend counting nites for two reasons: first, so that you see immediately how many full days you will have in a place so you don't overcount how many days you have; second, so that when you are ready to book lodging, you know how many nites you'll need to book for each place.

It also facilitates making changes to the overall trip plan: in our plan for the UK this fall, my spouse threw me a curve by wanting to revisit a place we'd already been because we had been unable visit something there. Knowing how many nites we'd be staying at the destination just before that made it easy to take a nite out of that destination and add a nite where my spouse wanted to go. Then I was able to start juggling the things I wanted to see from the prior destination and how to see them. The result is that we should be able to see just about as much by staying three nites as we would have by staying for four.

It also helps you focus on which days are travel days, as you recommended. So if I see on my initial plan that I will be staying in, let's say, Glasgow through Monday morning but will be in, let's say, Edinburgh Monday afternoon, it helps me see that I am going to have to check out, travel, check in, etc.