Cold. Pretty. Highlands.

The dining room was heated by a fire. Outside it smelt like a warm wood fire (like Googa). In our room it is cold. Ri was wearing his jacket. You know it's cold when Ri has his jacket on. He is walking around with his little hood on and I call him the John James to my Josie because I watched way too much BB UK. Ri never gets cold. He has this internal heater that keeps him warmer than normal humans.

Let's see what have my portable human heater and I been up to...

I think I covered Edinburgh last time (I really should read past blogs before I start the next one). From Edinburgh we made our way to Aberdeen, that's right the last blog I did was in Aberdeen. We saw this castle near Stonehaven (this was about 10 miles from Aberdeen). I forget what the castles name is and am too cold to look it up. But it was old and very pretty. Well what was left, it had that ruins feel going on. Now according to my guidebook a scottish castle is not a castle unless Mary Queen of Scots visits and MQoS visited this castle... twice! William Wallace also went there. The photo is of Ri on one cliff and the castle on the other.
I overheard a Scottish tourist saying that there was 440-odd steps to the castle and the next day it felt like there was 440-odd steps to the castle. Not big steps. Just a lot of them.

After Aberdeen we went to Inverness. On 28-08-2010 (I mention the full day as that was Annie and Drew / Annie and Daves wedding day) we went to Loch Ness to hunt monsters and have a picnic in terrifying conditions. Ri has a saying "it has to be terror sweat" and applies it to convincing me to play in snow, climb mountains and have picnics on the edge of cliffs at Loch Ness. So we had our picnic and toasted the newly weds back home. I was looking at photos just then and the Brides looked amazing. (The saying "it had to be terror sweat" is from the Simpsons, naturally)

So right now we are in the highlands. And. I'm. Cold.
The mountains look like they've come straight from paintings. I'm running out of basic ways to say pretty/beautiful and too cold to think.

Nessie hunts Henri

It is way too cold. We took this shot of Henri at Loch Ness and noticed a little something in the background. : )

Location - Aberdeen

Photos are from Edinburgh.

How did the election go? The BBC says that it was a hung vote. We didn't vote. Maybe we should have voted. BUT. There is only one place in the UK you can go to vote (this is according to Ri) and that is in London and we are in Scotland. I wish that the whole thing is sorted out quickly. I'm sick of switching over to the BBC and listening to some condescending little so-and-so asking if Australians even take politics seriously anyway - like 'oh look how cute Australia is trying to play politics'. There must be a least one or two people who take it seriously. It's not like they didn't have a close election here in June. OHHH and seeing the Aussie PM (?ex PM) on the BBC = painful. She sounded like such a bogan.

On election day we were walking around Edinburgh. It was a mostly sunny day and I was happy that I wasn't visting a polling booth that day.

I am in love with Scotland. It's green. Edinburgh is so beautiful. The Fringe was awesome fun. The Scots have a great sense of humour. The only thing I'm not loving is the weather. The rain switches on and off so quickly and the wind is SO COLD.

We are in Aberdeen atm Ri is watching the final of season 11 of BB UK (which started when we were in London and I was so addicted that I was looking at who was being evicted when we were in France). It's so bad. I'm loving it.

So we had 5 nights in Edinburgh. Yesterday afternoon we were walking around Edinburgh when a Aussie gave us a flier for a free comedy called "One kiwi, One Aussie, One hour" or something like that, so we walked into a club and ended up staying for 3 and a half hours of free comedy. Brilliant! This was on a Monday afternoon. One act was actually booed off stage by an Irish girl. True that jokes about paedophiles are not going to appeal to most people. But he probably has a market out there somewhere. Just not those who are at club Sin at 4pm on a Monday afternoon. For the next couple of acts we were all looking at the Irish girl from the corners of our eyes waiting for her to proper snap.

That night we went to a comedy club to see the best in Scottish comedy. FUNNY. Ok, so we only understood about 70-80% of what they said (oh I love the accent!!!!) but what we did understand was pretty funny. I think that the free show had a nicer atmosphere. The second people have to pay for comedy they seem to get a bit hostile.

Another thing we did in Edinburgh is visit the national gallery - for two reasons - one is that it's free. The other is that I didn't like the Munch gallery in Oslo and I wanted to show Ri that it was the arts fault and not my attention span. Turns out it's probably a bit of both.
We went to the botanical gardens. We climbed a random mountain. Or two.
We had some vegetarian haggis, at the worlds end.
I think tomorrow we are going to a castle.
We hired a car in Edinburgh today and it was almost as bad as the day we picked up 'Gurdy' (the car we picked up in France) Ri had a day of adjusting to driving on the correct side of the road again. Round-abouts = terrifying. I had to point out that he learnt to drive on the left side of the road!

Back at home this week it is wedding week! There are two weddings this weekend and we have been chatting about the weddings and hope that everything goes really well this weekend for Annie and Drew and Annie and Dave.

Ri and Henri in Bruges

Here is a photo of Ri and Henri in Belgium. Oh it was so nice and warm in Belgium. Chocolate was ok, I like the Swiss stuff better.

Heading back to the UK

I really should be getting ready as we have a flight today, but I thought I would put up a little bit of text.

Since the last blog we have been to Bruges and Amsterdam. Both of which were awesome!
You need to accept that Bruges is a massive tourist trap and go there anyway. I wasn't sure if I would like it as we'd read that it was fake, but in a good way. And it is a bit fake, like the Disneyland of cities, but I really did enjoy it.

Amsterdam. Amsterdam. hmmmmmm. I think you should be over 18 before they let you in. Or maybe it's just the area in which our hotel is in (Ri picked it). We've been walking around the canals going "oh they weren't kidding when they said that."
I've got some really pretty photos of Amsterdam.

And now to Scotland!!

100 days of Travel (so far)

100 days! How is that? Not too bad in my opinion! Only 80+ days until we are back home. I’m already thinking about life back home. Currently not extremely keen on having to go home after living like this. It feels normal now to move every couple of days, hotels are now just home and I get to spend all day every day with Ri! The only thing I’m getting sick of is having to eat every single day! Although my fat rolls suggest I’m still managing. I’m a little tired of the minimal selection of vegetarian options. I can only eat so many buns with no meat.

In 6 more nights we will be in Scotland and I’m keen to head back to countries where we will be able to understand everyone. The Vegie selection was good in England, maybe it's good in Scotland too?

Anyway since the last blog we have covered a vast distance. And not really seen a lot. Five nights ago we were in Tromso, which was a life-long dream of mine ever since I found out it existed 6 months ago. Tromso was awesome. Tromso is in the Arctic circle so we had two nights without any darkness. And a crazy beautiful sunset/rise on the first night. We kept expecting the darkness to come after we saw the sunset (because we’re silly) and were treated to seeing the sunset for about 2-3 hours only to change its mind at the last minute and at about quarter past midnight it started getting visibly lighter, time for sunrise! This all happened before the last blog.

We got on a flight from Tromso to Oslo at about 8:30am and then drove from Oslo to Copenhagen where we slept, did our laundry (people never say this about travelling but the need for clean clothes is almost as annoying as the need to eat every day), grabbed a hotdog (on our own!), grabbed some ice-cream and then we made our way to legoland.

Ah LEGOLAND. The photos at the start are from Legoland. This is one thing I am sure Aussies could do better than Scandinavians. Maybe they have better hotdogs, ice-cream, ways of selling cheap furniture BUT Aussies could make a better Legoland. Although I’m also convinced anyone can make a better Legoland.

There are many reasons why I'm not a fan of Legoland DK, but here is the big one that made Legoland a disappointment for Ri.

The park builds Lego structures that are really ugly and about their sponsors. So one sponsor is Dong energy, so we were treated to a Lego energy plant, a Lego solar plant and the ever so colourful Lego off-shore oil rig. And a Lego airport. And a Lego space station (ok Ri liked that one). There was no COLOUR, no personality. No interesting use of Lego. Like Lego a fork at the burger shop. Nowhere to interact with Lego either, which is what Ri was hanging out for.

So we left Legoland after only a couple of hours disappointed. And made our way to Bremen, Germany. Which wasn’t the most beautiful city we’ve ever seen. We gave up on this city three times, making our way back to the car, but we kept going back out because Lonely Planet had said it was pretty. In the end we did find a nice street and a couple of pretty little churches. If we had found it sooner we probably would have left thinking Bremen was amazingly pretty. But we were just over it and had a big drive down to Luxembourg to do that day.

And that is where I am now. Luxembourg. Eating pineapple. Watching CNN. We plan to see the city tomorrow before heading on to Bruges.

One awesome thing that did happen at Legoland is that we ended up (entirely by accident) at the Bob the Builder 4D movie. Which was in Danish. So we sat watching Bob the Builder with 3D glasses on for about 30 minutes having NO IDEA what was happening. It was hilarious. We really did have a good time. But the kids HATED it. The 4D effects were scary at some points and come to think of it, it was probably about why Dong energy is awesome. So maybe the poor things were bored.

Ri's Guide to Scandinavia

We have completed our Scandinavian portion of our adventures so I thought that it was about time for me to do another update. Firstly I want to say that Scandinavia is awesome, the People are all friendly (and speak English), the scenery is awesome, the capitals are all smaller then Brissy but can still support places like the Tivoli in the heart of the cities, we could understand TV and ice-cream everywhere is awesome (weird considering how cold it gets.

As you will have seen from Tori’s posts we started off in Denmark and I have to say that Copenhagen is definitely my favourite for Scandinavia and maybe of the trip so far. It is almost half the size of Brisbane but somehow manages to feel the same size, maybe because it is all in the one spot and not just a giant sprawl.

Oslo and Stockholm were both spectacular and had the same Scandinavian vibe although the Something about the Norwegians and Swedes come across just a little bit more serious.

Highlight of Sweden was Meatballs at Ikea (I know I can get them at home but you have to do the stereotypical stuff for laughs and that actually tasted pretty good and the locals love them). Other funny food stuffs that I didn’t tast were there meat pastes, was tempted to try beacon in a tube but Tory wouldn’t let me make myself sick.

For Norway it would have to be tromso, couldn’t spend much time there but want to go back for the winter and northern lights.

Only setbacks of Scandinavia are the price for to poor old aussie dollar and Its alot more spread out and sparsely populated then I had imagined was the case in the whole of Europe. This would have been a pro if we had more time to explore it.

So once again summarising Scandinavia:
Food = Good
Scenery = Spectacular
People = Friendly
Generally = Awesome (just try not to convert everything to AUD but that applies to Europe in general)

Midnight in Tromso

The photo is of us in Tromso at midnight a couple of nights ago. Shortly after this shot the sun started rising.

Currently we are back in Denmark, heading to legoland. I'm so tired! It's 10:30pm, we were up at 6am for a flight from Tromso to Oslo and from Oslo we have driven to Denmark. Just wanted to do a quick blog and post up one of my favourite pic's so far!

Location - Oslo

We were in Melbourne New Years Eve 2009 and we got lost, or sent our friend to the wrong suburb or something along those lines, so he sent me this message "I'd like to see the two of you on the amazing race." He was mocking us! And our travel abilities in Melbourne with a year and a bit until we were going around the world. So when this friend set us a challenge in Copenhagen, the mission was to find a hotdog with 'yellow sauce.' I thought that this would be our roadblock our chance to show our friend that we aren't completely hopeless. So inbetween museums and the other sites we saw, we LOOKED for hotdogs with yellow sauce. And. We. Failed. We only found French hotdogs and an organic hotdog stand. I could hear Phil telling us we were the last team to arrive.

Luckily our friends mother had hooked us up with his cousin, who showed us all around beautiful Copenhagen the next day. She was kind enough to point out all these hotdog stands that had come up over night (they had either just opened that day or we had walked straight by them). We had a great day with her and her friend and her half pug whose name our English tongues couldn't pronounce. She took us to the Crowned Prince's house, where we could line up and file through the big rooms to admire the renovations (there was a massive map of Tasmania in one room - and really what can you do but laugh?).

We could get so close to the Royal houses! You could go and knock on the Queens door if that's what you felt like doing. So different to the fort that is Buckingham palace.

After admiring the future home of Fred and Mary, we went to Christiania. Which is like Nimbin, except in Copenhagen.

After our guided tour of Copenhagen, which had lasted 8-9 hours, we drove to Sweden.

Stolkholm is apparently made up of 13 islands and a heap of 'bloody tunnels.' On our first day in Stolkholm Ri decided we had to see the hippy island and the old town island.

We arrived on the hippy island at about midday and noticed yellow and blue tap was going up and that they were getting ready for a parade. Then a rainbow flag walked by and I said to Ri "I think that a Gay Pride Parade is about to start!!!!" So we grabbed a park and he gave me a choice....
"We can go left and go to the park or go right and go to a gay pride parade"

I'm like ARE YOU KIDDING ME? YOU THINK WE HAVE A CHOICE?!?! HOW OFTEN CAN ONE SAY THEY SAW A GAY PRIDE PARADE? LET ALONE A SCANDINAVIAN GAY PRIDE PARADE! WE MUST GO."
I still can't believe he would let this opportunity pass by.
So we found a space in the crowd and watched the Scandinavian Gay Pride Parade 2010, oh the colours and the music and the gimps. SO MUCH FUN. I was singing along and Ri was watching, some what silently. But even he couldn't resist singing along to "I come from a land down under".... ummm I didn't know that song was 'Gay.'

Now I'm not remotely political. But I think that Gays and Lesbians should have every right to get married. No one can present me with an arguement as to why it's not their right, or why they have the right to stop them. I think laws against gay marriage are very short sighted/small minded. But that's just my opinion I guess.

From the Gay Pride Parade to a local vegetarian cafe (YUM) to Old Town on another island. I'm finding that lately I'm a self-loathing tourist. I can no longer walk around with maps out and camera shooting everything in site. I want to upgrade to traveller. I once read that the difference is that a Tourist goes to another country and tries to make it feel like home and a Traveller goes to another country and tries to experience it like a local. I'm somewhere in the middle. Still won't eat meat. But I can't stand being in an obvious tourist trap for more than the time it takes to grab a few gifts with the local flag on them.
That is what old town is by the way, a massive tourist trap. So.Sick.Of.Tourists.

We had another two days in Stockholm, but I can only be bothered writing about 2 more things that happened in Sweden.

We went into a local video store and asked the guy at the checkout if he spoke English.
Yes he did.
Sweet, then we needed a Swedish movie with English subtitles for my brother who I know owns one Swedish movie about Vampires called something like "Let the right one in."
Movie man had heard of this movie. He looked up the director of the vampire movie on his computer and found a similiar movie, and after going through an entire non-alphabetized shelf he decided it wasn't in stock... Back to the computer and suggested another one. Turns out no English subtitles. At this point he begged "Does it HAVE to be Swedish?!" Yes, we are in Sweden, why would I buy Big Mama's House in Swedish? Makes no sense. Eventually we found the only Swedish movie in the store with English subtitles. Love you Mr Movie Man.

At the Zoo in Stockholm (yes we went to the zoo, but it was the only thing open late on a Sunday afternoon). Ri needed to go the bathroom and I watched this happen.
Ri walked into a bathroom marked "Herr" walked out again 5 seconds later, looked next door at the bathroom marked "Dame" he then hesitated, then confidently walked back into the one marked "Herr". He really does make me laugh every single day.

Now we are in Oslo, Norway, with beautiful weather and free Coke. In Berlin I made Ri buy a book on travel in Europe and now he quotes it ALL the time. He was reading it at lunch in Oslo and looking worried.
"We need to dress up" he says
"What, why?"
"In Italy, the locals expect everyone to dress up... as the locals are snappy dressers and one of the tips is to take some good clothes"
"Do you want to go shopping? Do you want some good clothes?"
"Yes, for Italy"

So we went for H&M and found him a snappy shirt.
Oh he makes me laugh. Every day.

Until next time.

Evolution of Hair

Every couple of countries (we are in number 11) I'm overcome with a desire to change my hair. I was looking back at my photos and was shocked at the change in my hair since May. The first one is of my at the zoo in Stockholm on August 1st, the one underneath in when we were in Berlin 2 weeks ago, then there is my in Bath in June (I know Bath and Berlin hair don't look that different but I DID dye it), Sandiego in May and the last one in me at my dad's birthday party on May 1st 2010 (I look exhausted because that was also the night before our wedding).

It was my Nans funeral today

and I wasn't there.

Now I'm not going to pretend that I was ever that close to my Nan, it terms of illness we missed each other. She was healthy when I was a very (very) unwell child, and just as I was coming out of my illness, she was falling deeper into hers. Add to that, we never lived in the same city, and you don't have the ingredients for a strong relationship.
But here are a couple of interactions:

When she still lived at home, at let's say I was about 10, she cooked a roast and sat down with me, explaining that "she knew it wasn't pleasant but I really should drink more water."

After she moved to a home, there was a gathering at my Aunty and Uncles place and let's say I am 19-20, my nan arrives and says that I'm looking a lot healthier these days, in fact "I'm almost as pretty as my cousin" (I know that it's a pretty big complement, you should see my cousin).

And last year Dad and I went to visit her at the home, I'm 24, and she can't remember who we are, or what happened 30 seconds earlier, but she is very polite all the same. She was thrilled to find out I was marrying a boy from a suburb she had live in, and kept telling me to have children, as she remembered really enjoying that.

xoxo