Hello lovelies! This is I believe my last blog post about our cruise vacation. The whole cruise went by so quickly, but that is usual for when you're having a good time. We definitely did! I've seen just enough of Scotland and Norway to be determined that I'll come back as soon as possible. I don't want to post lots of posts about it, because I'm very late with this and I honestly just want to show you the photos, so you can fall in love with all the places as well. I will however briefly describe what we did each day.
After Shetland islands our ship sailed towards the continent and our next port of call Portree. The next day as we arrived we were pleasantly surprised with the lovely weather outside. After a cold and windy Norway we finally had a sunny and very warm day. Again we weren't sure whether to visit Glasgow or Stirling castle which was an hour drive away while we were already looking for a taxi. We were lucky to get a very friendly cab driver who was happy to chat throughout the drive to the castle (I found out all about Scottish school system, politics, food, basically he was almost like a tour guide). The castle was situated on a hill and a cobbled narrow street led to it so you can imagine just how scenic the view was. The castle itself was glorious and I could almost see all the battles that It survived and countless banquets held in the Great Hall. It is one of the largest and historically most important castles in Scotland. I won't bore you with history right now, but this is worth mentioning: just about two miles south of the castle lays the battlefield of the Battle of the Stirling bridge of the First War of Scottish Independence where the forces of Andrew Moray and William Wallace defeated the combined English forces of John se Warenne, 6th Earl of Surrey, and Hugh de Cressingham on the River Forth. Some of the names might sound familiar to you from History class. Sadly we didn't have time to visit it as we hardly had enough time to even see the whole castle. Of course we returned to the ship for lunch and after it we decided to go around Portree a bit. We only had an hour till the ship departure so we practically ran around asking for the directions for the nearest bookshop. Yes, I admit that was my idea haha... I believe I've already read all the English books in our libraries that I like as well as translated ones, so I'm always on a haunt for new books. Since there are so many awesome English books that you can't get in my country, I prefer buying them while on vacation than ordering on eBay as it's much cheaper.
Our next port of call, Invergorden was the most disastrous one. Again we had warm sun shinning and beautiful landscape surrounding us, so what could possibly go wrong? Everything. First of all we had to wait for our rented car for additional half an hour as they'd forgotten to bring enough to the port. We had a perfect plan to visit most of the attractions in the area: Loch Ness, Cawdor castle and than Dalmore whiskey distillery. We only wanted to get a photo of Loch Ness, so we asked a seller in a souvenirs shop where we could do that and she gave us directions for the best photographing location. Unfortunately we ended up on the main parking place for the Loch Ness and we should had payed 30£ if we wanted to get anywhere near the lake, as the price also included the Urquhart castle and lots of exhibitions. We of course didn't have time for all that, so we just drove away and stopped beside the road, took a few pictures of the lake (they turned out quiet okay) and drove towards our next stop Cawdor Castle. We lost a lot of time with the Loch Ness inconvenience so we arrived to the castle just at time for lunch. There were no restaurants around, so we had to eat in the castle which didn't have a lot of dishes to choose from, so I ended up eating ham from sandwiches and boiled potatoes. I was really looking forward to trying some of the typical Scottish dishes, so this really didn't help with my mood. After lunch we basically ran through the castle as we had to be at the distillery at 3pm which was one hour drive away from the castle. I was really sad, because the castle was the most romantic castle I've ever seen and we also had to completely skip the gorgeous gardens. Fortunately we arrived to distillery on time and it did look very interesting. It was however very quiet and after we payed for the tour and actually entered it we found out why: the distillery is closed for two weeks every summer so they can repair and clean everything. Apparently nobody felt a need to mention it before we payed for the tour. If you think that a distillery tour is boring then think about a distillery tour where nothing is happening, seriously worse than a Maths class. Just as we got to the (at least for my parents) interesting part of trying the whiskey in different stages of maturation we remembered that there was a show with Scottish dancers and pipes on our ship at 4pm so we immediately left. As you can probably guess the show wasn't anything special, so we really ruined our whole Inverness experience. Lesson of the day: if you have limited time for sightseeing, choose one attraction and see it properly instead of seeing a little of everything. It's very stressful and unsatisfying and you can always come back and see everything else.
Next we headed towards Queensferry, port of call for Edinburgh. I was soo excited for the capital of Scotland, because (it may sound weird) we have this text in our English Students Book about it and it sounded so mysterious and spooky with cobbled and narrow streets when we were working on the text in school, basically wonderful. I was very happy as we had a whole day (our ship departured at 10pm) for exploring it. Of course we couldn't have a perfect fun day, oh no, we had to wait till 11:30am to get to the shore as it was very windy and too dangerous for our tenders. The atmosphere however was perfect. When we finally got to the Edinburgh with a shuttle bus it was already time for lunch, which is no surprise, I mean I have to eat every two to three hours. We found a very nice restaurant with typical Scottish food and it was delicious. I even tried a bit of haggis which tasted surprisingly good (I'm not a big fan of liver). After a warm brownie with vanilla cream and apple crumble we headed towards the Edinburgh castle. The nearer that we got to it the more crowded it got. We knew it would take the rest of afternoon just to see the whole castle, so we decided to go down the Royal Mile instead and visit all the souvenir shops. The sun peeked out from the clouds, so we had a really lovely time strolling down the cobbled streets and admiring beautiful architecture. As predicted we ended up in a bookstore again. While browsing through books time really goes by quickly and soon it was five o'clock in the afternoon. I really wanted to see more of Edinburgh, but my dad and brother didn't want to miss the international food night for the 4th of July with stalls with food from different parts of the world. I must admit I've never had so much different food to choose from, so I was glad that we haven't missed it. I can always come back to Edinburgh later on in life (I definitely plan to!).
Our last destination was Port of Tyne, near Newcastle, UK. I must admit I was quiet hyped about it, because I love UK and we were also planning on visiting Alnwick castle where a few scenes of Harry Potter were filmed (fellow potterhead right here). My mum had booked a car rental as it takes approximately an hour to get to it from the port. It was really hard for me, because we could pick the car not sooner than 10:30am & I wanted to spend as much time as possible in our last port. Finally we got the car and header towards the castle. We reached it at around 12pm and because we had to be back at the car rental branch till 3:30pm, we decided to see only the castle and not the gardens as well. The castle is huge and I loved all the furniture and pieces of art. It was a bit different as a family actually still lives there, so we could see photos of their children and some of their personal items. I can only imagine how cool would be living in a castle like that. After lunch I convinced my mum to find a Superdrug store, because I love you tuber and blogger Zoella and I really wanted to buy some of her products. Unfortunately we found out that the new collection was scheduled to launch one day after our departure and they were also out of stock of the original products. I was quiet disappointed, because my parents won' let me order her products online and I don't think we'll visit the UK anytime soon. Nevertheless it was a very enjoyable day even though I was very sad to leave Britain.
The last day was at sea and from the morning till the dinner I was going straight from one activity to another, learning everything from Windows 10 to how to make salmon burgers. You can never be bored on a ship, trust me. They also held a High Dutch and Thailand tea in the main dinning room with lots of cute little desserts which tasted equally good.
Overall they had very delicious and diverse food on the ship. The staff was very friendly as well and they practically did everything that we asked them to. They even bought apple vinegar as I told them I couldn't use the balsamic one. As there were mostly old people on the ship me and my brother stood out, so everyone knew us by name, which was pretty cool as well. It was one of the best vacations and I can't wait to visit the North Europe again. Despite the cold weather I still prefer the north than the south especially because of its gorgeous landscape. And what do you prefer: the north or the south? Once again I apologise for posting this late, but it took me quiet some time to find all the photos. I hope that you still enjoyed the post. Lots of love.
xoxo
