happiest place on earth

I found it during a stop-over in Inverness to change buses. I had enough time to just take a quick walk through the town, and there it was. My favourite place on earth.

It's a book shop. Not a chain store, but a real book shop. And a second-hand book shop, at that. It's in an old gaelic church. It has great big bookcases hewn from real wood and wooden floorboards that creak just a little. The counter was in the middle with a cast-iron wood-burning stove spewing a merry warmth while the clerk reclined with his feet up on a stack of cord wood and a cat slept nearby. It was, I think, my idea of heaven. I nearly turned around and walked straight back out, terrified that if I lingered at all, I would never, ever leave.

Thankfully - or not - I had a bus to catch, so I couldn't browse for too long. But the memory of that book shop stayed with me for nearly fifteen years, and when I arrived in Inverness on my trip this past December it was the first place I wanted to go.

It's still there. I was so thrilled when I found it. There was a ceilidh dance going on at a pub down the street and I would have dearly loved to join, but it being late afternoon on a Saturday in December, the ceilidh ended at the same time the store closed, so I gave up the dancing to spend a blissful 20 minutes browsing the wooden shelves.

They've made it even more cosy with the addition of a little cafe on the upper gallery, accessed by wooden stairs with a wrought iron railing. And I feel like they may have moved the counter. In addition to books, they also sell old maps and prints of artwork. I didn't get a photo myself, but I managed to find one online here. (It's from a delightful website that has its own description of the shop. I can't seem to find a website for the shop itself.)

Isn't the shop just beautiful? I stayed until closing.