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Published: October 12th 2012
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Well I should probably finish off my last days in New York and boy did the weather turn it on for me. The last day was beautiful and sunny and warm so I took a very long train ride out to Rockaway Beach which was a nice change from the busy city. It was funny because I was sitting on a deserted train platform waiting and I could hear church bells type music start up and God Save the Queen came on...strange because I was in the US and strange because I was flying out for London that day!
I arrived in London late and had done all my Google research as to which trains I needed to catch to get to my hotel. As usual, I got on th wrong one so at 11pm at night I suddenly realised I was heading out to the country and had to get off and get back somehow. A very nice man on the train gave me very specific instructions and over an hour and a bit later I finally arrived at my hotel! Only to demolish a medium pizza, 4 pieces of fried chicken and a sprite..probably not the best meal
to eat at midnight but it did the trick! As I really only had 1 day in London I decided to Tube it into the City and I just started walking, knowing full well I would get lost but that's the fun of it! I ended up walking through Buckingham Palace just as the changing of the guards was about to take place so that was pretty cool. I walked around Picadilly Circus, Oxford & Regent Sts up and down Parliament, took in Big Ben and the London eye and I was very lucky as the weather had been terrible up until then and that day was beautiful! Plenty of tourists around. I had just got myself a salad from Whole Foods..which really needs to come to Australia, they would make a fortune! Walking down Regent st and this guy comes up next to me and says excuse me miss, I just wanted to tell you how confidently you walk, it's very intimidating!! He was about 5 foot if he was lucky. I had a gob full of salad so kind of just smiled at him and he said sorry to interrupt your lunch, I just thought you should know
it's great to see. Then he says, I bought these jeans last week, do they look ok? I was thinking..hmm ok got another crazy here, he was dressed really nicely and I said yeah they look fine and he says does my ass look alright? I laughed and said I'm not answering that! He said I don't want to look like a gay walking down the street that's all and I said no you don't and he says thanks for that, enjoy your lunch and walked off!
Strange...speaking of, I forgot to tell you about the guy in New York who crossed a road with us and he said to me my god you are beautiful and I just laughed and kept walking and he followed next to us and said no seriously, how do you feel about interracial relationships?!!! Well the girls couldn't stop laughing, we crossed the street and kept going with him waving and yelling out how he didn't have a problem with it! Very funny.
Anyhoo, back to London. In the arvo I met with my friend from Brisbane who was on her last day of holidays there and we had a few drinks
and something to eat, it was lovely and then it was back to the hotel ready to head to Scotland the next day.
I arrived in Edinburgh to a beautiful sunny sky...luck is clearly on my side on this holiday as they had terrible weather until then too. It was freeezing but sunny so I could deal with that. My friend Mhairi who I had met on my first trip to Europe 5 years ago picked me up and we jumped on the sight seeing bus, sat upstairs and outside (my idea) which was a terrible idea cause the wind was bloody cold! It was about 5pm by that stage so getting quite chilly. We took in the main sights of Edinburgh and then went and had some dinner, walked around and joined a pub crawl at about 8pm. So I got to see about 6 of Edinburghs pubs, some I'd never visit again others like Vodka Revolution were pretty darn cool!
I got to bed at about 3am and we had to be up at 7am as we had booked a 2 day Highlands Experience tour. It was a mini bus with only 9 people which was
excellent and a tour guide who was on something he was pretty hyper but lots of fun and knew the complete history of everywhere we went.
Over the 2 days we went to South Queens Ferry, Dunkeld, The Hermitage in Perthshire, Pitlochry, Culloden, Inverness, Drumnadrochit (Loch Ness), Urqhuart Castle, Invermoriston, Fort Augustus, Ben Nevess, Glencoe, Rannoch Moore and Loch Lubreig....feel free to google! There was some amaaaazing scenery, beautiful country side with the 2 sunniest days we couldn't have asked for better. We stayed over night at a hotel at Loch Ness, in bed at 8.30pm given the lack of sleep the previous night! Poor Mhairi was woken by me having a bad dream and I was crying out in my sleep but apart from that interuption it was a pleasant night!
We arrived back in Edinburgh about 6.30pm on the second night and went to Mhairi's sisters to do my washing as I had completely run out of clothes! She had made a pot of soup and some bread and it was just lovely. Listening to a Scottish family talk was quite amusing with all the aye's and other words they use that make me laugh.
On my last day there we get up early and drove up Arthur's Seat which is a hill lots of people walk up and around and is behind the Queens residence there and Holyrood Park. Good views back over Edinburgh. Then we went to the castle as Mhairi, despite living in Edinburgh her life had never been there. We had to hurry a bit through there as I needed to get to the airport but that was pretty cool too. If you were into war and the history of war you would love it. They said it was going to rain that day but again we had a sunny day.
We said goodbye and as I got on the plane the rain started coming down...perfect timing!
I came back to London then to Paris and jumped in a taxi last night. But I will save my Paris story for my next blog!
I had a wonderful time in Edinburgh, the Highlands was so pretty and Edinburgh itself if amazing. I said to Mhairi how lucky she was but she said that you kind of forget it's all there after a while. I guess that's true but I
loved it and would like to go back again one day!
P.S Photos take so long to upload to this thing so I've just done a few
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