Day 7 - Culloden Battlefield.

We took a short bus ride to Culloden today. Culloden was the site of a battle between the French-supported Jacobites and the "English" government on April 16, 1746. It was the last battle on British soil and ended the Jacobite Wars. The museum itself was wonderfully created. Many of the exhibits were interactive - there was a cool movie that was played in a square room on all four walls of the battle, making you feel like you were in the center of it and there was a large panel that depicted the battle from an overhead view. There were many artifacts from the battle site itself as well and those were neat to see. A famous letter from the Bonnie Prince Charlie to the French king Louis XIVwas on display and I was really geeked to see it. :]

The museum gave us GPS audio things to walk around the battlefield with (in the wind and rain, no less). It gave life to an area that I otherwise would have only thought of as a plain old field. There were a lot of interesting facts, particularly about the recent archaelogy that was done in 2005 to uncover where the 50 English/government soldiers were buried. The rest of the deaths (all clansmen/Jacobites) had clear markers, thanks to clan donations, but no real effort had been made to identify the graves of the English/government soldiers previously, except by a small stone that has been proven to not be near the actual graves. However, I'm still trying to make sense of the glorification of such a battle in recent years - no real interest was taken in preserving the battle site until about 100 years ago.

As a group, we had dinner at a Thai restaurant - another first for me. I really loved it! It's fairly similar to Chinese, but I think it's better. Most of the class decided to spend our last night in Inverness at a karaoke bar. It was so much fun! A large group of us (deemed the 'Almanians' by the DJ) performed Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen at the top of our lungs. We danced and all had a great time together. I had only one drink there - as I'm still trying to get used to the younger drinking age as well as the taste of alcohol since I've never drank in the States.


Tomorrow: Carbisdale Castle!