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[chloemarievaughan]

May 10-11- the End!

my last full day in Scotland, and I saved some of the best for last! First stop of the morning was a guided tour of Holyrood Palace, which is a lovely palace where the current royal family of the UK (Queen Elizabeth, King Charles, Princess Anne, Prince Edward, and Prince William, among others) stays when they have working engagements in Edinburgh. There are state dinners and parties as well as other meetings. to get to the palace, I walked all the way along the Royal Mile down to the very bottom, about a 20 minute walk. It was very sunny this morning and I stepped outside and immediately went right back inside to grab my sun hat 😂 I enjoyed the walk and then made it to the palace, noticing on the way that it was free to visit the Scottish parliament so decided to visit that after. I very much enjoyed the tour of Holyrood, which was a well done audio tour discussing the historical occupants, including Mary Queen of Scots and more into the story of her Catholicism and how she eventually abdicated the throne in favor of her son; also went in depth into a murder plot against her. Another room, the biggest in the palace, had a wall full of portraits of the ancient kings and queens of Scotland of old, commissioned by King Charles the II. To reinforce to everyone the kingly pedigree of Charles II, the painter chose to portray every painting with King Charles II’s big nose 😂. The palace is beautifully decorated, outside and in, and again I took a photo in the first room before noticing a no photos sign and getting in trouble with the palace staff. Whoops!

the tour finished up in the abbey ruins from the 1100s beside the palace and then a lovely walk through the palace gardens. I was wanting an early lunch at this point but there was basically a choice between the cafe at the palace or the one at parliament; didn’t specifically want anything from the cafe at the palace and was confused about the line so went next store to parliament, which ended up being a mistake because the food looked way worse 😂 had a little bacon sandwich and chocolate pastry to fortify myself for my hike of Arthur’s seat in the afternoon, and then poked around the exhibit about Scottish parliament (Scotland only had its own parliament since the 1990s! Which is why the building is so new. It was pretty interestingly designed and modern architecture throughout) and I got to actually go in the legislative chamber! I learned that if I had planned ahead you can actually sit in on Parliament while it is in session Monday-Thursday, or get a free guided tour.

Then it was time to hike Arthur’s seat! This is an (extinct) volcano beside which Edinburgh was built, offering great views of the city and also the other volcanic hills nearby. The yellow gorse bushes were blooming all over the mountainside, and it was a beautiful day for a hike; a bit sunny at times making me glad of my hat, but also partly cloudy making it less hot than it could have been. Sidebar: I later realized I should have definitely applied more sunscreen to my shoulders and I have an impressive sunburn that is going to give me some weird tan lines on my shoulders lol. This hike was Steep- my iPhone told me I walked the equivalent of 80 flights of stairs today! Felt like I zigzagged Straight up a cliff which I essentially did for part of it, though there were stairs to walk on- and I had to take many breaks to recover and catch my breath, so I was glad that Grey wasn’t there to have to wait for me lol, it took me way longer than I’m sure it would have taken him lol. I had a liter water bottle but wished I’d had more water. My recovery breaks always came with a great view though :)

I brought a couple pairs of shoes for the trip, including my hiking boots and some athletic sandals (Tevas) which I love for traveling, because I’m always hot when I walk around. However I really wished I had my boots for this walk! my sandals held up okay but I didn’t have the best grip on the dusty soil of the paths. When I got to the top a French guy said he was impressed I made it with sandals 😂 he and his group had brought a cooler with beers to the top which in retrospect was a fantastic idea haha. it was beautiful but very crowded at the top, so I made my way back down; this was even worse with my sandals. Didn’t appreciate the view as much trying to be sure of my footing on the way down haha, only slid once though but was able to catch myself before I actually fall down. At the very base of the mountain there was a little ice cream van making an absolute killing I’m sure, I bought a new water and chugged it immediately. Totally worth the hike but I was super sore and tired at this point, so wanted to walk back to my apartment for a shower.

Unfortunately for me I had to walk all the way back up the royal mile to get back to my apartment, but had a pleasant walk ducking into touristy souvenir shops, weaving in an out of the huge crowds and listening to the buskers playing bagpipes and watching the magicians doing tricks on the street. Speaking of magic, I had to stop for a butter beer at the Elephant House, a cafe where JK Rowling wrote Harry Potter! It’s on Victoria Street, which claims to be an inspiration for Diagon Alley. The butter beer was Disgusting, a nasty cream soda- I’ve had much better at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, but I couldn’t resist haha. Went into one of the Harry Potter shops to browse too.

I stopped for a very quick falafel wrap for lunch and then showered and rested a bit for my last hurrah in Edinburgh: another chocolate whisky tasting! it was in a bar called the Tipsy Midgie (Midgies being the Scots word for a midge, or biting fly, that apparently gets quite bad in the summers in Scotland. Luckily we missed midge season!) this bar was about a 20 minute walk away, and I took a path that went past a few sights I hadn’t seen yet, including the National Museum of Scotland and the Greyfriars Kirkyard, a cemetary with Harry Potter connections: JK Rowling used to walk through the cemetary and took several characters names from the names on the Graves, including Tom Riddle (Voldemort himself). then onward to the Tipsy Midgie! They do ever changing whisky pairings with chocolates and you can book them in advance with at least 24 hours notice by emailing the bar. I enjoyed my first chocolate whisky experience so much I thought a second would be well worth it. The bar itself was small but very cool. This time it was 5 whiskies paired with 5 chocolates, from the 5 major whisky regions of Scotland, Speyside, the Highlands, the Lowlands, the Islands, and Islay; again arranged from a light sweeter whisky- the Tamnavulin Tempranillo Cask Edition, paired with a strawberry cheesecake white chocolate, to an Ardnamurchan Rum Cask paired with a dark chocolate with rum filling (my favorite kind of chocolate is dark chocolate, but honestly it went the least well with whisky; the sweeter notes of the rest of the white and milk chocolates made for much tastier combinations) all the way to the peatier Kilchoman 2010 vintage from Islay, with the smoky peat flavor going excellently with a peanut butter and jelly truffle. I had an incredible time at the tasting- there was a table of perhaps my parents aged Americans next to me who were just starting their two week Scotland trip, and I could tell they thought I was about 18 years old as they were chatting with me haha, thinking I was very brave to be so young and out and about on my own drinking whisky 😂 also liked talking to my waitress Sarah, who designed the tasting and picks out the best whiskies to go with the chocolates- I asked where she got the chocolates and she told me a local chocolatier named Finley, not exactly helpful if I wanted to buy any chocolates lolol. and also I met the proprietor Colin, who told me that the bar had only been open 18 months! Which explains why it was in a bit of a weird area, more residential and less of a touristy place. When he heard it was my last night in Scotland he brought me a free bonus tasting of the 6th whisky region in Scotland, a Glen Scotia from Campbelltown. I did not necessarily need a 6th whisky at that point haha but it was a really good one so of course I thoroughly enjoyed it! Very smooth. No bonus chocolate pairing though ;) I walked back to my apartment enjoying the sights of Edinburgh for the last time, and was a bit tipsy while packing and tidying up the airbnb. I had an early night, and woke up to head for the airport bright and early, leaving before 6. It was nice and bright outside, and I found a way to walk that avoided lugging my suitcase around on the stairs, thank goodness. Took the tram to the airport and checked in without incident- though my luggage seriously gets picked every single time for additional screenings. As usual I have very normal things in my suitcase lol! (In Toronto my bag got pulled again and the worker asked me if i had bottles of maple syrup in my bag- no, it was whisky lolol) slept a lot on the plane and wrote this last post on the way to my layover in Toronto. Should arrive in Columbus around 3 o’clock and then have a day to recover and back to work on Monday 😭

From the Isle of Skye to the Loch Ness to castles, churches, history, and mountains with wonderful train rides and delicious chocolate and whisky pairings, I had such a wonderful time in Scotland! I couldn’t possibly recommend it more and I’m sure I will be back again! :)

[chloemarievaughan]

May 9

Grey and I went to breakfast at the cafe right in front our the air bnb, the Castle Gate cafe. It was a delicious choice, we enjoyed some smoothies and Grey had a full Scottish breakfast, with bacon, beans, toast, mushrooms, and tomatos. I had some avocado toast, not quite as good as the one I had on our first day in Scotland though.

Grey had to take a 20 minute walk and then a 30 minute tram to the airport, and he wanted to be early, so we left after breakfast and I walked with him in that direction. There was a tram coming every 7 minutes, so we said our goodbyes and I tried to quickly walk to the train station for the next train to Stirling. of course I missed it by like a minute- and should have just sat outside the train station in a park to wait for the next one in 30 minutes, but instead just relaxed in the train station for a minute. Grey ended up realizing his flight to DC is 45 minutes delayed and so he was in the airport SUPER early on accident. Better safe than sorry though!

When Grey and I told Dad we were planning to go to Scotland, he offered to buy us a beer if we made it to a Brew Dog Brewery location. There are several Brew Dogs in Columbus, but it originated in Scotland and dad was an early investor when they first came to Columbus. we saw Brew Dog in a museum gift shop once but there aren’t any brew dogs in the cities where we were staying aside from Edinburgh so we weren’t sure if we would make it to one. luckily, Grey found one in the airport to enjoy a brew while waiting for his flight! Cheers Dad! 🍻

As far as me, I do love to travel by myself! Grey is a very chill traveling companion but there is something wonderful about doing whatever I want when I want; I never have to wait for a companion who is taking longer than I am in a museum exhibit, and can decide only on my own needs if I want to sit down on a bench and take a break or when it’s time to eat, etc. I haven’t really traveled by myself since my big college graduation trip in 2015 but maybe I should start back up. I am great company 😂😂

When I was young, Mom and Dad went on a fantastic trip to Scotland- interestingly, we didn’t overlap too many locations, they went to Oban and Glasgow rather than further north where Grey and I went. they brought Sophie and I souvenir kilts and then forever talked about their favorite location on the trip, Stirling. Stirling is one of the locations they would love to spend a few months getting a taste of life there; so naturally I had to make time for a day in Stirling! It’s an hour train ride from Edinburgh, so I bought a convenient anytime return ticket to do a mini day trip today.

I had a ticket for entering the castle at 11:00, and I have to say, Stirling Castle was WAY better than Edinburgh Castle! Probably less than a quarter of the amount of tourists were visiting, and they include a tour with the price of admission. The tour guide was from London and he had a mullet and was wearing some spectacular tartan pants. He gave a lovely ~ hour long discussion of the castle as we walked around the grounds, including two of the famous battles with William Wallace (Braveheart) and Robert the Bruce. The first mention of Stirling Castle is in a letter from the early 1100s so it must have been built even earlier, but it was a constant site of battles due to strategic location on the border of two rivers between the highlands and lowlands, and so the oldest part of the castle still standing dates to the end of the 13th century because things kept being destroyed. The castle was where kings and queens of Scotland lived and were coronated in the 1500s, but more recently (until about 1960!) it was used as an active military garrison and they used the old chapel and great hall as military barracks, ruining the interior.

There were excellent historical preservation and restoration efforts put into place once the army left and they were able to recreate things like the ceiling of the great hall (made of 350 Scottish oak trees held in place with wood pins rather than nails) based on exact architectural surveys completed in the days of old. even more impressively to me is that they spent ~10 years commissioning a new set of castle tapestries to be woven! from 2003-2014! The new tapestries are in the style of a set of old tapestries about the Hunt of a Unicorn but it took a team of weavers years to research, plan, and design the tapestries and then years to actually weave them. They are hanging in the beautiful Queens apartment in the castle. The Queen who lived in the castle was Mary of Guise. Her husband, James V, died just as the castle was completed so he never lived in the rooms intended for him, and they were kept empty at Mary’s request. But her chambers have been recreated, complete with actors sharing information about the past of the rooms. In the outer rooms, a servant girl was embroidering a scene of a black child being presented to the king. While there was limited diversity in Scotland in the 1500s, there is evidence that a woman was paid for a presentation of a non-white “moorish” child to the king, meaning it was noteworthy at the time to see any people in the court with skin colors other than white. In the next room, a lady of the court discussed the history of the tapestries in the room, and in the last room, a man dressed as a guard demonstrated the use of his giant claymore sword/ axe thing. He was fun to listen to, had a seriously strong Scottish accent and even spoke some Gaelic; the first I have heard this trip! He also spoke French to a couple on the tour and still had a Scottish accent while speaking French 😂

the view from the castle was incredible as well, all around, I had a lovely time. I considered walking to the Wallace Monument, but unfortunately it was about 2 miles out and not easy to get to on a bus so I decided not to. Instead i ducked into the Church of the Holy Rude (funny name, church wasn’t worth the 4.50 entrance fee. The most interesting touch about the church was that at one point, one of the pastors split with the others on theological grounds, and their solution was to build a wall in the middle of the church dividing up the parishioners and not having to work together. It was finally out back together hundreds of years later in the early 1900s)

Took a leaf out of Grey’s book and looked up google restaurant reviews and ended up with a lovely late lunch at a restaurant in Stirling called Brea. I had a steak burger and a cider and then realized they had my favorite Oban 14 from the chocolate tasting! So I had to get it again. Loved it just as much! Then I realized that I was immediately next door to Brew Dog Stirling! Which I noticed because I was trying to connect to the WiFi and then Brew Dog’s WiFi popped up 😂They didn’t open until 4 so I had 45 minutes to kill. Was in need of a water so ended up accidentally walking through the Stirling mall. Randomly there is a little touristy museum showing the old walls underneath the mall. I had seen the old town cemetery earlier and thought about walking around, but hadn’t realized that I had made it all the way back down the big hill in Stirling and so had to hike all the way back up. But the creepy vibes of the kirkyard cemetary with graves dating back to the late 1500s in the beautiful but gloomy overcast Scottish day was worth the walk. went back down and enjoyed a Brew Dog on dad I told the bartender that Dad was buying my beer and there was a brewdog where I lived and he knew about Columbus haha! Cheers again Dad! 🍻

The next train to Edinburgh was at 5:00 so I walked back to the train station. The Stirling train station is a lovely blue and white decor that I haven’t seen in other train stations here. Enjoyed another walk through town and made it back to my apartment, and had a reservation for the White Hart Inn, across the street from me, the inn was established in 1516! Crazy history. The food was okay but I appreciated eating in the oldest restaurant I have ever been to (by far 😂) back to my apartment for some tea and an early night!

[chloemarievaughan]

May 8

we left our tiny jail cell hotel room bright and early, to take the 7:45 train to Edinburgh, switching trains in Glasgow on the way. the line from Glasgow to Mallaig, which we did in pieces between the Harry Potter route to mallaig and today Fort William to Glasgow, is called the West Highland Line, and it is often voted the best train journey in the UK. Having taken it I can wholeheartedly agree! we had another gorgeous set of views winding back out of the highlands to Glasgow. The downside of the north to south direction of travel was that we got worse views toward the end when we were approaching Glasgow; it felt SO strange to see so many people, houses, roads, and infrastructure after all the relativel sparse populated areas we have been through in the past week. Our reservations for seats were once again facing backwards; grey decided to sit in our seats but I jumped around a bit to take pictures based on the views. However our train was very full so there weren’t too many options for switching sides, and eventually the only seat on the good side for the views was directly next to a heater so I understood why it was still open 😂 we changed trains in Glasgow, very painless as we got off one train and 5 minutes later were on the next train, and made it to Edinburgh about 1:00. It was a 5 hour train journey that covered only about 130 miles, so definitely our train was not going very fast. But that gave us more time to soak in the views. One of the highlights of the ride was the “Horseshoe Curve” where the train makes a very tight u shaped curve around a valley.

By the time we made it to Edinburgh, we were ravenous; no trolley lady selling snacks in this train, though there was a bathroom on board. we had a ~20 minute walk to our air bnb and if I thought the walk to our air bnb was hilly in Inverness, i was sorely mistaken. Edinburgh is Crazy hilly and it was unpleasant to lug our suitcases along, though I enjoyed the walk as we took in the sheer numbers of people out and about. Grey was feeling a bit claustrophobic- way too many people for an introvert haha.

I love traveling in Europe because each city has such a unique look; there is something so Edinburgh about the sort of dirty stone building with the castle looming overhead, and buskers playing the bagpipes as you walk along the street. Our air bnb has a direct view of the castle! It’s nice to have a lot of space again after our hotel in Fort William. This is Grey’s last day of the trip before he flies back to Denver tomorrow, so he has just one afternoon/evening to get a little taste of Edinburgh.

We tried to drop off our bags in the air bnb , but there was no key in the lockbox. So we headed to a pub across the way and Grey enjoyed his last fish and chips of the trip and I had a very good steak sandwich and a beer. Our airbnb host messaged back that the cleaning lady was still working on our flat but we could be buzzed into the locked door by the cleaning crew to drop our bags. So we did that and then had a walk around for about an hour, taking in the sights. We went into St Giles Cathedral, and another church that had been converted into an art store, and went in a few whisky stores. Grey found a bottle of the Talisker 18 year he loved but it was a bit out of his price range at £195 haha. We had 3:00 tickets to the castle and in retrospect should have bought the audio guide, but we made do with walking around and looking at the exhibits. There are great views of the city from the castle walls, we learned about the 1 o’clock gun; in the old days, time keeping was difficult and so every day at 1:00 a gun was fired to let everyone in Edinburgh and all the ships in the harbor know what time it was. It is still fired today, for more ceremonius purposes as I think we have more accurate time keeping methods now haha. there is a residence where the governor of the castle used to live, a great hall stuffed with armor and old swords, a war memorial where I obliviously took a photo and got a scolding from a security guard because it is forbidden to take photos in there, a museum about Scottish war history with tons of artifacts, and an extremely long line to view the Scottish Crown Jewels. grey was not down to wait in the line and I didn’t mind missing it, so we googled the photo of the jewels and read a little exhibit about it. They were gifts from the pope in about the year 1500, and were used to crown two literal babies, Mary Queen of Scots who was days old, and James the IV? James the Somethingth who was under a year when he became King. They put the crown on the baby and put the lscepter in their tiny hand. Reportedly Mary screamed through her whole coronation.

once we were done with the castle (it was okay, I don’t see how we could have NOT gone there with it being visible from our window haha) we relaxed for a bit in the apartment, Grey checked in for his flight, and we had dinner reservations at 6:45 at the Whiski Rooms . We finally had some DElLICIOUS Scottish food; Grey had venison, which he had been wanting for the past few days after all our tour guides kept talking about the game and hunting lodges in the Highlands. I had braised lamb shoulder which was excellent but did make me feel somewhat guilty later when looking at all the lamb photos we took this trip 😬 and we both did a whisky flight. Grey did a staff pick selection and I did a “whisky regions” selection with one whisky each from the Highlands, Islands, Lowlands, and Speyside. Unsurprisingly I didn’t like the peaty Islay one and I liked the Highlands one the best- it was more similar to the Oban 14 that I liked the best still of all the ones I’ve tasted or the Ben Nevis ones.

we enjoyed another sticky toffee pudding: grey was a fan of the hot salted caramel sauce that came on the side so you could perfectly drip the exact ratio of caramel sauce on each bite. We headed home for a nightcap of the Tomatin 18 we had bought a little airplane bottle of at the Tomatin tour (best Tomatin we tried) and enjoyed the view of the castle lit up at night. tomorrow Grey is flying home to Denver and I have two more days to fill near Edinburgh. I have some fun things planned but Will miss having someone who cares about reading restaurant reviews to find us the best places to eat- I’m more of a “let’s eat in the place next door” convenience traveler 😂 there’s no one I would rather ride trains, drink whisky, and explore the Highlands with than Grey!! love you! :)

[chloemarievaughan]

May 7

Grey and I have planned to separate today- He is going to attempt Ben Nevis, the highest peak in the United Kingdom, with the caveat that the peak of Ben Nevis is often cloud covered with no visibility, and he may turn back early if it doesn’t feel worth the hike for no view. It’s a 7-9 hour round trip hike, not to mention a bit of a walk back into Fort William. One would think there would be a more direct bus line to the foot of the mountain but I guess not, but grey did hop on a bus that at least took him closer to the mountain to start off the day!

I have no interest in hiking the highest mountain in the UK, so I found a more touristy mountain option. Nevis Range is a ski slope nearby with a convenient Gondola taking you from the bottom of the mountain to about 2100 ft up. Then, there are two hikes, about an hour round trip and about 40 minutes round trip. With the bus timing, I left at about the same time as grey, but we took two different buses. This was very convenient because the bus picked me up directly in front of my hotel and dropped me at exactly the ski resort; I was only stressing a bit when the bus was 10 minutes late and I had been waiting at the stop for about 30 minutes to be sure I wouldn’t miss it 😂 made it without incident though. unless you count waiting in line for an unneccesarily long line to buy a gondola ticket. There were a bunch of mountain bikers going up the gondola who had to fill out a long waiver, and instead of letting people who were not mountain biking buy a ticket quickly or having two lines, I had to wait for multiple people ahead of me to fill out their waivers painfully slowly 😂

I paid $30 for my Gondola ticket which was so fun. I love taking weird transportation and I got to float in the air above the hills almost to the top of Aonach Mor, the 8th highest mountain in the UK! It was also hard to take pictures through the gondola windows, which were both dirty and appeared to be scratched by people carrying their skis up 😂In ski season, they have a chairlift going up to the actual top, but in the summer, you just go mostly up. And I had a good amount of time to kill so I took my time savoring the view. There were a bunch of mountain bikers going down the mountqin; they could attach their bikes to the outside of the gondola to go up!

The hour long hike I did first and it was the “flat” one; it was only flat in comparison to the other hike. Clearly the makers of the trail have never seen what “flat” means in Ohio lol. I stopped and took pictures, wandered, touched the water coming down in a babbling brook (not as cold as I was expecting!). After the first hike, which was pretty much just me and the less than 10 other people I passed on the trail, I stopped at the ski lodge cafe for some tea and cake, and then wandered out for the second hike drinking my tea. This one was short and much less flat, and way more people had made it up the mountain by this point, including a ton of people with dogs. Some very tiny chihuahua type dogs were walking on the hike 😂 I assume they were mostly being carried though. . I sat at the scenic overlook for about an hour, soaking in the view from different angles. I wore my warmer jacket and my rain coat overtop, but didn’t get too cold until I was sitting down for a while. Went back to the little cafe and had a cheese and mushroom melt and some sparkling water, and then it was time to make my descent. Got a message from grey as I was heading down that he made it to the top of Ben Nevis! One of the many mountains I could see from the top of my view was apparently Ben Nevis but honestly I could not tell which one lol 😂 As advertised, it was snow covered with no good view from the top, but Grey couldn’t resist. Also, no wonder I always feel like he is walking so fast; he made it to the top in 3 hours and 15 minutes when it often takes people 5+ hours to summit!

once I made it down the gondola (this one had an open window! So I got one dirty window free picture on the way down haha) I had about 20 minutes until my bus came. Due to some construction it wasn’t super clear where the actual bus stop was, but then a couple minutes before the bus was due I realized a large crowd had gathered to go back to town so that made it easier to find 😂 Instead of riding all the way back, I hopped off the bus at Ben Nevis Distillery. I was hoping for a tour, but they are sold out the next few days and it was more spur of the moment because I saw it from my window on the way there. I enjoyed both the whiskies I tried, but have no idea which was which 😂 I *think* what I tried was the Coire Leis and the Dew of the Nevis Supreme; I liked the supreme better. But I had a confusing situation when I ordered and am Not totally sure if that’s actually the ones I was trying lolol. After the distillery I had the option of a 50 minute walk back into town or waiting for the bus so I waited for the bus. I wasn’t sure if I had to pay because I got off the bus early on my return ticket, but the bus driver was the same one from earlier and he remembered me and let me ride the rest of my return ride to the hotel for free. Grey had beat me back to Fort William and we both took lovely showers and then went out for dinner. Did not really enjoy my seafood dinner which was disappointing as there are a lot of rivers and lakes and oceans in the vicinity so should have been better! Grey and I have an early train tomorrow (leaving 7:45 am for a 5 hour journey to Edinburgh!)

[chloemarievaughan]

May 6

today we left Inverness for fort William! While the two places are not very far apart, they aren’t connected by trajn: taking the train would be an estimated 10 hours with multiple changes. A bit much even for train lovers like Grey and I!

There is a fairly cheap bus that connects the two. It’s a pretty straight line along Loch Ness, where we had already driven and boated past. When we got on board, the driver warned us that the Road Æwas winding and if we were bad travelers, to sit in the back near the on board toilets. As a seasoned pro of Scottish bus tours now, I figured I wouldn’t have any issues, but the heat was blasting and I was horribly carsick the whole time 😂

Tried my best to appreciate the scenery even with feeling terrible- even snapped one or two pictures, but was very glad to get off the bus 2 hours later 😂 Fort William, our next stop, is a small mountain town (population of the town including surrounding villages: about 5000). It was MUCH harder to find a good hotel/ air bnb here, probably not helped by the fact that again it’s a three day weekend in Scotland so people were visiting Fort William, which is something of a Mecca for hikers and outdoor enthusiasts. the highest mountain in the UK, Ben Nevis, is nearby; there is also a hike called the Great Glen way which follows the opposite of the bus we took yesterday, from Fort William to Inverness. it’s a 74 mile hike and fort William is the start. There are also lots of hiking trails, and in winter, skiing.

We arrive at about 11, dropped our bags at the hotel (the luggage storage closet was absolutely Packed with other travelers presumably doing the same thing. we then went to lunch at a local pub (grey had some fish and chips, I had a ham and cheese toastie and some lentil soup, drank some coke and sparkling water and fully recovered from my car sickness. we had some time to kill, so made an unexpected but lovely stop at the West Highland museum. It is a free museum on the main street of Fort William (there really is only one street in Fort William 😂) and it had a cool collection of random donated historical items found through the highlands, touching on again the Rising and Bonnie Prince Charlie, to earlier development of the area, to the nature and geology, to World War II and the local Commando military training grounds. we next ducked into a grocery store for some snacks and then sat in a park for a bit before we were able to actually check into our hotel.

Our hotel was called the Garrison and the rooms are inside of old jail cells complete with the hallways having the jail cell doors 😂 we have the tiniest room I have ever seen and a bunk bed; Grey has the bottom and cannot sit up fully, and I have the top with a window. We have a private shower but it’s out in the hallway haha. Grey and I thought the gimmick was funny but we are also glad we are only here for two nights we have no space at all 😂

we had been planning this day to ride the Jacobite Steam Train, otherwise known as the Harry Potter Hogwarts Express shown in the movie. I had first class seats booked including a tea service, and was looking forward to the fancy steam train. However, about a month ago I got an email that the train company was being forced to shut down operations because the locking mechanisms on their door are not up to code with the Scottish rail system laws, and it’s a safety hazard. This had been a known issue for about ten years, with both sides suing each other and the West Coast Railways getting an exemption each year to continue running. Well, of course, this year they did not grant the exemption. I had hopes it would be fixed by the time we came to ride, but alas, they were only operating on reduced capacity (only the carriages that met the safety standard I suppose) and so our booking was cancelled.

however, the normal trains still run between fort William and Mallaig, and instead of a $150 round trip ticket, grey and I were able to ride round trip for about $20 bucks- the view on this ride might have made this the best $20 I ever spent!

We were scheduled for the 4:00 train to Mallaig, and so made time for a quick pub pit stop to try a locally made whisky, the Ben Nevis distillery. Both of us thought it was pretty solid!

In Europe, you can usually drink on trains; not in Scotland which was too bad. we caught a glimpse of the returning steam train we were supposed to take and then headed out. It was a little bit hard to take pictures because our windows were dirty, but the pictures I did manage were still incredible. But nothing compares to the view in person!

in Mallaig, we had a 20 minute stop, just enough time to use the restroom and buy a little iced gingerbread cake from the stall by the station, and to take a picture of the ocean (directly across the water was the Isle of Skye again!) on the way to Mallaig, we sat on the left side for the best views, including a picturesque turn over the Glenfinnan Viaduct. We could see tourists down below taking pictures of our train going across! we passed by very tiny train stations, including the most westerly train station in Scotland. It was wonderful and I took loads of pictures on the way out. The train is a one track line, so the same train goes out and back all day for about an hour and a half journey. On the way back, I decided not to take more pictures since it was the same view and soaked it all in, noticing some details I missed out the way out and seeing more wildlife, including deer and herons and noticing the bluebells in the woods starting to bloom. And of course more sheep and cows :) Again, best 20 dollars I’ve ever spent- didn’t much feel like I missed out on much of anything by not riding the Harry Potter train!

we stopped for dinner at a Scottish brewery and I tried some of their beer? Enjoyed the cider and thought the Red Ale Nitro was interesting but not my new fave. We had a 45 minute wait for the wood fired pizza with venison but it was very tasty. This ended up being the latest we have been out all trip, heading back to the room at about 9:30. Our days have been full and we are tired by the end haha! tomorrow, we have plans for some separate hikes in the mountains! Can’t wait!

[chloemarievaughan]

May 5

When I was tour planning I really had three days worth of tour bus worthy itineraries in a row… but a combined ~30 hours on a tour bus seemed like it was pushing it a little bit and I like doing things more independently too, so I decided to venture out on our own at least for part of the day for one of our main attractions, a visit to Culloden battlefield, and booked a half day tour for a boat trip to look for Nessie on Loch Ness!

Turned out I should have sucked it up and done a third full day bus tour. I should have known better but we did make it work and it was fine- but would have done the same itinerary cheaper and easier on a full day tour 😂

my first mistake was that it is a Sunday and unbeknownst to me, the bus that goes directly from the city center of Inverness to the Culloden battlefield museum was not scheduled to run on a Sunday. I realized this in the morning before we left, so we decided to get breakfast and then get an Uber to the battlefield- about a 15 minute drive. Grey enjoyed a more relaxed start to the day, getting some pancakes and bacon. I’ve been eating breakfast provided by our landlady; she left instant porridge, cereal, and yogurt, milk and eggs for us to eat breakfast in the air bnb! And enjoying my Starbucks Via of course. well uber didn’t pan out; while Uber exists in Inverness, it Just started and there weren’t any drivers available. tried to sign up for a taxi app, it was a no go because you had to have a UK phone number to book one. And same thing with booking the taxi on their website. Luckily grey realized we were eating breakfast directly across the street from the taxi depot so we walked in and told the guy we wanted a taxi to Culloden and it was super easy.

Our taxi driver was a garrulous Eastern European man who was a lot of fun, joking about how if Culloden battle had gone differently then it would be required for all men visiting Scotland to wear kilts and joking that the people of Scotland don’t know what the sun is. Dropped us off and we bought a ticket for the museum and tour of the battlefield at Culloden.

Culloden was the site of the last major battle fought on British soil in April 1746. the supporters of the Stuart claim to the throne, including Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobites, made their last stand against the government in power, the Hanovers and King George and the Duke of Cumberland. The Jacobites lost the battle (1500 men died in less than an hour total battle), and then as a consequence, the Scottish culture (wearing kilts, playing bagpipes, speaking Gaelic, etc) was prohibited and the culture of Scotland was forever changed. It was a very nicely done museum, taking about an hour to walk through and then a 40 minute walking tour of the battlefield itself. The museum had two sides of the hallway throughout, one side telling the Jacobite side and one side telling the Government side. There was a movie room with projectors showing the view from all angles of the Culloden moor and how the battle went.

The tour walked out on the battlefield and went into more detail about where the people actually were standing, putting it into a cool context, and then the future consequences of the battle. The leader of the Jacobites, Bonnie Prince Charlie, escaped from hiding by disguising himself as a lady’s maid and getting on a ship out of Scotland.

Our tour guide was also named Chloe and she was Australian.

Then we grabbed a bite to eat from the cafe at the museum. We enjoyed a Culloden beer and a hot sausage roll and potato leek soup. we planned to save some money and try to take the bus back to Inverness, but again, the convenient bus stop was not running because it was a Sunday. It seemed like a less convenient bus would work but it required like a 30 minute walk to the nearby town, so we set out to walk. It was a nice walk through a wooded path beside the road and then past farms and into the cute village of Balloch; but as I was walking I realized that my backup bus option was Also closed on Sundays. The backup backup bus option was running on Sundays but only once hourly and waiting would mean we missed the bus to Loch Ness 😬 So I was getting stressed about how to get back to Inverness because while I had the phone number for the taxi company I couldn’t figure out the address for any of the houses we were passing 😂 another 17 minute walk away ( we had already walked 35 minutes at this point) was the Balloch village town hall which had an easily findable address. So I called the taxi depot and dispatched a taxi to meet us at the town hall and then we speed walked over there to meet the taxi, grey unbothered and me stressing about the idea of missing the Loch Ness cruise. But we made it to the taxi without further incident and then arrived back to Inverness like an hour before we needed to be back. Stupid public transportation! And honestly, we did have a lovely walk. Also our 50 minute walk saved a grand total of £3 😂

Once we made it back to Inverness (with plenary of time to spare. Like an hour lolol) we sat at the river again for a while before coming to our bus, which took us to an hour long cruise of Loch Ness, an hour to explore the ruins of Urquhart Castle, and an hour scenic drive through the mountains on the way back to Inverness. I thought the tour bus drivers on the previous two days had a lot of fun facts, but this woman Linda did not cease speaking for the entire time we were on the bus. She knew the broader historical facts about the cities and scenery, but seemingly also had a fun fact to share about every single house, farm, and restaurant we drove past. I’m not sure how she even had time to breathe she talked so much 😂

She dropped us off at Dochgarroch, where we boarded the boat for our tour of Loch Ness. We sailed something like 23 miles over our hour long ride and it was magical. We have been driving past plenty of similar views, but not all the waterways we have been seeing are navigable by boat. the water at Loch Ness is about 700 ft deep at its deepest. According to the boat captain, the water in Loch Ness is 42 degrees year round; it never freezes over or gets any warmer. There also is no visibility whatsoever; the water is black from the peaty soil of the loch, and while people have tried to take submarines down to search for Nessie, you have no visibility at all after about 6 feet down. We learned about the variety of societies and organizations that have been devoted to finding Nessie or disproving Nessie. Out on the loch with the cold Windle blowing off the water, an eerie mist surrounding us from the incoming rain, it was easy to feel an unsettling chill in the air: no wonder people felt they saw things in the water 😂 it did eventually start to rain, coming down in big raindrops that immediately proved that my rain coat was more water resistant than water proof, and getting us both fairly wet. the majority of people who had started the cruise sitting upstairs with us enjoying the view and breeze moved downstairs to the indoor part of the boat. grey and I scooted under an overhang where we could enjoy the view without getting wet. The “Highlander hot chocolates” we both enjoyed , which had a generous addition of whisky, definitely helped us warm up from the chill!

Once we landed at Urquhart castle, the light continued rain seemed the idyllic way to spend the afternoon traipsing around the stone ruins of a castle in the Scottish Highlands. the old outlines of the walls are the only thing left from the castle built in the 13th century with various additions through the years, but some parts you could still climb to the top or take a peek down into the dungeons. Par for the course I about wiped out slipping on the wet stone but no injuries except my dignity. It was funny to watch people sheltering from the rain in castle walls built 700 years ago, and think how many other people have sheltered from the rain in that time.

we made it back to Inverness after another solid hour of fun facts from Linda the bus driver. I had been reading about some options for our last night in Inverness, and one option was the Uile-bheist distillery. They have tours, and we were considering this until we learned more and realized it is a brand new distillery; they are still in the process of aging their whisky to be good to drink. The tour walks you through the history of creating the distillery and you can taste some of their blends they have crafted with other distilleries whiskies. Maybe next time we visit Inverness haha. The other option, which I was worried wouldn’t quite work out, is called the Malt Room. It is a tiny little bar seating only about 15-20 people, with an astounding collection of over 350 whiskies. however, our timing on this was PERFECT! We walked in just as someone was leaving and were able to grab a sofa. We each did a tasting of three whiskies. Greys was called “Island Life” and was Scapa 16 year, Talisker 18 year, and Ledaig 18 year. mine was called the CHOCOLATE flight: a match made in heaven! And it was a pairing of three whiskies each with an associated locally made chocolate from a fancy chocolatier! I was in heaven it was delicious. And what do you know, your bourbon girl actually does like Scotch! (Especially paired with chocolate! And not any of the Scotches Grey likes lolol) also, in an absolute MIRACLE of miracles, my sense of smell came back just in time for this tasting 😭 scotch has a sort of toffee smell that is very dissimilar to bourbon, along with of course the peaty smell on the peatier ones. I asked grey to describe his tasting to me so I could put it on this post but really all I could get out of him was that the Talisker 18 is now his top Scotch he has ever tried (that is Distilled on Skye! I had the Talisker 10 year yesterday. It was not my favorite ever though). Of my three scotches, I liked the Oban 14 year best (paired with a dark chocolate caramel truffle) and also enjoyed the Kilchoman Sanaig (paired with a cappuccino chocolate swirl). I was not much of a fan of the Tomatin 14 (paired with a chocolate with a red currant filling). Grey and I had fun touring Tomatin, but ultimately neither of us liked the flavors of their whisky. I actually liked the Oban 14 even when I wasn’t pairing it with the chocolate.

After our tasting, we ducked next store into the associated whisky shop and enjoyed chatting with the proprietor. Grey bought two bottles; one, he was chatting with another customer and we overheard the story. During a bottling, A distiller accidentally mixed Macallan 12 year- which is like a 80-90 dollar bottle of scotch with other 6 year blends that he was mixing, basically ruining the batch. But someone enterprising decided to bottle and sell that mistake and grey had to buy it when he heard the background 😂 and then grey also bought a store pick that the proprietor did at the Talisker distillery, of “Old Particular”. Grey was such a fan of the other Talisker! So looks like I’m gonna have to visit Denver to try greys Scotch haha.

We finished off the night with a Turkish restaurant where we by far had the most delicious meal of our trip! Lamb kebabs, couscous and pilaf, it was incredible. Made it back to the air bnb and again immediately went to bed! Another incredible day in Scotland- and we are going to be sad to leave Inverness! Such a great base for our exploration of the region.

[chloemarievaughan]

May 4

Today we had another bus tour booked, this time, to the Isle of Skye! One of the things I was looking forward to the most about this trip. Skye is not very easily accessible, especially without a car; I considered staying on the island but there isn’t much public transportation and so again a bus tour was the best option! It is not really very close to Inverness making it a 12 hour round trip bus trip to get there. Again, thoroughly justifying my decision not to drive in Scotland because the roads were terrifying, one lane mountain roads with two way traffic covered in potholes with our bus driver flying through with ease.

Our bus driver (larger tour this time, about 30 people and a bus rather than a van) was not Scottish, he was from Lancashire and had an accent reminiscent of the Starks from Game of Thrones or Jamie Tartt from Ted Lasso. He was a grumpy old man but full of facts about the places we were passing. I thought yesterday’s drive was beautiful but I was blown away by the majestic scenery we passed today! (Grey and I each took over 400 pictures of the day! The most scenic day of my life! It was again hard to actually take photos that did the scenery justice; once I noticed something picture worthy immediately we went behind a tree blocking the view, or another car, etc. so I did end up deleting quite a few photos 😂) Grey and I started sitting together but the seats directly across the aisle were empty and so he bumped across the way, which worked out well because usually one of us had a better angle for photos than the other, one side usually being up the mountain and the other down the mountain. we had a brief morning stop to take a ~20 minute hike to a waterfall and another brief stop where I had a delicious raspberry jam and coconut cake and ginger tea with an incredible view of the farmland hills. Yesterday I dressed too warmly; today I may have gone a bit farther the other way and been not quite warm enough, but I would way rather be cold than hot! I warmed up plenty when walking around. there is a very annoying woman on the tour who has been talking non stop to the bus driver for hours of the day. She is the only person who answers when the tour guide asks a question and the grumpy tour guide driver also seems to be very annoyed by her. At breakfast she was loudly chatting with a Scottish couple who lived locally and complaining about the low level of education in the US and how most people where she lives in Las Vegas don’t have bachelors degrees. I’m not sure how likely it is that the sheep farmers she was complaining to have bachelors degrees… but also why spend time complaining about this when you could be talking to the lovely local Scottish couple about literally any other topic lolol.

we stopped at a scenic overlook in the mountains of one of the lochs, which was scenic but was not actually a great place to take a picture because the trees next to the overlook were way too tall!

I learned that loch sometimes means lake but more accurately means body of water- something like 20 % of the lochs are fed by the ocean and aren’t a proper lake. Other things I learned as fun facts from the driver: the isle of Skye, our destination, was expecting 300 million dollars of tourism in 2024. It’s may 4th and they have already surpassed that! He told us about the history of developing the roads and trains through the wilderness of the highlands, including the bridge to Skye. They used to only have a ferry able to take two cars at a time across the water, and then would up with a bridge charging crazy tolls that had to be purchased by the government due to all the protests of the tolls.

Every single bend we went around on the road to Skye and then on Skye and on the way home from Skye was more scenic and picture worthy than the last! It was magical! We went to lunch at Portree which is the biggest town on Skye, overlooking a harbor with colorful houses and filled with touristy shops and restaurants. then we went to hike the Fairy Pools- which has surpassed my previous favorite hike I did in Colorado last summer while visiting Grey as the best hike I’ve ever done! We had 1.5 hours to hike a 3 mile out and back that was down a mountain, up a mountain, back down the mountain, and back up the mountain, all following along a winding mountain river with rock fixtures and waterfalls and plenty of mountainous photo opportunities to boot. One of us had an easier time on this hike than the other; let’s say the one who lives in Denver at a mile elevation and regularly climbs mountains had an easier hike than the one with the sinus infection lol. So I powerwalked on the out part of the hike, planning to go slower on the way back, taking in the view. It was a bit difficult to tell when to stop hiking, but I made it to a waterfall that is the picture when you google “fairy pools” so I figured, good enough! Grey made it much farther but just decided when to turn around based on timing. The trail continued on but was less and less maintained and more and more rocky. We headed back, and I felt like I was dyingI on the last little climb back up the mountain and had to keep stopping very out of breath to enjoy the scenery and recover. Made it back to the top with 9 minutes to spare and enjoyed looking back on the whole hike!

We then stopped at a memorial for the two Scottish men who did most of the surveying and mapping of the mountains on Skye. They have a statue of themselves gazing upward, forever facing the beautiful mountains they once explored. Next to their memorial was a restaurant where Grey and I enjoyed some more whisky- grey asked for the “peatiest scotch they had” and I had a whisky distilled on Skye, a Talisker 10 year. It started to sprinkle just a little bit on the way back, so I couldn’t take pictures for a while out the window but still was able to soak in the view. Last stop of the day was a picture stop at Eilean Donan castle, which juts out on a loch with a great view. It is sort of the ruins of a castle and looks how I would imagine Hogwarts is supposed to look to muggles 😂😂

the last bit we wound down the mountain past more incredibly beautiful mountains and back to Inverness past Loch Ness- we are going back to Loch Ness tomorrow. We had dinner at a random restaurant taking reservations (it is a bank holiday this weekend so people don’t work Monday, and the restaurants are pretty full) it was okay but we were both exhausted so ate super quickly to make it back to the air bnb to pass out!

[chloemarievaughan]

May 3

I got a solid 12 hours of sleep last night after yesterday’s exhausting travel day. On the agenda for the day was a bus tour of Cairngorms national park and a whisky distillery tour at Tomatin Distillery! When Grey and I discussed our trip, we were both in theory okay with renting a car and figuring out driving on the wrong side of the road, but there are a lot more winding hilly one lane road type of driving here than easy highway driving and so I wanted to see if I could plan a reasonable trip without a car. when I went to Europe in 2015, I did several bus tours- went to Luxembourg, the Sleeping Beauty Castle, and Salzburg, and had a great time on all of them. Mom and I didn’t do any bus tours on our trip because we were doing more cities and towns that we wanted to see lots of things close together/ easily accessible. In Scotland, especially in the highlands, many of the best things aren’t in a city but are dotted around the countryside and so bus tours were the way to go for some of our destinations this trip!

This tour was a small group tour on a van that sat 16 people and then the driver. Grey and I showed up 8 minutes early, but we were supposed to be 15 minutes early: so we didn’t get to sit together. Grey was all the way at the back and I sat in the very front directly next to the driver. grey the introvert was very happy he didn’t have to make small talk with the driver but I had a great time chatting with James our tour guide and had the best view on the bus from right up front.

First stop of the day was Carrbridge which was a little town with a very old stone bridge. You cannot walk on the stone bridge and it looks like a good shove would knock it over like a Jenga tower. While we got some good pictures, what you cannot see in the pictures is that the Bridge is Immediately next to a gas station, making it feel significantly less scenic. We walked around the town for a few minutes and I got some ginger tea, and then got back into the van.

The drive itself was back in the direction we had come into Inverness on the train; our driver added some facts about the glens and lochs we were passing and the plants and trees we were seeing, along with other colorful facts about the towns- one town has an annual porridge competition, another has a wood carving competition. He told us about how we were lucky to come at this time because it was lambing season and all the sheep that we were driving past had adorable baby lambs alongside! We also saw more horses and cows, including the famous Highland Cows that are everywhere and we stopped for a quick photo op. He asked where I was from and I said Columbus Ohio, and he said “oh like Jack Nicklaus!” 😂 he said he had been to the states but only the coasts and never the middle. I told him we don’t really get tourists in Columbus Ohio but he didn’t really seem to understand what that meant haha.

Our next stop was Loch Morlich, (loch= lake and glen= valley), but first we snaked up the mountainside to take some very scenic overlook pictures of the valley. we had about an hour to walk around the forest near the shore of the lake. There was a beach and people were enjoying the sunshine and water activities, paddle boarding, kayaking, and fishing, but overall it was less crowded than I imagine it would get later in the summer!

Back to the bus and then we stopped in Aviemore, a tourist town with lots of shopping and restaurants. We had some fish and chips and went in some souvenir shops- I found a sweatshirt with a Highland Cow on it that was on sale for 10 pounds, (converted to dollars that’s $12.40!)! I will be sleeping in that the rest of the trip :)

After lunch we were off to our distillery tour at Tomatin Distillery! I have been to many bourbon distilleries in the states and always enjoy how they focus on different things. We got an overview of the history of Scotch- which they pretty much exclusively call whisky when talking about it. Per our tour, it’s interchangeable scotch vs whisky, but always “whisky” without the e, never whiskey :) there are 5 different regions and they all have different flavor focuses. In the highlands, the whisky is less peaty, unlike the Islay region where it is Very strongly peaty. grey is a Laphroaig fan which is an Islay style whisky, but I’m more of a bourbon girl myself so I was okay with less peat. Peat is kind of like coal, it’s fuel for the fires that they burned in the distilling process, but you can burn other things than peat and not infuse the mixture with the smoky peat flavor In this tour there were certain areas that you were forbidden to take pictures- they said it was due to being concerned about electronics causing a spark? Not sure how that would work exactly but she repeated that several times.

The tasting was fun- we tasting three different bottles. One was Tomatin Legacy, one was a Tomatin 12 year aged, and one was Tomatin cu bocan which was peaty, but very lightly peated. I still cannot smell due to my sinus infection so I can’t say how accurate my tasting ability was without my sense of smell but the legacy was a bit hotter, the 12 year smoother and the Cu Bocan was my favorite with the light peat flavor. Per grey who is more into scotch, he thought the cu bocan needed to age more to be smoother.

To wrap up the bus tour, we stopped by Clava Cairns, which is a standing stone built about three thousand years ago. If you have read outlander, it is what craigh na dun is inspired by; (a magical stonehenge type rock formation that allows time traveling WWII nurse to fall in love with a Scottish warrior in a kilt and then they become improbably entangled in political events in Scotland, France, and then America in the 1700s). There were many outlander themed bus tours but while some of them went to cool locations, I was not about to put Grey through a whole day of outlander fans 😂 it was not a scheduled stop on our trip but was a “secret” added stop since we had enough time at the end of the day! It was in a gorgeous valley and well worth the quick stop even for non fans of the show, but it also was more or less just a pile of rocks haha. But a Cool pile of rocks!

after the tour we had reservations at a place along the river (enjoyed Scottish mussels, Scottish cider, a Rob Roy scotch cocktail and a Toffee Pudding with ice cream for dessert! Didn’t enjoy my chicken main course 😂) and then we meandered back to our air bnb, enjoying what may be our last sunshine for the rest of the trip. found a way that did not involve all the stairs! We put a load of laundry in which we have to hang dry and went off to bed!!

Another bus tour tomorrow!

[chloemarievaughan]

Scotland with Grey- Trains, the Highlands, and Whisky! May 1-2

I asked Grey earlier this year if he would be interested in doing a trip with me somewhere… without any hesitation he immediately said, “Scotland!” And so I planned our next adventure! I did the lions share of the planning as I enjoy planning my Europe trips, but to check with grey about my planned itinerary, I texted him “shall I assume your Scotland requests are: trains, the highlands, and whisky haha” And he replied “💯” and so that is much the theme of our trip :)

Grey is living in Denver now, and so I looked for flights for us with the same layover so we would arrive in Edinburgh together. there was only one option; we would meet up in the toronto airport. The downside was that I was planned to have a 5 hour layover which is definitely on the longer end. So I bought our tickets and then not two weeks later my flight was rescheduled to an EIGHT hour layover which was pretty excessive. I got pretty familiar with the international departures terminal at the Toronto airport, spent time walking laps back and forth, sitting in a variety of chairs for about 45 minutes each. I did get one short nap in which I imagine looked odd laying my head on the table where I was sitting 😂

I am currently getting over a nasty sinus infection and will spare you the gory details but I did drink a lot of tea in the airport, and ate some spicy curry soup for lunch in the hopes it would clear my nose. I also brought the 4th Harry Potter book in French that i am STILL trying to finish- but I read French way slower than English so I would probably finish most English books in 8 hours. I did read like 200 pages of the book over the long day and some on the plane!

Grey showed up after I had been in the airport for about 5.5 hours, by which time I knew all of the best places to sit and the variety of dining options and art installations in the terminal, so we found some dinner and then it was time to board the plane! For some reason, my ticket would NOT let me choose a seat but grey was able to: so he elected to sit next to me, even sacrificing to sit in the middle seat. The Toronto to Edinburgh flight is Very short for an international flight, under 7 total hours. This doesn’t leave much time to actually sleep. Grey and I strategized this oppositely; Grey has a two hour longer time difference to Edinburgh than I do, and so he was essentially planning to push through the flight, sleep a bit on the train the next morning, but more or less doing an all nighter. I need my beauty sleep so I planned to close my eyes the instant the meal was served and keep them closed for 4 hours until breakfast was being served. I am not sure how much I actually slept- thanks to two crying babies that seemed to be keeping each other awake all night on and off, and one crying would usually set off the other one. but Grey only slept for about 30 minutes. Getting off the plane in Edinburgh made me glad we weren’t meeting in the Edinburgh airport- lots more to distract you in the Toronto airport. We then took the tram to the Haymarket train station about a 25 minute ride away and had another wait for our train which left at 10:37 to Inverness. The train left at 8:37 or 10:37, but 8:37 seemed like too tight a connection so I booked the later train. We would have made it in plenty of time, so had to kill like 2.5 hours: went to a little Turkish cafe for breakfast- had some excellent avocado toast, grey had a traditional English breakfast, and I had some delicious lemongrass ginger tea. I was testing a theory about the timing of my caffeine consumption on adjusting to the time difference so I didn’t have coffee on the plane, waiting until about 9:30 am. We went to a cafe next to the Turkish place that had cozy armchairs and Delicious filter coffee- usually I don’t like the actual coffee in Europe, preferring to get espressos, but it was very tasty. There were two Giant very friendly dogs wandering the cafe wanting to play fetch and get pet. It was finally time for our train and both grey and I fell immediately asleep the second we sat down. According to our booking, our seats were forward facing, but when we got to the seats they were backward facing and grey was a little motion sick, but surprisingly I was okay with it. Train seats aren’t That comfortable for sleeping but it still was so much better than the plane!

I slept for about the first hour of the four hour train to our first city, Inverness. I woke up and peeked outside and saw spectacular rolling hills and farmland with sheep, horses and cows and I was suddenly full of energy and enjoyed looking out the window and seeing the sights. I bought more tea when the trolley lady went by on the train with her cart. We went into the highlands, seeing the Cairngorms National Park (which we are visiting tomorrow!) past tons of little towns and villages dotting the hills, and there are yellow gorse bushes that are blooming now and dotting the hills. The trees are *just* starting to bud; another week or two it will really be spring.

I sent my friend Bridget a picture of me wearing my trusty sun hat on the plane and she replied “Yay!!!!! :) I love how you have a sun hat for Scotland! Is it supposed to be sunny at all when you’re there??” which the answer is no, it really was not supposed to be sunny. However I would feel incomplete traveling without a sun hat and also this one is a new one I just purchased for $6 on clearance at target because I left my old one on a train in Amsterdam 😂 however, it actually was sunny for our first day here! Not a cloud in the sky sunny! Not usual for Scotland and likely to be rare for the rest of my trip but now my hat is justified :)

We arrived in Inverness and our air bnb was a short walk away. Not obvious from google maps is that it was a short walk straight up a ton of stairs! Though I crammed everything in a carry on, I did not exactly pack lightly; I was definitely out of breath by the top of the stairs!

Our air bnb is a cute tiny apartment on a quiet residential street a few minutes from the city center. There is a bedroom and a pullout couch in the living room, so Grey doesn’t have to endure my snoring from my sinus congestion lol, and a tiny cute kitchen. our air bnb host sent some welcoming messages and left us some treats and small breakfast items and some milk in the fridge for our tea/ cereal which was nice!

After a quick shower- 24 hours of traveling and I felt like a human being again after that shower! And then we went for a walk around Inverness to kill some time before dinner. This was Beautiful- we walked along the river, past churches, parks, flowers, restaurants, and trees, back and forth across some bridges on the river and winding up at some creatively named islands on the River Ness called the Ness Islands. The sun was out and the people of Inverness were all walking their dogs, strolling along the river and out on bikes, but we were walking away from the city so it wasn’t too crowded. Grey is a very brisk walker so we were booking it around the river, a good reason that we have planned to go on separate hikes later in the week haha. The second half of our walk was significantly less scenic; Grey doesn’t like to walk the same way twice, so we tried to walk back along the opposite bank; an unfortunate construction detour meant we walked most of the way back around a large set of soccer fields and past the construction instead of back along the scenic riverwalk. We then made it to our dinner reservation, which was a sort of trendy American restaurant that served interesting cocktails and burgers, and wouldn’t have felt out of place in Columbus. I had my first scotch of the trip in cocktail form, essentially a scotch and soda with apple, and a pretty solid Mac n cheese. The neighboring table ordered a drink that was poured over a cotton candy base to dissolve, and they had a smoked cocktail that looked incredible but I can’t smell out of my nose so I felt it was a waste to buy a fancier drink if I can’t fully taste 😂 grey had a Scottish beer. When we finished there it was only 6:00, so while I didn’t particularly want another drink, we wound up at another bar for a nightcap. The place wasn’t really our style but we were too tired to find someplace better haha, it was kind of frou frou and looked like a great place for happy hour with the girls haha, and all the cocktails were super sweet and fruity. Grey ordered some scotch and I ordered a fruity cocktail that I did NOT enjoy and still could not taste/ smell so grey also drank that one. We made it back to the apartment at 7, got ready for bed, and chatted until we both crashed at about 8 pm, excited for the trip ahead!

[chloemarievaughan]

Winter Weekend in Quebec City!

Sophie and I decided to brush off our dormant French skills, pack all of our warmest sweaters, and jaunt off to Quebec City for a long weekend! there is a Winter Carnaval going on with wintry activities and we plan to keep ourselves busy (and hopefully stay warm) exploring the city for a couple days!

Mom and Dad picked us up for the airport bright and early and Kenny carried Sophie’s suitcase down to the car for her, sadly without Kenny along for the trip Sophie has had to carry her own suitcase the rest of the day but she has borne it like a champ.

Our flight options were somewhat limited so we basically had the option of arriving at 11:30 pm with one layover or arriving at 5:30 pm but with two layovers, so I picked the two layovers and we both have brought along some good reading material for the trip. Interestingly, my backpack got flagged for additional screening while going through TSA- but not due to my portable charger which I assumed was what they were checking. They wanted to look at the physical book in my backpack- which is Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in French, which I have been vaguely planning on reading for like the last 10 years since I read the first three in French. Was hoping the French vibes of Quebec City would inspire me to finally read it, but Who reads physical books anymore, must be suspicious 😂 I just got global entry for the first time and this trip was the first time I used the tsa precheck- the columbus airport is so small that it didn’t save me any time at all. But I did get to keep my shoes on. Currently on our last leg of our flight and our plane has propellers! Which is cute. If you’re reading this post our propeller plane must have made it to our destination!

We are staying in an air b n b in the Old city part of Quebec City, which is a walled former fort from the 1600s. It was snowing when we arrived and we grabbed dinner and then enjoyed a snowy evening walk around the city. The majority of this walk was so cute- winter wonderland vibes, and it was actively snowing an inch or so while we walked around. There is an ice skating rink, parks, a really excessive number of Bronze statues of famous Quebecers (some of which were a bit creepy in the dark covered in snow!) we found the location of a few landmarks we may visit tomorrow. Got very chilly and snow covered by the end of our walk. Sophie has purchased a cheap but cute pink digital camera that takes very poor quality pictures so you all have some excellent images to look forward too 😂

Friday morning was our first full day in Quebec City! Neither Sophie nor I usually eat breakfast first thing, so we planned for a stroll around and then a later breakfast. I wake up a lot earlier than Sophie so I enjoyed my trusty travel Starbucks Via coffee and read my e book for a while until Sophie woke up. Both of us had weird snow hair/ bed head from being out in the snow the night before so it was a good thing it was cold and we could get away with full time hat usage to cover that up! We both packed furry leggings, jeans and fully layered up on the coat and jackets, scarves and gloves. I was not a fan of any of the winter attire I brought with me- all relics of my early high school ski club 😂 so I planned to be on the lookout for some new more fashionable winter accessories while we did some window shopping and found some souvenirs.

Once we suited up for the cold, we took a stroll in The opposite direction from the evening before- first stop was to duck into the Catholic Church in downtown Quebec City. Love a beautiful old church, and there was a museum exhibit in a side room discussing St Francois de Levalle who is an important figure in early Quebec history of the church. Then we did a lot of meandering which is my favorite way to explore a new city- up to the fancy hotel, and back through the streets. Did some souvenir shopping- went in a bunch of weird shops, including like a chapelier- or a hat shop that only sells fancy hats- and an artisanal craft store that somehow sold even fancier hats. Then we went in a home goods type store and I found a cute new significantly less expensive new winter hat that was on clearance. And of course lots of souvenir shops selling various items with Canadian flags on them.

Our top destination on this trip was a bus tour to the ice hotel! The ice hotel is only up in Quebec City in the winter, and melts away in the spring. and it’s not really in the city, it’s like 40 minutes away at a winter village with snow tubing and an indoor water park like Great Wolf Lodge. Easiest way to get there from where we were staying in the walled part of the city was taking a bus tour. The tour times seemed tight to me- a bus there at 12:30 and the bus home at 2:45, but they did have a second bus back at 6:00. but that was really plenty of time to see the ice hotel, there is an ice bar and ice slide inside, but other than peeking in each room, there wasn’t too much to do inside the hotel. we learned that if you book a room to stay in the hotel, they provide -30 degree rated sleeping bags for you and they also book a secondary room inside a real hotel room in case you wimp out and can’t make the whole night. The hotel is a balmy -4 degrees Celsius and the instant we walked inside Sophie said, “I COULD not do it”. the rooms are all artistically rendered snow carvings and the beds are made of ice with a mattress on top. There were

“Cheaper” rooms with no carvings just plain snow walls. There is a bathroom in the ice hotel but luckily not made of ice ;)

We definitely enjoyed the ice hotel bar- they serve the drinks as shots in blocks of ice! neither of us packed water proof gloves so I was a bit concerned that my ice would melt onto my glove and get it wet, but it was cold enough that that really did not happen at all. Sophie has a fun looking drink with blue curaçao and that was way more impressive looking in the ice glass than my off white colored amaretto drink with crème- note to self for future ice bars!

Sophie was slowly turning into a human icicle during the ice hotel tour so we managed to snag some coffees before we rode the tour bus home. I don’t really get cold so I was okay- Sophie is an excellent sport for agreeing to come on a winter adventure with me but we made sure she never got *too* cold haha!

I thought the bus ride part to the ice hotel would be more of a tour but it was basically the same highway to the airport and not scenic at all. The couple from

Texas behind us were having a loud chat about how they had never heard of Tim Hortons before and I enjoyed listening to their weird conversations while Sophie snoozed a bit on the bus.

Went back to the airbnb to recharge a bit and add on some more layers for dinner and then going to the actual winter carnival! This year is the 70th anniversary of the carnival and the have events for two weeks including ice canoing, concerts, parades, masked balls, a creepy snowman mascot named Bonhomme. We had an effigy, or a little ticket to get access to

The events, and were thinking we would be doing more carnival activities, but our timing/ location was sort of off so we really only did a couple activities and probably could have skipped the carnival ticket entirely, or come a different weekend to take better advantage of more activities. I also get the sense that the carnival used to be a bit more debauchery/ partying and now is more family friendly with things like ice skating and kids activities. It did make for great people watching all weekend though!

we wound up at a little burger place advertising good cocktails for dinner. I got some poutine- classic Canadian snack with fries, cheese curds, and gravy. the cocktail lists at nearly everywhere we have been are sorely lacking in bourbon or whisky drinks. Lots of gin and vodka, but no whiskey. Canada has a lot of Canadian whiskey/ rye so it makes no sense! Our waitress at the burger place had never heard of a Manhattan and had to check with the bartender that he could make it. (He could and it was actually quite good lol)

After dinner we headed to our only carnival activities which were visiting an ice sculpture garden, igloo, and Bonhomme’s Ice Palace! we had a lot

of fun taking pictures of the sculptures and the ice palace was cool, but the festival crowd was picking up and the line was crazy. It was jam packed shuffling through the ice palace and we didn’t even see Bonhomme, though of course we saw many of his statues. Unlike the ice hotel, which was cool inside but meh outside, the ice palace was cool in both directions but you definitely could not sleep there. We also enjoyed drinking some Carnival Hot Toddy’s and standing by the fire after the ice palace.

In approximately 2012, my parents gave me some random Canadian money ($80) that was dated 1991. I guess they assumed I’d go to Canada someday- I do like to travel. And I’ve had that money in my little coin collection for over a decade now haha. I finally made it to Canada and have now used up the cash, but turns out Canadian money has all changed in design and every time i used the money the Canadian people were so impressed at the old money and wanted to chat with me about it. One girl tried to tell me it was probably worth more than $20- google says poor condition 1991 dollars might go for like $23. The reaction in the US if you used 30 year old money would literally be nothing haha. also the whole point of spending that cash was to get rid of it so mission accomplished!

Our hot toddy’s warmed us somewhat but Sophie was still freezing so back to the air bnb. We both needed to shower and the hot water was amazing- it went down to about 10 degrees last night outside. It was very difficult to get out of the shower after into the cold- our air bnb is cute but old and likely could be warmer haha. We watched a bit of the movie Groundhog Day before bed, otherwise known as “ jour de la marmotte” en francais! Spring is early per Punxsutawney Phil- sure doesn’t feel that way in Quebec City though!

Day 2

We were more tired this morning and got a bit of a later start so I enjoyed my coffee and e book for a couple hours while Sophie slept longer and then we started the day with getting breakfast. Realized I forgot to say that we also had breakfast yesterday, which wasn’t important expect I had crepes that weren’t really very good and so we picked another crepe restaurant and I had much better Nutella and banana crepes this morning :) at yesterdays breakfast we also had a Caribou- which is a little hot spiced wine. Very enjoyeable as a winter cocktail, I don’t know if other people usually drink them at breakfast but we are on vacation! :)

after breakfast we went back to the air bnb to get in our very warmest clothes because we decided to take a round trip ferry ride across the ice in the St Laurence River! Base on our two walks past the boardwalk overlooking the river, which was bitingly cold wind every time we walked past- we were worried the ferry would be absolutely frigid and miserable. So we elected to double all our layers to walk down to the ferry, just in case we would be freezing. Even with our double

Layers, neither of us bothered to wear the extremely fuzzy polar fleece robe/sweater thing that I packed for no reason that took up SO much space in my suitcase 😂 the ferry dock is on the lower part of Quebec City and down from the rest of the walled part that we had been exploring up to this point. To get there it was a truly excessive down hill walk with tons of stairs. The ferry ride itself was just out and back directly across the river to the town of Levis, and only cost $7.50 Canadian and took about 15 minutes each direction, but Sophie and I agreed it was our favorite part of the trip :) love a ferry and we got to watch (and hear!) the boat sliding through the ice on the river, cracking the ice along the way. it was nowhere near as cold as we feared it would be, the sun even came out and the views of the river, the city, and the hills in the distance were unbeatable!

We stopped in Levis for about 20 minutes, walked around an outdoor ice rink that a Zamboni was working on, and enjoyed the view from the opposite river bank, and then headed back on the boat to Quebec City.

We then decided to chill for a bit at a brewery in the lower part of the city (it was called Archibald- almost Sophie’s last name! So we were destined to stop there. ) The beer was good, my go to beer order is whatever wheat beer/ Hefeweizen/ white ale type beer that tastes the most like blue moon and they even served it with an orange like blue moon. I decided I was going to go do a tour of the Fairmont Le Chateau Frontenac, which is the big picturesque castle looking building that is the quintessential landmark of the city, and Sophie wanted to head back to relax in the air bnb for a bit. So, to get back up to the walled part of the city, we got to ride the Funiculaire! What is a Funiculaire exactly? Well, Columbus is the flattest city ever so would never have need of one, but it’s basically a tiny little elevator that takes you up the large hill without having to take the stairs. 5 dollars for a ride was a bit steep for the 30 second ride but we felt it was well worth it. It’s cash only so I got rid of more Canadian money, and found it funny that they accepted either $5 American or Canadian. That’s a bad deal for the Americans as it’s like $6.70 Canadian for 5 US haha.

I found a guy selling little watercolors along the street and I found one I loved so I had to buy it- not sure where I’ll hang it once I get home but I loved it :) I stopped and drank an espresso for my pastry and waited for my tour to arrive near the Hotel. The guide was an old man dressed as the old governor of Quebec from the 1600s, and the tour was nice- an assortment of the history of the city and the hotel, and getting to walk through various areas of the hotel like the ballroom and the wine cellar . The hotel namesake, Count Frontenac, was in charge when the British demanded a surrender of the then fort, requesting an immediate response or facing war, to which the guy replied, “my only response will be from the mouth of cannons” which is pretty badass. And clearly Quebec stayed French Canadian haha. Also turns out that FDR, Winston Churchill, and the prime minister of Canada met at the hotel and nearby Citadel military base to plan the DDay invasion. Various celebrities have stayed in the hotel, and we also got to see their bottle of Louis the VIII which sells for $250 a half ounce at the bar, and you can get a bottle for your own for like $50000. Apparently there is a famous masked ball hosted in the hotel as well as a very elegant New Years Eve party.

After my hotel tour I went back to the apartment- Sophie and I only had one key, and no data to text when I arrived- though likely could have connected to the WiFi from the street. Our plan was to have me knock on the window of our building so she would let me in, and if she didn’t respond or we would otherwise get separated, we’d meet where we had breakfast in the morning. Backup rendezvous not needed but you never know when traveling! we took a rest to finish watching Groundhog Day and then accidentally wound up eating dinner at a fancy restaurant- I enjoyed some Manhattans, and a very delicious but tiny meal of Canadian Walleye. But I was still hungry after dinner so then we got some late night banh mi from a Bubble tea place near our place😂

other than having to book a surge priced Uber to get us to the airport causing some minor morning stress, we wound up back to the Quebec Airport without issue and made it to our flight connecting through Toronto- writing this from the plane on the last stretch. We thoroughly enjoyed our whirlwind winter wonderland Vacation in Quebec City! Still not sure how I convinced Sophie to come with me somewhere so cold but we had a blast- Love you Sophie! 🌨️☃️❄️

[chloemarievaughan]

May 27th-Amsterdam

I forgot to report yesterday that I left my sun hat on a train, RIP sun hat that I just bought for the trip! I never liked the hat anyway, good excuse to buy a new one! 

This morning we enjoyed some espressos and then had a quick tram to a longer tram to a ferry to visit a medieval castle about 40 minutes from Amsterdam, the Muiderslot. This castle was started as a fortress on that location in the 1200s and was built due to the defensive position on the mouth of the river and the sea. There were two sections of the audio tour, and this audio tour was not easy to follow. It was never clear which way you were supposed to go for the next segment of the tour and instead of scanning for the audio clip at the entrance of a new room you had to cross the entire room to scan it which was a bit annoying. We also did stops 1-6 on the first tour and wound up back at the beginning somehow so went on to the second tour. Once we finished that one, we could see step 11 from the first tour which we had missed entirely, so did 7-11 of the first tour again. Turns out that was the best part of the tour, 1-6 and the second tour were all showing the defensive features of the fort (places to shoot people with arrows or throw boiling water on invaders, etc. step 7-11 were laid out with a recreation of how the castle actually looked in Medieval times, and then some exhibits on the founder of the castle, count Floris V, who was murdered nearby the castle which was then essentially destroyed by his enemies, and then a famous poet PC Hooft who lived in the Muiderslot in the 1600s (long after it had been rebuilt)

This castle has a working moat and drawbridge, and the weather was again beautiful today so a great day for a ferry ride! after the castle tour, we still had about an hour until our ferry came back for us. We ate some lunch at the castle courtyard restaurant (a caprese panini and a delicious plum tart, as the Muiderslot has famous plum trees surrounding the outside of the Moat) and then tried to do a self guided audio tour of the castle gardens, but it was only in Dutch. then we walked around the gardens and moat for a while soaking in the sunshine. There were a bunch of signs with helpful information that really seemed like should have been part of the tour- like a visual of what parts of the castle were built when and descriptions of how the Muiderslot defense system worked to flood the fields and prevent invaders from getting access to the castle, along with an exhibit about how the water retention/ and dam technology has been built up over the last 800 years.

We got on the ferry back and enjoyed some beers while slowly making our way back to Amsterdam. We had a fun time at the castle, and on the ferry, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it just because it is annoying to get there and really takes up basically a whole day. Because the tram/tram/ferry/castle/tram/tram situation took up so much of our time, I picked us two small museums for after. This first I wanted to go to Was the Willet Holthuysen house, and we had a reservation at 3:45. I actually heard about this museum while on the canal tour boat! This is a fancy canal house owned by a wealthy couple in the late 1800s which was turned into a museum. The ferry was supposed to get back at 3 but we didn’t get off the boat until 3:30, and of course we needed to still take two trams to get where we were going. We (barely) missed the next tram, (story of our lives) but then once we caught the next one, seamlessly made the connection to the second tram. And we (eventually) made it to the museum at about 4:15, but turns out they didn’t really care about the reservation we got in just fine. I was expecting to be more wowed by this tour, but it was okay. It was Jam packed with a tour bus of older French speaking people. we hurried through the audio tour (skipping a couple steps) and ended up finishing in only 30 minutes, had plenty of time to spare before the museum closed at 5😂

The second museum I had picked basically just for the reason that it closed at 6 and we’d be able to squeeze it in. We took a meandering walk past the canals to get there. Amsterdam is SO much busier on Friday/Saturday night than when we first got there Thursday. This museum was called the Our Lord in the Attic Museum and was actually awesome! In the 1600s, the Dutch Reformed Church became the official national religion of the Netherlands. While there was “religious tolerance” for other religious beliefs, It became illegal for gatherings of people worshipping- so you could personally be Catholic in your own home but couldn’t gather together. So, a rich catholic merchant bought 3 adjoining canal houses and had the top floors of all three merged together to form a hidden church! This museum was a very cool slice of Amsterdam history, and now it makes sense why the other two churches we visited were no longer maintained or used as churches- they weren’t allowed to continue being Catholic Churches.

we walked around a bit more, finally getting some Stroopwafel! It is a sort of waffle cookie with syrup, absolutely Delicious, and I’d been looking forward to it all trip! last thing on my trip list to check off :) 

We finished off the night enjoying beer and fries (and not enjoying our burger) at a cute place outdoors overlooking the canal. perfect end to a perfect trip!!! and could not have asked for a better traveling companion than Lori Holycross Vaughan! Love you <3

PS: we have landed in Philadelphia and are killing time on a 6 hour layover! Uneventful train to the airport to the flight, with the exception of my king skirt getting STUCK in the escalator and me having to rip the skirt to get unstuck. 

PPS: now I have the travel bug! Who wants to plan a trip with me next???

[chloemarievaughan]

May 26th- Amsterdam

We had an early start this morning (for once haha, we’ve been more on the leisurely schedule of waking up and savoring our coffee and getting out and about at about 10). But as I mentioned we had to make advanced reservations for a lot of things in Amsterdam and I had made us a couple reservations starting at 9:15 am.

We grabbed a quick hotel breakfast and espresso and then went the the Anne Frank House first. I made these reservations 6 weeks ago because it is a pretty small museum and sells out, but was incredibly worth it. It was poignant and thought provoking to see the actual annex where Anne and her family hid for two years. It was actually much larger than I was expecting, but of course for 8 people all together for two years it must have seemed so so small. I also knew but was reminded that Anne and her family were so close to being liberated. The Allies had already invaded Normandy and were getting closer and closer, just a few months away from Amsterdam when they were arrested. We got to see the actual diaries too which was incredible.

We then had a big change of pace and went to the Koninklijk Palace which is the Dutch Royal palace where they host state dinners and have royal weddings and coronations. This was another very cool audio tour, with information about the transformation of the palace from the originally planned town hall to a palace in the French style once Napoleon named his brother the King of the Netherlands. There were two options on the audio tour, a brief tour (35 minutes) or a full tour (75 minutes). 90 minutes later we still weren’t down with the full tour but we had afternoon plans so cruised though the last couple rooms. Really enjoyed this visit and was glad we had also booked this ahead, it was all sold out but we had reservations 🙂

We quickly ducked in another church, the Nieuwe Kerke, which is near us and we kept walking past. Sadly it is currently hosting an art exhibit which is blocking like all the views of the church. I think they are doing it to raise money for renovations, but glad it was included in the card and not something I spent money on. We were hurrying so we didn’t really look at much of the exhibit itself so can’t speak if the exhibit was actually good or not haha.

Then we were off to one of the things I was l most looking forward to on this trip- WINDMILLS!!! Zaanse Schans is a picturesque little town about a 15 minute train ride+ 15 minute walk or 45 minute bus ride from Amsterdam. In the past. The Zaan region of Amsterdam had hundreds of windmills and was a heavily industrial region. Over time and with the invention of electricity, more and more windmills were closed down or fell into disrepair. In the early 1900s, the historical society decided to create a historic center with museums and preserved houses to acknowledge this history. They actually moved the windmills and houses from all over the region to Zaanse Schans. We took the train and had a little walk to get there, and happened to need lunch. Of course we passed the perfect place to eat with a gorgeous view of the water and windmills. enjoyed an Italian lunch and cocktails in the sunshine 🙂

We started in Zaanse Schans Museum and learned a bit more about the history and then wandered the town. We visited a weavers house, a cheese maker, a clock museum, and (of course!) a Dutch wooden clog making shop! All real buildings historically used for those purposes, but not in the original locations. We went in one windmill that is still being used to make paint pigments, and a second windmill that was actively sawing logs into boards while we were there. The second windmill was actually an exact replica of an old windmill which had fallen into disrepair about 50 years ago. Before demolishing it the owners made exact scale drawings so that it could be remade in the future and it was built again about 15 years ago! Pretty cool.

we must be nearing the end of our trip…. We are getting pretty tired of the long walking days 😂 tired feet but not ready to be done sightseeing, so we took a tram around the city for about 40 minutes (got into some less touristy areas, still gorgeous and very much styled like the central areas of Amsterdam, only less canals. we only went in the exit only door of the tram once and clearly are becoming European public transport pros, just in time to leave.

Finished up with sharing a fish and chips and a local beer, then finishing up our evening relaxing in the hotel. Tomorrow is our last day 😭😭😭😭

[chloemarievaughan]

May 25th- Antwerp to Amsterdam

Can’t believe we are headed to the last destination of our trip! We had a truly wonderful time in three very different Belgian Cities. ate our fair share of Belgian chocolate and fries, and drank our fair share of Belgian beer! The Netherlands are a new country for me, the 22nd country I have visited! Belgium and the Netherlands are both new countries for Mom.

Before we headed off to the Netherlands, we had to get one last walk through Antwerp in the diamond district, doing a bit of window shopping. It was amazing how many diamond stores there are; how do they make any money with so much competion? Block after block of nothing but diamond stores. 

Our train to Amsterdam was again one that we could take any train on the day we booked it which was nice flexibility. We weren’t sure how long we felt like exploring the diamond district so rented a locker at the train station so we could walk unencumbered by our bags. After a short walk we were ready to go so bought espressos and a yummy raspberry coffee cake. our train ride was the slow train (1 h 50 minutes) as it was 20 euros vs the more expense fast trains saving 45 minutes but costing 4 times as much. The fast trains had WiFi though which would have been nice. 

did some planning for Amsterdam… again we are buying a city card to take advantage of the flexibility of transportation. Annoyingly, nearly all the museums in Amsterdam require advanced reservations. I did get a couple things booked ahead that needed reservation… but we are gonna miss out on the Van Gogh museum because it’s fully booked. I’m sure we will be able to keep ourselves fully occupied even without that, but Reservations weeks ahead are not how I like to travel, like to be able to go with the flow!

We also saw our first windmills out the window of the train! Yay the Netherlands :)

Got to the Amsterdam train station and got slightly lost trying to figure out how to leave the train station. Turns out, in Amsterdam you scan your ticket to enter the train and to leave the train (this is also how the tram works) we both really had to pee but the bathroom on the train wouldn’t open and the one in the station had to pay cash… which we don’t have. We powerwalked to our hotel which luckily was only about a 12 minute walk away. The check in guy at the hotel let us check in early which was nice, and our room is very cute. We had a reservation for the Rijksmuseum at 3:15, and were all checked into the hotel about 1:30. 

So we decided to take a leisurely walk past the canals to get to the museum! I love Amsterdam :) it’s beautiful. Much cleaner than Antwerp, a much bigger city than we’ve been to so far, and it’s the perfect wandering city where every block is another picturesque canal and beautiful rows of house and of course, bikes everywhere. We have both almost been hit by multiples bikes because neither mom and I are good at noticing if we are about to walk into a bike lane… no casualties so far 😂 

we wandered into a floating flower market and did some souvenir shopping, then wandered past a place selling pita and French fries (which were at least twice as good as any of the Belgian fries we had… sorry Belgium I am Not gonna be calling them Belgian Fries 😂) we were ravenous at this point and this might have been the best tasting meal we had all trip hahaha.

Made it to the Rijksmuseum, which we had snagged the only available reservation time left for today earlier this morning. It was a very nice art museum with some Rembrandt and Van Goghs, a cool variety of historical Dutch artists, paintings, and decorations, but Mom and I would have done a little better with an audio tour or a live tour. Note for if you come here: there are some guided tours available on the museum app, but we didn’t know at the time.

 We were tired of walking around at this point so sat in the garden behind the Rijksmuseum watching a fountain for a while and then went to grab a tram back to Central Station.  Every time we try to take a bus or a tram anywhere we can see the tram we need pulling into the station when we are too far to make a run and catch it. Luckily this time the next one was only 6 minutes later so we waited and took the tram back to central station, and went to reserve a boat ticket for a canal tour. They didn’t have any tours for an hour and a half so we did some more walking: really got our steps in today! 

We did some wandering past some of Amsterdams more interesting areas. (Walked past many coffee shops, a quick look to check out the Red Light District (much tamer during the day) and then ended up at another church, the oldest church in Amsterdam which is no longer operating as a church, just a museum. The Oudekerk had a guided audio tour that we did for about 25 minutes before the museum closed, got a few good pictures and enjoyed the brief tour.

then it was time for our canal tour! I was very excited for this after no canals in Antwerp to have a tour of, but it wasn’t my favorite boat tour. Instead of a guide, it was a recorded audio tour of facts about the canals, and the boat was a covered glass boat which made it a little hard to see and take good photographs. the boat before ours was open, which would have been better for pictures and taking in the sights but turns out we would have been absolutely freezing so I guess it worked out! 

wandered around some more back to the hotel, and tried to find a cool place for a nightcap but nothing near us but coffee shops ☕️ ended up in the hotel bar where I disgraced myself by ordering the beer Ijwit in the most American possible accent: it is actually pronounced “eye wheat”. My Dutch has not gotten any better this trip 😂

[chloemarievaughan]

May 24th- Antwerp

We had an adventure figuring out the tram system in Antwerp. First, the tram we were trying to take was cancelled and we were waiting around for like 15 minutes without

Realizing, and had to walk to the next stop over and take a different tram instead. Later in the day we were trying to find another tram stop before we realized that there are actually underground parts of the tram in Antwerp! Who knew 😂 easy enough to figure out once we had more information, of course we always figure out the transport information as we are ready to leave a city.

We had a pretty random but busy day today! First stop today was the Red Star Line Museum. This was a really interesting museum about the history of European immigration to the United States. Antwerp was the last stop in Europe for millions of Europeans before they left for America in the late 19th/early 20th. The journey started as a 6 week sailing journey to New York, but by the 1900s they had a steam boat with a 10 day crossing to the US. it was a really well organized museum and took you through the history of Antwerp as a port city through the modern times along with immigration. Reminded me a bit of the Titanic Exhibit at COSI, the science museum in Columbus. 

grabbed lunch, accidentally stopped at a really fancy restaurant and had really slow service. We were on a mission to get our moneys worth out of our city pass and they took forever. And they didn’t even serve fries with our meal 😭 Clearly should have found a to go frituur and grabbed something quicker haha!

after lunch we were going to go back to the MAS museum and go to some of the inside exhibits but decided not to to save time. We were trying to go to three churches: the first, St Pauluskerk, we arrived at 1:30 and it didn’t open until 2:00. So we went to the next church, Onze Lieve Vrouwekathedraal, which was very beautiful and full of paintings by Rubens. This church has the tall beautiful tower you can see all over Antwerp. as we were getting our city card scanned, we heard the person at the desk telling another couple that the church and the tower are owned by two separate companies, and the tower tours are booked through 2023!!! craziness. I have learned that the downside of climbing the most beautiful tower in the city is that then you can’t see the beautiful tower in your skyline pictures from above, so I guess for the best that we couldn’t visit the top unless we came back next year 😂then we went back to St Pauluskerk, also very lovely and had an extensive treasury filled with gold pieces for the churches altar and professionals. The treasury had a vault with a steel door and everything which was interesting! We tried to go to a third church which was only open in the mornings for visitors, so we missed out on that one.

Next we went to another unique museum, the Plantin-Moretus museum about book printing! This was the former house and book printing workshop of Christoph Plantin and his descendants, who expanded printing in Antwerp from just religious works to scientific and geography texts, and language books and dictionaries, and expanded printing options to many unique languages. Balthasar Moretus, a descendant of Christoph Plantin cultivated a relationship with Spain and they printed a fancy bible set for the King of Spain. There was an active printing press demonstration that we got to watch and the old man running the demonstration gave me the poem he printed during the demo. Not sure what I will do with a French poem written by a historical Antwerp printer but so cool! They also have an extensive library on site of books actually published at the printing press! Both the house itself, which is beautifully decorated with leather everywhere, and the contents of the museum (the books and printing press workshop) are designated UNESCO world heritage sites. 

Last stop was another brewery tour at De Koninck brewery! This time, it was a self guided tour with various exhibits and movies. As promised, we got one beer at the beginning of the tour and a second along the way. we watched little videos about the history of the family who owned the brewery, the history of beer in Antwerp, and the beer making process. One room had a 7 picture frames with actors playing the previous owners of the brewery while they argued with each other via their painting about who made the best beer 😂 one owner of the brewery in wartime was forced to make beer from beets and potatoes as the conquering Germans confiscated all the grain. as he argued, it was better than no beer. Dad might like beet beer 😂

The tour was cute, but the “two beer” situation was misleading: just got two little tastes not two full beers. 

We went to dinner on a rooftop bar and had some sausages, more beer, and again, no fries!!! Are we even in Belgium anymore hahaha. we were planning to take the tram back home but we walked up to the stop just as our tram was pulling away, so then it was quicker to walk 25 minutes back rather than wait for the next one. 

We walked a bit through the Stadspark outside our apartment, and came back and enjoyed another evening on the patio with some cherry beers (got a fancy cherry beer but it was too much like a sour. Sticking to my previously tried cherry beers if I get more this trip) 

Off to the Netherlands later this morning! :)

[chloemarievaughan]

May 23rd- Bruges to Antwerp

Woke up, had our coffee, and got all packed and put our luggage in the storage room so we could do some last minute exploration of Finally made it to the churches we wanted to go to from the day before! St Salvatorskathedral and then Onze Lieve Vrouwekerk. St Salvatorkathedral Was very, very opulent. Dark wood, a ton of gold and silver decorations, and for some reason, three organs! One of them looked very new but I have no idea why a church would need so many organs. Probably the fanciest church we have been in this trip.

According to our tour boat driver from the day before, the other church (Onze Lady Vrouwekerk) has the third highest brickwork tower in all Europe, behind only two in Germany. You could not go up in the tower part though, and we went in the beautiful church part but didn’t pay for the museum part to see a Michelangelo sculpture. I didn’t realize that’s what was in the paid part, might have considered it but I thought it was just a museum about the church.

Then we had a moment I’ve been looking forward to all trip! A Belgian waffle! There are two types of waffles commonly sold throughout Belgium, Brussels style and Liege style. They are shaped differently (Brussels looking more like what Americans think of as Belgian waffles) and also the batter is different. I’m pretty sure that Belgians eat their waffles plain, but mom and I got some toppings- mom got whipped cream and strawberries, I got bananas, whipped cream, and chocolate syrup which was an extremely delicious choice even if not authentic haha. (We both got Liege waffles- Wikipedia says the dough is based off a brioche bread dough). They serve them to go and so we did some window shopping while eating, and then went to one more church, the Basilica of the Holy Blood. This church claims to have some of Jesus blood on-site, which was very interesting.

With great reluctance to leave Bruges, we headed back to grab our suitcases and head out of Bruges for Antwerp. Had to roll our suitcases back 20 minutes over cobblestones- tried to go a different route for a hopefully smoother sidewalk, no luck- and then bought a ticket and hopped on the next train to Antwerp! This train took 1.5 hours, had a few stops along the way (backtracked us beside Ghent again and I saw the Belfry and St Baafs and St Nicholas again! Fun!)

Took a quick nap on the train and got off in Antwerp. Antwerp Central Station is the most beautiful train station I have ever been in. We took a bunch of photos, and then headed to our air b n b. We stayed in hotels the rest of the trip, but in Antwerp we are here on a Tuesday and Wednesday night which aren’t as popular travel destinations so we got a good price on an apartment style air b n b. We have so much space- including a kitchen, and Also, there is a private rooftop with a view over the Stadspark! Our air b n b host came and greeted us and gave us an overview of the city and made some recommendations of things to do while we are here. He told us two nights weren’t enough and was so proud to welcome us to his city and his apartment.

However, The trade off of such a cool apartment is that we are farther from the action here. We have another city pass here and for the first time I think we will be taking more advantage of the trams and buses to get around! we walked about 20-30 minutes to get to Antwerps tourist center, which is located in an old castle/ fortress on the river, and bought our city pass. In Ghent the pass was a physical card; in Antwerp it’s a website you can scan QR codes to redeem. how modern haha. The goal for tomorrow is to go to enough museums to make the pass worth the money! we talked about the pass and decided even if we didn’t quite spend enough to make it worth it, it’s really nice to have the flexibility for unlimited public transport since we are further away (side note as I wrote this we learned that this city card includes a brewery tour with two free beers included. That line item puts us over the top with the city card, so it side end up saving us a few bucks 😂)

After two such cute towns/ cities in Ghent and Bruges, Antwerp was a bit of a shock to the system. Much bigger city and some parts are pretty dirty, and then you walk around the next corner and see a beautiful cathedral or some really cool architecture which is kind of jarring. Even some of the pretty buildings look like they could use a good power washing… we had time for one museum before dinner so chose our museum based on the only thing Mom knew about Antwerp before coming here- they are famous for their diamond industry. (Before this trip I knew about the fancy train station but did not know they were famous for diamonds) We went to Diva, which was a diamond museum! Again had a little audio guide, and there were exhibits on the current and past state of diamond mining and cutting in Antwerp (80% of the worlds raw diamonds get processed/ cut in Antwerp) they had Some exhibits of diamond jewelry but really not enough in my opinion. then they had a little side exhibit of fancy cutlery and plates and I wasn’t impressed. the diamond museum needs more diamonds 💎

Mom and I were famished by the end of the diamond museum and quickly made it to the Grote Markt or main square of Antwerp, and enjoyed dinner at a Random place while taking in the square (mom had a pasta dish and a Brugs Wit beer- the one we had yesterday at 2Be. I had a chicken pot pie type dish and a beer from a local brewery in Antwerp. we then went for a walk near the Scheldt river and went to admire the evening view from the top of the MAS museum! We may go back tomorrow to actually go to the museum, but you can get a nice view of the city from the top which is always my goal in a new European city. This view was on the 10th floor, and luckily, while there was no elevator, we did not have to take the stairs: wound around the building taking the escalators to the top! And the view was great!

then we took advantage of our city card by taking the bus back to our apartment instead of walking. Finished the evening grabbing some hummus, cheese, crackers, truffles, and a bottle of wine which we enjoyed out on our patio overlooking the park while watching the sun set. another lovely day in Europe 🙂

[chloemarievaughan]

May 22nd- Bruges

Drank some coffee in the hotel- this time we had a coffee maker in the room, how fancy 🙂 then we were off for a morning walk- it is chillier in Bruges than Ghent so far, so we dressed in our warmest clothes for the journey. We both are wearing leggings and long skirts. Found a cafe for breakfast and had a very enjoyable pancake breakfast (topped with brie - cheese and blueberry compote) with espresso. Mom had some fruit, a croissant, and a pour over coffee (rare to see in Europe, usually you just see espresso ( which I don’t mind haha). first stop of the day was the Chocostory Museum on the history of chocolate. It was definitely cheesy and at first I wasn’t sure about it… but it ended up being really cute and very worthwhile. Another audio guide, and exhibits that took us from the origination of chocolate with the Mayans and Aztecs, to the introduction of chocolate to the Spanish conquistadors, to the importance of chocolate in French royalty ( in the form of hot chocolate to drink first and then the hard form), to the industrialization of chocolate making, and rise of Belgian pralines (chocolate shell with typically hazelnut and sugar filling). there were props and illustrations, and even a live demonstration of praline making (with tasting) and a jar of unlimited chocolate samples- white, milk, and dark. Yum 🙂

With our chocolate tour, we could add on a French fry museum tour for only 5 euros! Of course calling them French fries is a bit sacrilegious in Belgium, they say “frites” or “Frieten” or maybe Belgian fries, but never French. Not as good as the Chocolate one, but some cute exhibits on the history of the Potato. Sophie Archbold would like this museum 🙂 and they gave credit to the US for inventing the potato chip haha. they did Not include a fry tasting in the tour, just a 0.40€ discount at the frituur (fry shop) at the end. Also, not enough salt on the fries in general in Belgium- though they do serve them at every meal 😂

Then we went on a canal tour in Bruges! We had bad timing and bought our tickets right after a group of like 80 children on a field trip so had to wait for a couple boats to go but sat in a beatiful spot to wait. Thought the Ghent boat tour was great, but the Bruges one topped it! Bruges is spectacular 🙂 the canals are full of little but beautiful buildings, we saw a lot of swans (the symbol of Bruges) gliding through the water, and our tour guide was very funny. At one point our boat went under the “lowest bridge in Bruges” per our guide, and he joked that they had a boat full of basketball players last week and they needed to clean the blood from their heads of the bridge after the tour. But the guide did brag that he only lost about 10% of his customers to decapitation on the low bridge 😂

after the Boat tour, we had about two hours until our brewery tour that we had Booked at 16:30. As an American, I am obviously less used to the time 16:30, but in my head, I looked at it and planned for 4:30 for the brewery tour. All of a sudden, I panicked that I read it wrong and perhaps it was actually 14:30, or 2:30, and I had missed the tour entirely. Of course, my wifi wouldn’t work and moms internet connection wouldn’t pull up our reservation, so we wandered around for a while hoping for the best! It was correctly at 4:30/16:30 🙂

Went shopping for souvenirs and chocolates and more souvenirs. We like to wander around getting a bit lost to explore new areas- though in Bruges it is hard to get lost because you can usually always see the belfry anywhere you are, but for some reason we went passed the same block of shops like 4 times during our wandering. we went to two scenic places before the brewery- the Begjinhof and the Minnewaterpark. The Minnewaterpark was a lovely park, but wouldn’t necessarily go back, pretty generic park. The Begiinhof was very cool though. It was a place where unmarried women who did not want to be nuns but agreed to live by a certain code of conduct lived, and it was a place of peace and quiet with a church and white buildings and flowers. There are apparently now nuns who live in the area as well.

Following this walk, we headed to De Halve Maan or the Half Moon Brewery! we really enjoyed the tour here though didn’t know we were in for 110 more steps during the tour, and a very steep staircase back down. The same brewery has been operating in one family for 6 generations in the same spot and for many years were the only brewery in the city limits of Bruges. Bruges is a UNESCO world heritage sight, and so new buildings cannot be tall and must match the style of the city. The brewery is quite tall with each park of the beer making process on each level of the factory, with a fabulous view of the city because it so tall. but the coolest feature of the brewery is that they have a direct beer pipeline to their bottling facility 3 km away dug under the city and just installed in the past decade!

also, the unfiltered Brugse Zot (fool of Bruges), one of the beers that is fully made on site without ever needing to leave via the pipeline, was fresh from the vat and the best beer I had in Belgium so far!

after the brewery, mom and I meant to find a dinner restaurant but instead wound up at a bar mentioned by our guide on the boat tour. It was directly across from the most photographed spot in Bruges, Rozenhoedkaai, and had a “wall of beer” with hundreds of bottles. We had a Bruges witbier and also thoroughly enjoyed that though we were in desperate need of food as it had been a really really long time since the Fries at the Frietmuseum.

popped across the canal again for dinner at a restaurant with another view of the Rozenhoedkaai, where we had a thoroughly enjoyable time, a delicious salad, fries, a cherry St Louis Kriek and a Raspberry St Louis Lambic, and possibly the worst steaks mom and I have ever had. They were cooked medium rare as requested but otherwise, not good at all 😂

I wanted to go see the Markt Square and Rozenhoedkaai light up at night, but sunset here isn’t until 9:41 pm. (Sunrise at 5:45am- were far north here!) decided that if we went straight back to the hotel at 7:45, we’d fall asleep, So we went for an another stroll by the Bruges canal. once again had a lovely time meandering, and managed to explore until 8:30 pm. Back to the hotel room to make some decaf coffee and stay awake until we can go admire Bruges at night!

And now at about 10:15pm, back to our hotel, enjoyed a quick evening stroll with some pictures of the landmarks at night! And now it’s bedtime 🙂 hopefully you enjoy about 7000 pictures of different Bruges houses along canals 😂😂 (my WiFi kept being uncooperative hence the late post)

[chloemarievaughan]

May 21st-Ghent to Bruges

Again got our beauty sleep and not a super early start. We planned to have a sit down breakfast, then rent some bikes and ride around for a while, then head off to the train station and on to Bruges. another absolutely gorgeous morning, both mom and I had a picture in mind of a perfect European vibe cafe where we could eat breakfast outdoors with a view. We walked  around fruitlessly for a while but never quite found the breakfast place we were looking for. (Mom and I have basically been eating all of our meals based on the location of the restaurant and availability of outdoor seating, not particularly looking up reviews or anything.) we never did find the perfect place but we found a good enough little cafe that had some croissants and espresso. With our city card we could get a free bike rental for the day, so we decided we would give European bikes a go. Not our best idea ever haha. We went to the rental place right when it opened at 10 and the guy who was running the shop said “one minute” and then spent about 12 minutes huffing and puffing and muttering under his breath as he was writing a bunch of numbers in a notebook. finally he gets done with that and we get our bikes, which were Huge. Neither of us could sit in the seat and touch the ground even with the seat all the way down. He did offer that that had child size bikes before we left but I felt I could make it work… should have taken him up on it hahaha. I injured myself by smacking my shin against the back of the bike while trying to dismount, gonna have an impressive bruise tomorrow. we rode around for a while, but we didn’t have helmets so didn’t want to go on any major roads, just stuck to some of the walking areas. There were a bunch of trams in Ghent and so we were worried about having to dodge a tram if one came but we didn’t pass any luckily. 

We definitely did not understand the rules of the road in Ghent. Bikes, people, cars and trams seem to just be everywhere and everyone just dodges out of the way. Turns out there were some actual rules that we didn’t understand (being able to read Dutch road signs would have helped) and some areas of the roads were not for bikes, and we couldn’t tell if the bike lanes were supposed to be one lane or two. by the time we sorted out the rules of biking, we were kind of getting tired but wanted to go back to the castle area of town one last time, but there was a running race going on so some roads were cordoned off. Seemed like as good a time as any to head back to the hotel to check out, so we went to return the bikes. The guy was SO confused to see us back after only 30 minutes 😂 our explanation that we were checking out of our hotel seemed to confuse him and he offered to watch our suitcases so we could keep biking. I guess if you work for the bike shop you probably love biking more than I do 😂 we did learn that we are Not cut out for European biking and likely will not be doing that again hahaha. 

Once we checked out, it was off to the train station! We took the tram (learned our lesson about walking) and bought a ticket to Bruges. This time we made sure it was the right train before catching it, and 30 minutes later we were in Bruges! I like the Belgian train system: you buy a train between two destinations on a given date, but you can go on any train that day. Makes it much less stressful because if you miss a train you take the next one!

In Bruges we also had a little walk until we got to the hotel, which again was cobblestones and not easy to pull a suitcase, but was better than the walk in Ghent by far. Bruges is adorable! it is smaller than Ghent, less city like, but still a lot to do and see! We dropped our luggage at the hotel and headed over to the Markt square for lunch. We thoroughly enjoyed a seafood lunch- Bruges is closer to the coast than the other cities we are doing in Belgium, but not really on the water or anything. I had some mussels in white wine sauce, mom had some cod, we drank wine and drank in the view of the square. then we had some ice cream with tart cherries for dessert. we were right next to the Belfry of Bruges, which is one of the big Bruges landmarks, so we decided to buy a ticket and they had a ticket for a few hours later, so we bought that and went off on a shopping expedition! We wandered in and out of a few random shops- souvenirs, lace, and different purses/ accessories, and then did a big lap of a bunch of cute streets and some canal views. by that time it was time to check into our hotel- very cute! It is a bigger room than Ghent, and almost as good a location- a 4 minute walk to the main square rather than being next to a landmark. 

Next we headed to the Belfry! There are 366 steps up to the top of the Belfy, which is a bell tower and clock over looking the city. (They don’t start counting the stairs until the gift shop on the second floor- but there are like 15 more stairs up to the gift shop, so it seems like they are selling themselves short)

we were a bit afraid that it would be 366 steps directly up in a spiral staircases but luckily they put landings every 50-100 steps with information about the tower, benches to take a break, etc.  it did get steeper with smaller steps the further up you went until the top was almost like a ladder. I only tripped once, slamming my shin into the exact place I bruised on the bike earlier of course! on the second landing to the top, which we got to at 4:15, you could see essentially a large music box looking contraption with pins in it to play the bells. The music box weighs 9 tons. And the bells themselves weigh 27 tons!! 

we then had only about 30 more steps to the top. We took a bunch of nice pictures of Ghent from above, and then at 4:30 we could actually see the bells ringing! It was sweet, got a cool video of the bells ringing. They change the pins on the music box to make new songs every two years and have different songs on the hour, 15, 30, and 45 minutes so you can always tell what time it is. Maybe the best thing we’ve done so far, totally worth the tired legs :)

Once we made it down the 366 steps + 15 steps, we went for another walk to try to visit a few churches we could see from above. we didn’t quite time this right though- we arrived at one church about 20 seconds too late to go in, and the other was closed by the time we got there. will have to try again :) like our quest from earlier for an ideal breakfast spot, mom is also on a quest for an ideal “pub” type bar. We haven’t been successful with that either but we did wind up at a local brewery to have a beer before dinner, Bourgogne de Flanders. On their website, they describe their namesake beer as “surprising” and it definitely did not taste like I was expecting 😂 mom had a blonde ale, not her favorite either haha. The brewery was cute though! 

We went back to the Markt square for dinner. It was getting chilly- bit colder in Bruges than Ghent and the temperature dropped a little throughout the day, so we found a place with both a view and an outdoor heater/fireplace. Enjoyed a traditional Flemish beef stew and mom had a (not traditional Belgian) avocado toast with smoked salmon, which was delicious. Topped off dinner with another cherry beer (Leffe Ruby, not as good as the brand I had yesterday) and we made it back to the Hotel! We have some fun adventures planned for tomorrow, if we’re not too sore from the biking and climbing we did toeday 😂