Looking back on those two weeks in Scotland feels like flipping through a reel of half-dreamed postcards. We started in St Andrews where the North Sea wind whipped across the Old Course and the ruins of the cathedral stood sentinel over waves the color of pewter; then north to Inverness, walking the banks of Loch Ness at twilight while the water lay so still it doubled the pink sky. The Highlands swallowed us next: the drive to Skye along single-track roads lined with sheep, the sudden reveal of the Quiraing’s jagged cliffs rising like dragon teeth through drifting mist, and those evenings in Portree where the harbor lights trembled on black water and the pub smelled of peat and old songs. Edinburgh closed the circle, its castle brooding atop volcanic rock one minute and bathed in festival fireworks the next, while we wandered the Royal Mile at dawn with coffee steaming in the cold, listening to gulls echo off ancient stone. Every mile between felt stitched together by rain-sweet air, the low bleat of distant bagpipes, and the quiet certainty that we’d only borrowed this wild, beautiful country for a little while before it took its heart back.