All the other ports from our North Europe cruise

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

Relaxing vacation in Croatia

Hello! As you know I've been on vacation for this past two weeks in the sunny Croatia. I'm not sure if that's common in other countries, but here most of the families go on a vacation somewhere near the sea in the summer, so they can go to the beach every day and stay there till the evening with food and drink and even tents for a shade. There is always a competition who will get the "natural" shade so my dad takes our beach towels to our spot under a small tree when he goes on a walk with our dog at around 7am (yeah, you read right, that early) to reserve it. Our dog is a German Spitz Klein and he gets hot very quickly, so we need shade for him and of course we also go back to the apartment before 12pm to avoid the heat. I think everyone should do that, because you get sunburn very easily from 12 to 3pm. Not to mention the fact that I'm allergic to all kinds of sunscreen, natural ones as well (trust me, I've tried them all), so I can't really risk being out there when the sun's the strongest. Even though I've never been sunburn in my life, thanks to my very concerned parents and a bit of luck with my skin type.

We've been going to the same place in Croatia for my whole life and to be honest I quiet like it in some ways. For one there is no Wi-Fi except for the one at the reception-room, so I really get to do other things than spending my days on the Internet, for example read (I read five books in those two weeks, one of them in French which I'm very proud of) and swim a lot. I don't know about you, but I really don't like public pools, because they're always crowded and I don't know why I always have this feeling that the water isn't very clean. Maybe it's just me being weird about it haha. But I really do love swimming and it is very helpful with my blood sugar, so I always spend as much time as possible in the water when we're on the beach. The sea was also very warm, it had 28 degree Celsius! Some people weren't so happy about it, because they thought it was too warm to cool down in it, but since I get cold all the time it was basically perfect for me. I didn't quiet like the air temperatures though as we had more than 33 degree Celsius every day and more than 25 degree Celsius at night. Of course mosquitoes had no mercy for me either, so just imagine sleeping in these kind of conditions.
 Over all I was very active there and I spent much more time with Medi (that's our dog not to confuse you) and my family. Don't get me wrong, I take him out for a walk every day even during school, but with studying and other activities I don't get to play with him that much and teach him some tricks. 

Socialising with other people was a bit difficult though, because there were mostly families with little kids and a lot of German speaking ones. Sadly I don't know much about German beside " Guten Morgen" and "eins, zwei, drei ", so I couldn't really make conversation with anyone. That's one thing that I did miss, because I'm kind of in that phase where I really want to meet new people even though I'm very shy. Doesn't make much sense, but I guess I need to practice approaching them.
All in all it was very relaxing and fun vacation. I forgot to mention that the sea was also very clear. On the days when it was calm you could see the bottom just like through a window. I will add some of my attempts capturing it, because it was truly amazing. I hope that you're having a great summer vacation too wherever you are. I would love to hear about your experiences and let me know if you ever been to Croatia. Thank you so much for reading!

A perfect day in Lerwick

Hello lovelies! I'm actually super excited to write this post as I'll be writing about one of my favourite destinations of all time. Try to guess...we're talking about the northernmost point of Scotland. Yes, I have gorgeous Shetland islands in my mind. To be honest I was even more looking forward to Scotland than Norway. I have this weird love for anything UK related and I even wrote a research paper about British cuisine this year. Maybe I should try out some of the recipes and share with you my poor cooking skills? Good laugh guaranteed.  :)
I don't know about you but whenever I visit new countries I have certain images in my head of how I expect the landscape and architecture to look like. Well Lerwick (the main port of Shetland islands) was exactly as I've imagined a typical Scottish city to be like. Lots of very green grassy hills with long-haired sheep and sandstone houses. We rented a car as we had to get to the south of the island for bird watching and it was also a great opportunity to have a good look around the island. It took us only 40 minutes to get to the other part of it  and on our way there we had to cross their small airport. I have never seen such a tiny airport in my entire life and keep in mind that I come from a very small country. My mum even managed to get a picture of a plane taking off right in front of us. Amazing! After a few more minutes we reached the southernmost part of the island and parked the rental car. We were supposed to look for Atlantic puffins (cute little birds with big and bright beaks, also known as ''clowns of the sea'') but in the end we sadly only saw two of them and lots of these black & white birds. Please don't ask me about their name, because I have no idea. *awkward* Nevertheless it was great with breath-taking views of the ocean foaming around the rocks and beautiful pink flowers defying the strong wind. There was a lighthouse which played an important role in Second World II and we also learnt a lot about the life of lighthouse keepers. Time passed by really quickly and soon it was  time to leave. I was really sad because we didn't have enough time to go see famous Shetland ponies but luckily we noticed them on a meadow right beside the road and my dad quickly pulled over. There was a door in the fence and it wasn't locked so we entered their paddock, me feeling a bit guilty for disturbing their leisure grazing. There were so many of them each of a different colour from dirty white to almost black. It was a picturesque sight with daises all around them, so I might just went a bit crazy with taking photos heh. I was really surprised by their height as they're very small and chubby, but really friendly. Some of them were a bit scared of us and some even let me pat them.  A perfect day or what?  hope you enjoyed reading this post and let me know if you want to read more about Scotland.
                                                                  xoxo