We love Brighton

Brighton is so so so incredible, can't really describe it but we love it!!! It has even bumped York from the top of fav English town/city list. There is just something about it, wish I was staying here longer but sadly tomorrow we are leaving for London :( but don't worry Brighton we will be back and will be bringing friends with us next time :) 

We also found more snowdogs :D turns out there are Brighton ones as well as Newcastle ones :) we have found 24 of the 44 big ones that are spread around Brighton and Hove, and today when we went to the library we found 5 teenage ones :) and yes we did a happy dance when we found the first one hehe. 

We have enjoyed wandering the pier and the seafront as well as the laines and the main town centre. The only issue with the pier was that the rides were open but required two people minimum (or 4 or 8 depending on the ride) to make them go and Missie apparently don't count as a person :( we were as shocked as you by this news! The seafront was lovely though and we wandered for ages along it. 

We also saw the palace thing, and checked out the laines. I got a nice ring which rounds off the piece of jewelry from each country which I didn't aim for but has happened :) Ireland was from a proper jewelers but the other three from markets :) only reason the ring I got in Ireland wasn't from a market is cos it's a claddagh ring from Galway, figured that one should be done better than just cheap lol 

We had the most amazing lunch/dinner last night at las iGuanas, a Latin place. The food was so good, and the waiters were amazing and they had a seperate gluten free menu which I always like :) they get a thumbs up from us on our ratings thing :) 

Our fav three snowdogs 

The palace 

Cool market stall home things along seaside

Enjoying a beer while watching the sunset earlier tonight

Goodbye Ireland, Hello Wales

After a very rough ferry crossing, rough enough that they closed the outside deck, as well as the shop and cafe on the ferry and all staff seemed to be on handing out paper towels and vomit bags and Missie kept falling over and even I spent most the trip staring at the horizon thinking ferrys should come with seatbelts, we made it to Holyhead in Wales. 

We checked in to our hotel for the night, had a lil sit down then went for a wander along the coast and through town. Holyhead is amazingly beautiful and the locals are all super friendly, if the rest of Wales is like this then I think I'm gonna love it. It was super windy and rather cold but we didn't mind cos the views were worth it. We even found a Missie sized Stonehenge so now don't gotta go to the other one hehe. We found signs for a Roman Fort and got super excited and then when we got there got disappointed and it was just the walls around a church as the fort, we were thinking it was gonna be a big proper fort like in kids playgrounds :( 

After our stroll we had a lil nap then planned our next few days travels using the road map the hotel owner kindly lent us, and advice from Eoin as to where he thinks we should go :) 

Had dinner at a lovely pub just down the road from the hotel, The South Stack, the meal was a lovely home cooked meal with proper homemade chips, so good :) the two ladies running the place were super friendly and welcoming to which was nice, had a good chat with them about where I had been and where I am going. Totally gets a massive thumbs up from me :)

I am now on the bus to Bangor (pronounced Banga) where I will spend a few hours then will head to Caernarfon (not sure how to say that one properly yet lol) for the night. When I asked the driver how much the fare was he said £3.20 and a smile, good fare I thought hehe :) 

View from room 

Pics from our wander

Roman Fort aka stone walls around a church

A well deserved chilled out day

Today I travelled from Broadford to Inverness, after being woken by idiots who do not understand that if you are leaving a hostel early in the morning it is common curtesy to pack your bag the night before so you can make as little noise as possible for the other people who are still sleeping in your bunk room.  I packed mine the night before thinking that getting up at 8am might wake some people but I was stupid, the other three in my room were all up at various stages before 7.30am (one at about 6.30am) and they were all fully packing their bags as had done nothing the night before.  Wish hotels were not so expensive as I am not a fan of bunking with other inconsiderate people.

The bus ride was long and uneventful.  I did see the scenery by daylight and most of it reminded me of driving from mine to bros cept Inverness is not Vegas and bro wasn't there to greet me when my bus arrived (pretty rude I thought).  When I got to the bus station I looked up where I was staying (short walk from town was the description on the internet when I booked it) and saw that I had a 1.4 mile (2.3 km for us normal people) walk ahead of me, pondered busing but couldn't be arsed figuring that out as I was tired.  Turns out walking that far with a big as heavy pack on your back and a lil but still heavy (damn old school laptop) pack on your front does not help with the tired as it is actually quite tiring work.  I made it though and didn't have to stop and take the packs of at all, just stopped and had a couple breathers.  Missie was absolutely no help whatsoever and just kept asking if we were there yet.

After having a sit down at where we are staying (which by the way was worth the walk as I am staying in a 'chalet', pretty much just a cool cabin at the back of someones driveway but its all mine and I don't have to share and have a kitchen if I want to cook stuff (but it turns out no jug to boil water and the only pots are steamers so no cup of tea for me)), we then went for a wander into town just to see what was there.  We decided pretty fast that we like Inverness and this feeling only increased when I happened upon Eds Easy Diner where they do gluten free hotdogs in proper hotdog buns and bottomless cups of tea :) so happy happy Jilly.  Oh and Eds get a bazillion thumbs up from us :) :) :) hehe

Our original plan was to use the third day on our 3 day saver bus ticket on Wednesday to bus somewhere from Inverness for the day but we have decided that we want two days to explore Inverness not just one :) we have also booked ourselves tickets to the theatre on Thursday evening, we are going to see Ross Ainslie & Jarlath Henderson who are some musical act, not sure what we are actually going to see but it looked more interesting that just going to see any old movie and we get to dress up for it, well as dressed up as two travellers can get :)

Some pics from my walk into town

Nessie we are aware that they misspelt your name but still pretty cool huh :)

 This is the theatre that we are going to see a show at on Thursday

My incredibly awesomely amazing dinner

Isle of Skye

On Sunday Veronica and I got up rather early (7.30am, yes pa and brudda I know that is not early for everyone, but for me on a Sunday it is pretty early) to meet the bus that was going to take us around the Isle of Skye on the Best of Skye Tour.  We got picked up and then headed up to Portree where we got a short stop to see the harbour and the famous coloured houses and to pick up a couple more passengers; there were 8 of us in total once we had all been collected. 

We then headed up to the Old Man of Storr, which turned out to be a pile of rocks lol, Storr means big/prominent so am guessing some old man noticed them or claimed them (can you tell who didn’t read the full information board haha).  Veronica and I walked up to the bottom of the main hill with all of the big rocks, I plan to come back one day as you can walk right up to them and all the way behind them which I would loved to have done but there was not enough time.  The walk up took around 35-40mins and was pretty steep until you get to the rock clambering part of it which is way fun :) well way fun for me, Missie bumped the back of her head on a rock when she heroically saved me from a face plant so she didn't love the rock clambering part as much.  The views we got were so wicked awesome it was worth the walk, the rest of the bus did not make it all the way up just some of the way, and I think they missed out on something pretty special.  We not only got views of the rocks but also of the lakes down by the road, we took loads of photos.

After this we went to somewhere that had a lot of dinosaur fossils found around it and also had amazing views of the cliffs on the coast, cant remember the name of the place but it began with S so may look it up for you at some stage.  Missie and I were way more into the taking photos of pretty places than we were of finding out where exactly we were lol.  There were lots of stops throughout the day for photos so some places we didn’t even know where we were at all, just somewhere on the side of the road taking photos of pretty things. 

After this we headed up to the Quiraing which is basically a really good view of Skye, its famous or something and also lots of tourists seemed to be there.  There were a lot of walks around it so again would like to go back there one day and go wandering.  We did the jump photo which is apparently tradition, not sure how to get it though as the guide took it on his camera lol.

We then went to Uig for a toilet stop (as the Isle of Skye is very religious no cafes or public toilets were open except for it seemed in Uig, there also were not many other bus tours as most drivers don’t work on a Sunday, ours was an atheist so was happy to work Sundays lol).  We also went to the Isle of Skye brewery where the others all got to sample some Isle of Skye beer, I didn’t as they don’t yet make a gluten free beer but it is something they are looking into, yup I asked.

After Uig it was off to the Fairy Glen for lunch and more stories and climbing :) The Fairy Glen was also real pretty and there was a fairy circle which we walked into the middle of following the path round and round, left a token in the middle (I left a fern leaf) and made a wish then we had to walk out backwards round and round.  It was actually which fun.

After this we drove to some thatched houses and a old school graveyard which had really nice views overlooking the sea.  Then we got back in the minivan and drove to the ruins of a castle, another stretch of the legs to get to the castle ruins and take some cool photos.  Got the story of how one clan had the castle then another took it but then one of their young daughters fell out a window and plummeted down onto the rocks and got washed out to sea so they thought they were cursed and moved leaving the castle to just ruin.  Missy decided she wanted a closer look at the castle and she hopped past the fence for a look but then couldn't get back so I had to reach through the fence help her get back.  By now it was getting darker and we were all pretty tired so did not mind that that was the end of the tour, we got on the bus and Rob (the driver who I forgot to mention) dropped us all off at our respective towns.

The tour was real fun and I would totally recommend Tour Skye for anyone looking to do a bus tour of Skye.  Next time I will have a car so can go where I please and walk for as long as I want :) Somewhere along the way Veronica turned to me and said ‘wow have you ever seen so many sheep’, to which I responded with a laugh ‘I’m from NZ’.  Lol she then laughed to and commented that she had asked that to the wrong person on the bus hehe.

After the tour Missie and I pondered if we wanted to go out for tea or just chill at the hostel as going out was an effort and we were tired and not sure if we were all that hungry.  We decided that we would go out and we are so glad we did.  We went to Café Sia and got ourselves a ham and cheese pizza and a cider, the pizza was amazing, there was no issue with us not eating the whole thing, it got inhaled hehe.  Café Sia totally gets thumbs up from us :)

Tomorrow I am off to Inverness in the morning and will be there until Friday when I fly to Dublin.  I plan to spend tomorrow afternoon chilling somewhere with wi-fi so I can post these posts I’ve just typed and also rest as its been a hectic couple days and I am doing another bus tour on Tuesday so that will probably also be quite full on.

View from hostel when got up

 

View while waiting for our tour to collect us

The famous coloured houses in Portree along the harbour

Seriously good reflection on the lake of the Old Man of Storr (aka the big rocks on the hill)

Another nice pic (ps there are a lot of pics in this post cos there were so many good ones)

Partway up to the Old Man of Storr

Old Mann of Storr

Us being tiny

View from up where we were looking back over the lakes

Missie wanting her solo photo

Partway down, photo just cos

Same as above hehe

The place I don't know what its called but had gorgeous views, this was looking north...

... and this was looking south

The Quiraing

The Fairy Glen, Missie thought we should stay here till we saw fairies

Same pic just with me sitting down for lunch hehe

The Fairy Circle, Veronica was walking the wrong way cos we hadn't been told the rules yet lol

I'm King of the World (on the big rock thing in the middle of the pic a couple above, and yes I yelled that when I got to the top to the laughter of the other people on the tour lol)

The old school replica thatched village

The ruined castle is on the left of the pic (the one where the family thought they were cursed)

Pretty coastal views from up by the castle

Last day in Aviemore

On Saturday morning we went on the Strathspey Railway, it’s a steam train that goes from Aviemore to Boat of Garten then Broomhill then back to Aviemore again, all up it was just under 2 hours though you do have the option to get off at both Boat of Garten and Broomhill and you can take a later train back so you can go explore if you like.  We chose wisely not too and just chilled on the train J The views of the Cairngorms were pretty wicked and it was a steam train so that made up super happy.  We have decided that we are going to be steam train drivers when we grow up hehe.  I did pretend Grandma was with me as I know she would have enjoyed it.  I looked for a postcard to send her but there were none of the Strathspey Streamtrain which was disappointing.

As our bus out of Aviemore was not until mid afternoon we decided to treat ourselves to lunch at Mambos.  After much discussion (between me and Missie, not just myself, that would make me crazy, silly people who thought I meant this :p lol) I have decided that the rating system for gluten free meals while I’m traveling is going to be a simple thumbs up or thumbs down, no comparing it to something else or giving it a number out of a max number of something, just thumbs up or thumbs down.  At Mambos we had a cheeseburger and a cider and it gets a thumbs up.  It was a very relaxed chilled place that we did not feel like we had to move from once we had eaten and we read for a while and chatted to the waitresses which was nice.

After lunch we went back to the hostel and picked up the rest of gear and headed off to catch our bus, the first part of the trip was from Aviemore to Inverness, then we had a 50min wait in Inverness for our bus to Broadford in the Isle of Skye.  The bus to Inverness was pretty standard, nothing special scenery wise or anything.  After a chill at the Inverness bus station we got on the bus to Portree (biggest town in Isle of Skye).  As soon as we got out of Inverness the scenery began to become way more awesome as we were driving around Loch Ness, the scenery only improved and there were so many places I wished we could stop to take photos, instead we had to make do with what we could get on the bus so there is sadly window glare on most of the photos (well I think there is, haven’t had a proper look at them yet).  The sun set while we were traveling to Broadford but that was ok cos I will get the scenery again going back to Inverness on Monday.  

When I got off in Broadford so did three other girls and I’m glad that there were so many of us as it turned out that the hostel we were all staying at was 800 yards down a unlit narrow road.  We were all glad we had someone else with us while we were walking down the road.  It also turned out that one of the girls (Veronica, she’s from Ecuador but lives in Belgium at the moment) was doing the same bus tour as me the next day which was cool.  It turned out that the hostel had no cell service and the wi-fi not only cost but was sketchy and kept dropping off so that is why this and the next post are not being posted in the evenings of their respectable days.

At the station

Our ride for the morning :)

Just chilling out and enjoying the views

Couple of pics from our trip to Isle of Skye, many did not turn out or did not look as good as what they did in real life so have not included them