World Trip

And we were off again! This time the destination was NEW YORK!

We got to Edinburgh Airport at about 5:30am, sat down to have some breakfast at cafe and then the fire alarm went off. Now after everything that happened at the airport in Moscow, it is understandable that we were a bit nervous about being evacuated. However I must say, everyone was so calm and moved very orderly through the fire doors. After half an hour, we were allowed back to our original locations, so thankfully nothing had really happened (as far as we know.)
And then we jumped on the plane and set out for Newark Airport, New York!

We arrived at about 11am and the city was bustling! I felt my eyes bulging out of my sockets! I will admit that I flew into New York with some trepidation, not knowing whether i would be disappointed or delighted. I was definitely the latter!
We dropped our bags off in our hotel room (which was massive!) and went for a walk. We wound up right in the middle of Manhattan! The hotel we were at was located in the middle of everything. On that 45 minute walk we saw; Central Park, Time Square, Broadway, and the Empire State building! This left us wondering (and not for the first time) how much we had actually paid for the hotel through our travel agent... Feeling a bit jet lagged, and wanting to sort out our plan of attack for the next few days, we headed back to the hotel early.

Day two in New York was SUPER BOWL SUNDAY, which left many of the things we wanted to do somewhat clear of the millions of people that usually surround tourist destinations. This was good as today was going to be a long one. We started off with breakfast from Starbucks, and a walk through Central Park, which was covered in about three feet of snow. So beautiful! We were unfortunately bombarded with people asking us if we wanted carriage rides and tours and all of that, which I was able to walk straight past, however Adam stopped to chat to ALLLLLL of them! We then found ourselves on The Corner of Fifth Avenue, smack bang in front of the Plaza Hotel (where we would be spending a night, later on.) This was the beginning of the end for my bank balance as ‘alas’ this was also the beginning of the road that housed: the giant Apple Store, FAO Shwartz (a massive toy store, with the piano from the movie Big,) Tiffany’s, Saks, Bendels, Bergdorfs, Cartier, Harry Winston...... Sigh... just every store that you could ever dream of.... I say dream because there is no way any of us ‘normal people’ could realistically shop at these stores unless we sold a couple of our arms and legs! But to just walk down the street was exhilarating to say the least! Even Adam was excited, well mostly for the Apple store and FAO Shwartz, but still! After having giant pretzels for lunch we made our way back to our hotel to get ready for the Broadway musically we had bought tickets for. There is only one word to describe our Broadway experience and that is WICKED! Did you like my little play on words? Yes, you guessed it we say Wicked, the musical showing the untold story of the Witches of Oz. It was just incredible, and that is not just coming from me, Adam agrees. Words cannot describe how wonderful this singing and dancing extravaganza was. The musical finished at about 8pm (we saw the early sitting,) and we decided to go up and have a look at the city at night from the top of the Empire State Building.

Okie dokie Adam here, Holly has asked me to take over. So we walked from the musical through Times Square admiring all the lights and bumping into the many other tourists that littered the area. The walk took a good twenty or so minutes, but we did eventually make it through all the hawkers and street sales people.

Now, Holly was unaware of this (but may have suspected) there was a particular reason I wanted to go to the top of the Empire State Building... and it was sitting in my jacket breast pocket.
After a long elevator ride (I hate elevators so I was nervous as hell!!) we arrived at the 86th floor. This is the deck that you see on all the movies where people can view the city. We walked a lap of the observation deck, and the view at night is just incredible. Then we found a cosy spot where we could take a few keep sake photos, and I could use as an opportunity to ask the love of my life that special question.
I got down on one knee (at this point she knew exactly why I wanted to take her up there) and produced a small box. I lifted the lid, and, the ring fell out!!! After a quick “Whoops... that wasn’t supposed to happen” I asked her to marry me and she said yes. I mean why wouldn’t she? I am awesome!

So, SUPRISE EVERYONE!!!!! WE ARE ENGAGED!!!!!!

We then took the elevator to the 102nd floor, the highest point in New York City. The view was amazing to say the least. After such a big night we made our way back to the hotel for a lovely dinner.
I’m (Holly) back again. So yes, we are engaged! Being proposed at the top of the Empire State Building is definitely the highlight of the trip! As a side note, proposing at the Empire State Building, was a nod to one of my favourite movies; An Affair To Remember, a black and white movie where a couple falls in love on a cruise and agree to meet in six months at the top of the Empire State Building. This movie was first shown to me by my Nan when I was about 13, and has been at the top of my favourite movies list since then.

We wanted to tell everyone in person, but are just too excited, and also I think everyone has probably guessed by now!

And with that I will end this post here, hopefully this news brightens up your morning!

All our love, Holly and Adam
xox

So time for some Wild and Sexy Haggis adventures!!!

Now, last year Sophie and I toured through Ireland on a Shamrocker tour and through Scotland on a Haggis Tour. We had two awesome guides and met some amazing people from all around the world!
Unfortunately over the year we all lost touch. This meant that I was really was surprised to see one of the girls, Julie, who we met on our Ireland tour, walk past the window of Starbucks approximately thirty minutes before the Haggis tour was about to start. I wasn’t 100% sure that it was her so I didn’t say anything. Then waiting in line in front of the Haggis office, I saw her again! And to my surprise, it turned out that she was on the same tour. Two seconds later I found out that I also had the same tour guide as my last Haggis tour. This BLEW MY MIND!!!!! It has been a year, we have all gone away from our previous tours, done our own things, and the randomly all wind up on the same tour, EXACTLY a year later!!! How does that happen???? It was so nice to see Julie again, and be given the opportunity to get to know her better.

So we jumped on the bus with twenty other random people and Chris, our ‘Jobbie’ loving Scottish tour guide. (For the record, Jobbie is slang for poo.... yeah... I know he’s a bit of a weirdo, but just hilarious!)
We were then ready to head up into the highlands of Scotland!

Our trip began with a brief tour of Edinburgh (as we were leaving) and introductions of all the people on the tour. While on the drive back up to Morags, we briefly stopped at one of the many preserved castles.
Before checking into Morags Lodge, we stopped past a store that specialised in selling all things Scottish. Also there we ran into a guy called Ken who ran us through the many details and day to day living experiences of the original Scottish Highlanders. He had an array of weapons that were used in the day, some still with the blood stains on the blades! After a guy on our tour called Lachlan stripped down to his ‘tiny whities’, it was time to head back to Morags for a good old pub quiz. It should be noted that the Back Seat Alliance, which included me, Adam, Julie, Liz, Tessa, Steph, and Kat, technically should have won. However a woman in the group next to us who I affectionately like to call the Trunchbull, cheated off of our answers and then marked some of our answers wrong when they were right! So we came second.... Yeah there are definitely no hard feelings there...

The second day of the ‘Highland Fling’ found us on the shores of Lochness, partaking in the ‘ancient traditional Haggis Tours Haka’ that was sure to bring the great beast Nessie to the surface for a few pictures. Alas, the great sea beast was camera shy that day... We then went on another bus trip to great field, where many years a great battle was fought. It was a fight between the English and the Highlanders (called the Jacobites), with the Highlanders grossly outnumbered, and the battle one-sided. The result of this war banned the use of the Kilt, the Bag pipes, and the Highlander way of life for many years. After that we visited another fort before heading back to Morags, trying a little Haggis (which tasted just like stuffing), and enjoying a little live music from a one man band.

On the third day we travelled to the Isle of Skye. It rained quite a bit and to say that there was wind would definitely be an understatement. But we still enjoyed walking up to a few of the tower ruins, and hearing the story of the Giants Causeway. While driving back however, the buses emergency exit decided that it no longer wanted to remain closed and continually caused us grief on those many tight and cliff face turns! Poor old Adam had to hold the door closed for most of the way! We eventually made it to our next destination, Saucy Marys. This hostel was defiantly a backwards step in the tour as far as ‘the comfort’ go...but it was only for the night! So we just made the most of the bar down stairs.

On the fourth day, we were on the way to Oban. Today saw us gain another member to the ‘Back Seat Alliance.’ Lachlan had previously chosen to sit up the front with a particular girl (Adam calls her lycra girl because he believes that no one should EVER wear as much lycra as she seemed to.) We don’t know what made him jump ship to the complete opposite end of the bus, but we do know that after that day they did not speak again. On the way Chris stopped the bus for a ‘photo stop’ of a lake which was conveniently the shape of Scotland itself. Unfortunately, like the mature adults we were, we were immediately drawn to all the snow on the ground, which quickly erupted in to a snow fight (which ended in our poor tour guide copping a frosty one straight in the ‘boys’). We did find our way to Oban safely (even though the roads were as treacherous as hell!!!) and enjoyed dinner and drinks with the friends we made on the tour.

On the last day of our Scottish tour, we had another interesting trip with the roads being a little challenging for our driver due to snow that had fallen the night before and that was still falling. We also had the opportunity to see the two castles used in the Monty Python films on the way back to Edinburgh. All too soon we ended back at the Haggis office and had to say go bye to all of the amazing people that we had met. Luckily many of us were all in Edinburgh for one more night and we all got back together to have one last meal together. There ended up being nine of us all together. It was so lovely to think that we all enjoyed each other’s company so much that we wanted to get together outside of the tour.

After officially saying goodbye to all of our new friends, Adam and I headed back to the hostel to pack for our flight in the morning to NEEEEEEWWWWWW YOOOORRRRKK!!!

Hello there everyone!

Well as Adam mentioned in the previous post, we made it to Edinburgh airport fairly unscathed on our tiny-tiny aeroplane from Brussels. To Adam’s sorrow we took a bus (we wanted to take taxi) from the airport to our new Hotel; the Apex European. We were definitely pleasantly surprised by this hotel, the outside looked a bit dreary, but our room was newly renovated with a king size bed and large flat screen TV! But my favourite part was the little rubber duckie that come with the bath! So cute!

We had a Scottish banquet that night and raised a glass to all of the Aussie’s back home for Australia Day! The next morning we woke bright and early and set out on foot to the centre of Edinburgh. After 15 minute we reached High Street (the Royal Mile,) a road that leads straight up to Edinburgh Castle. The First stop was the Haggis Tour Office, just to get our bearings. Then we headed towards the Scot monument where I got a bit side tracked and went clothes shopping at TopShop, H&M and Mark and Spencers! Adam even bought some clothes from ‘TopMan’!!!! Our haul now weighing us down, we decided it was the PERFECT time to climb the Scot Monument!!! This monument was built in dedication to Sir Walter Scott. He did some great things for Scotland, all of which I cannot really remember, but I do remember that he was the person who orchestrated the opening of the Trunk that held the Honours of Scotland (the Crown Jewels) after they had been hidden for over 100 years. Any Adam had the burden of carrying all of our new clothes up the tight winding staircases of the monument. We made it to the second highest landing of the aprox 273 step monument and decided that was enough... The walls around the stair begin to get really close from there.

Moving on, we started to feel hungry and found a nice little pub for lunch on the Royal Mile. We both drank a pint of beer and had our burgers in the 15 minutes that we had before we had to get to our next little adventure, a Ghost Tour of the Edinburgh underground streets. Rocking up to the tour feeling pleasantly tipsy, the guide ran up to us huffing and puffing in a just a t-shirt and jeans. He led us down a street through a town house and into the underground through a hole in the wall. Now I will hand over to Adam to give you the back story on this area.

According to local lore, beneath the South and North Bridges of Edinburgh lies a labyrinth of ‘vaults’ that were created to solve the growing city’s storage problems. These vaults were made in the early 1700’s and used as storage space for the local shops and taverns. When the rent became too high, they were used to conceal material of a more ‘black market’ nature.
Unfortunately, the vaults were created out of volcanic rock that, I’m sure you’re all aware, has the tendency to absorb copious amounts of moisture. As the city in those times had a below average plumbing quality, the stock was always ruined and it became too costly to keep anything down there.

The vaults, for that reason, were abandoned and no longer used.
Now, apparently around the same time, the leaders of Edinburgh were in the process of improving the city, especially since it was one of the first places that it was legal to ‘study the human form.’ This meant that it was now practise to dissect humans for the medical and arts professions.

To clean the city, the leaders decreed it was now legal to be homeless. To that end, if you were found to be begging or living vagrant on the streets, you were hung. (I believe Vladimir Tepes tried something similar...)
To escape this, the poor class of Edinburgh began fleeing to the underground vaults, making them their homes. As the living conditions were squalor, and the people more so, the vaults were rife with crimes of murder, theft, and rape. With the chance of catching disease so high, the local police dared not enter this horrid place. It is even rumoured that Irish mass murders Burke and Hare also hunted their game from the vaults.

Now as no written records were kept for the vaults, they are not sure when but apparently somewhere between 1730 to 1780, the vaults were emptied and sealed. (A rumour was that they were sealed as 80 or so people fled there during the Edinburgh fires and were incidentally cooked alive).
Now flash forward to around 1975. A group of young lads are using one of the local apartments as their bachelor pad. During a drunken stouper, one lad tried to find his way back to his room. Wlaking into one of the walls, he noticed it sounded hollow. Believing he might find another room to sub-let (and due to his heightened intoxication) he returned to the wall and took a sledge hammer to it. What he found was the vaults as they were, untouched for a couple of hundred years, still with the belongings of some of its previous inhabitants.

Thanks for that detailed description Adam. Anyway, that brings us back to our tour walking through the wall into these under streets. The smell of stale damp dirt filled our nostrils. And over the next 45 minutes our guide led us through a variety of vaults and streets, and filled our imaginations with visions of death, and the supernatural. It seems silly to be scared of all of the stories he told now, as we are sitting her on the train in broad day light, but down there, in the dark, your imagination goes into overdrive. I WAS TERRIFIED!!!!! I actually thought I was going to pass out, I was that scared. I don’ t think the pint of Bulmers I had earlier helped either. After we were sufficiently scared, the guide led us back to the main office, where we were all given a shot of whisky and some short bread. Ofcourse!
It was now getting late in the afternoon, so Adam and I decided it was time for our last stop for the day. Edinburgh Castle. We walked to the end of the Royal Mile and through the outer walls of the castle. I must say the view of Edinburgh from the castle is breathtaking. The castle sit on top of a hill in the middle of the city. We were shown the Royal living quarters, old military base, and the Honours of Scotland, amongst other things.

It was starting to get dark so we began our walk home to the Hotel, where we prepared our luggage for our train ride up to Inverness the next day.

Friday morning saw us walking to the Hay Market Train station with EVERTHING at 7:30 in the morning. We weren’t sure if we were going to the right station, so we had left early just in case we needed to catch a taxi elsewhere. As it turned out, we were at the right place and had to wait an hour for our train to Inverness. We reached Inverness and promptly hoped onto a base to take us to our final destination Fort Augustus (a town on Loch Ness.) The bus we were on didn’t quite make it to Fort Augustus, it broke down just 6 miles out, so we had to then wait for another bus to come and pick us up and take us the rest of the way. We finally made it to Morag’s Lodge in Fort Augustus, where we settled in the then went for a walk through the town.

I shall take it from here Hol...

The next day, we set out on a walking adventure. We packed lunch and snacks, found a map of walking trails in the area, and set off. To be honest, when we turned down off the road and into the forest, I wasn’t exactly sure we were on a walking trail at all. There weren’t many signs, and the walking map appeared more than useless. After following a road for a short while we noticed a green post on the side of the road with an off beaten track. We agreed this must be one of these walking tracks and pressed on.

During the walk we eventually came to a fork and a car park. Due to the early morning cold (well, due to the cold in general) a large puddle had frozen over. Due to the fact that that we don’t see much ice (not in a freezer), and due to the fact that the initial thought seemed like a great idea (hey, the closest thing we have at home is polished floor boards and socks) I decided it would be a completely lost opportunity if I did not try and skate on it. Of course when I started, Holly began filming it, and needless to say it didn’t end fantastically. Luckily I didn’t break my wrist when I landed on it, but soon after I fell on my arse, it was decided it might be a good idea if we continued on our walk.
After a bit of a stroll, and morning tea on a bridge overlooking a stream, we found ourselves back at the lodge. We got bac earlier than expected so we took another stroll down to the Loch. We had lunch at a quaint little boat-shed turned restaurant, which was in a perfect place for a little Nessie spotting... but the monster never showed.
By the time we made it back to the lodge, it was already late in the afternoon so we had a bit of a rest before having dinner and sleep before the next days early start.
Now, the next morning we had another one of our ‘taxi’ experiences.

Firstly, the ‘taxi’ from the lodge was by an elderly looking gentleman who’s car (once again) did not resemble a taxi. By that I mean it had no official ‘taxi’ markings (so once again, it could have been anyone’s car). Now, that morning was to go from Fort Augustus by taxi which was to take us to Invermoriston. From Invermoriston we were to be collected by a bus which would take us to Inverness, and then from train, back to Edinburgh.

Well that’s not what had happened. When the taxi stopped at Invermoriston, another three cars pulled up to where we were. All three occupants got out of their vehicles (including our taxi driver) and began having a local town gathering. Our driver had obviously told one of the other drivers where we were going, because not long after their conversation he looked up at us and said, “You’re going to Inverness? Come with us. We’re going that way and the bus is never on time.”

Holly and I both then looked at each other. Sent a ‘telepathic’ maybe this probably won’t be a good idea, and as we looked over, the man had already began taking things of his back seat to make room for us. We once again decided to take our chances (I mean we have been pretty lucky so far) and took the ride, and I am glad we did. The driver introduced himself as Adam, who was with his partner Barbara. The other occupant of the car was Fergus, a very well behaved Scottish terrier.

The car ride to Inverness was full of conversation with Adam and Barbara sharing with us some of the history of Loch Ness and its surroundings, as well as the history of the annual ‘Haggis Stalking’. In this context, a Haggis is a mythical creature that lives on these particular ‘spiral’ hills. With two of its four legs being shorter than the other it causes these spiral tracks down these mounds. Adam and Barbara told us of a radio competition (obviously a prank) to see if they could get people to participate in the annual ‘Haggis Stalk.’ From what I understand, a lot of people put themselves forward to search for these slanted critters.

We eventually arrived in Inverness safely but our wonderful conveyors refused to take any payment. We instead exchanged emails and bid each other farewell. To tell you the truth, I have yet to meet an impolite Scottish person on the trip. Not saying they aren’t usually, but it is always nice to have someone lend a hand especially in the small communities). We would just like to say thank to Barbara and Adam for your lovely act of generosity, we won’t ever forget it! If you are ever in Australia to visit your relatives, feel free to pop over to Perth for a while and we can do the same for you. XO

From Inverness it was an uneventful train ride back to Edinburgh (although Holly did win ‘Pass the Pigs’ twice which has resulted in being one of her favourite games). Note to Adam: Holly has yet to LOSE a game of Pass The Pigs!
From Edinburgh it was another taxi ride (which was marked this time) to the hostel to get ready for our Haggis tour (which Holly absolutely raves about so I think I will let her do that entry).

Cheerio

So lets begin where we left off...

After the taxi ride where once again we believed we were going to wake up mysteriously without our kidneys, we arrived at out Belgium Hotel, The Centrale.
We were politely greeted by the receptionist, who after we checked in, corrected the T.V. for us (this was somewhat important as we were deprived of the 'idiot box' through Rome as English is not the primary spoken language).
After an early nights rest, we spent the majority of the next day in the hotel room. This was mostly because Holly was still getting over her illness, and partly because we were buggered from the Italy tours.
In the late afternoon we decided to grab something for dinner so we made an enquiry to our receptionist who kindly pointed us in the right direction.
After traversing through a few modernized streets, we found ourselves in an older-style arcade rife with bars and chocolate shops (most people would probably have a sugar rush just by looking at it).
We eventually found ourselves in a large city square that was full of the older Belgium architecture. It was absolutely stunning and Holly and I are both kicking ourselves for not taking our cameras with us on this dining excursion. Like the arcade, the square had a variety of chocolate stores (reminding us that valentine’s day was creeping up) and bars.

We of course decided to dine at the tavern LeRoy, the one with the taxidermied horse. I ordered a Belgium mixed grill (which was awsome) and a king size Stella Artois. No joke, you could comfortably raise a few gold fish in this glass, castle and all. Holly had an awesome Cherry Beer and Vole vents. After paying for dinner we walked slowly back to the hotel, taking time to visit a few of the chocolatiers along the way.

The next morning was another early start back to the airport for our trip to Scotland. The taxi driver again was trying to kill us doing 140kph in a 70km zone!!! We arrived at the airport, surprisingly in one piece (also surprising was that this cabbie charged us more than the one that took us from the airport at the start of the Belgium leg).

The flight was a little rough. We were on a small plane, no bigger than a private leer-jet, so it was tossed around a fair bit during the flight.
We were once again relieved to be on terra-firma again ready and eager for our Scotland adventure!

To be concluded <-

Hi There, Holly here!

Adam was very correct in his last post when he said I like telling the taxi driver story. So we had just landed in Brussels! We were all ready to get to our hotel and hop into bed. To those who don’t know, we cancelled our tour in Belgium so that I could recuperate. And we were both just exhausted in general. Now before I can tell you this story I have to tell you another one that was told to us by a nice American couple. They had been to New York before and had a bad experience with a taxi driver. They said when you get into the airport, line up in the taxi line! There ill be other drivers who will alk around then line and offer to drive you, but you just can’t trust them and they can be quite dangerous. On another trip the gentleman had gone to India (dad take note of this,) he wasn’t careful and just hopped into what he thought was a licensed taxi. It wasn’t. They essentially took him hostage and drove him to the slums of New Delhi. He was eventually able to convince them that he was there for business with the government and they would know he was missing, so they took him back and dumped him out of the car. He said it has just scarred him for life. Anyway, we decided that we would definitely apply their advice to our travels, where ever we were. That was until we reached the taxi line at Brussels. We were in line and this guy came up and said this was the Flemish (Dutch) Taxi line and that we should go with him. We were hesitant but followed. We started freaking out when he then lead us to a black unmarked Mercedes.... I asked him what company he was with, and to be honest he didn’t really give us an answer... he just told us he would give a receipt. We looked at each other and decided that it was too late to back out now and hopped in. I made Adam sit in the front. He told me later that he had his sunny’s in his hand ready to break off the handle and stab it in the drivers eye! Anyway so we were driving along, I mentioned that I was in Brussels for a meeting (so that he would know that people were waiting for us :P) I heard Adam start counting coins and asked if we could stop at an ATM. I had trouble with two ATM’s so Adam decided (very hesitantly) to leave me in the car with they guy. Adam was in the ATM area when a bus came up behind the car. We had to move. We moved to another corner, but this was one that only we could see Adam from. He came and I could see him start to freak out we couldn’t move because we were at a red light. Adam ran across the road and was searching for me! I knew he thought I had been taken. I told the driver that he was a Police officer and that he was freaking out, and thankfully he beeped his horn. Adam saw us and ran over. Poor thing. We finally made it to our hotel... Thank god! And Adam paid him. When we got into our room Adam says to me “I gave him an extra 5 Euros cause he didn’t kill us!” Hahahahaha I will never forget the look on his face, he was deadly serious.

So, in summary, we were probably being a bit over dramatic, but seriously, we were tired and in a different country! What would you do!?!?!
Talk to you soon!

Love Hol