Now we’ve gone and done it. Today, Rob and I had the audacity to ride the train from Edinburgh to the city of Inverness in the Scottish Highlands, eat a late lunch, and ride back on the return train—the equivalent in America of traveling round-trip from New York to Boston for a quick bite at the International House of Pancakes.* This was actually Rob’s idea, one of which I was slightly wary at first, but we both wanted to see the mountains and to get our money’s worth on our rail passes.

Also occupying our small coach were two other American couples (one of whom appeared insane and the other of whom raised wiener dogs for fun and profit) and an elderly English couple that boarded with a covered picnic basket and maintained an hours-long running commentary during which neither one of them stopped speaking for an instant. I secretly dubbed them the Conversationalists. Wiener Dog One and Wiener Dog Two were also elderly and rather pleasant. They shared our table and light conversation. The Wild-Eyed Duo sat across the aisle and alternately looked lovingly at each other and glared disapprovingly at the scenery.

I had expected that, like any mountain town, Inverness would resemble Wheeling, West Virginia.** There is a river down the middle of the city that today was rapid and swollen with the spring melt-off. Indeed, the entire Highlands landscape was swampy, and the rail company had threatened to shut down the tracks because of flooding.

When I wasn’t looking out the window, I spent much of the journey reading my history of Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots. As well as being cousins and sister monarchs, it is a little-known fact that these two, upon retiring from their thrones, traveled to Boston to jointly open a Ye Olde International House of Pancakes Shoppe. You read it here first.

* Today, I also am audacious enough to switch my travel narration from the present tense to the past, considering I’m writing these things at the end of each day and not as they happen. Who did I think I was fooling? Did anyone actually think they were getting up-to-the-moment reportage? (And yes, we really went to a pancake restaurant.)

** I have no idea whether it does or not, as I have never been to Wheeling, West Virginia.