More from Scotland! Land of castles and lochs

Hey folks!

Today's post is about Scotland. I'm going to show you some beautiful spots we visited on our school trip and give you helpful travel tips for your trip! :) Let's see if you will recognize some of the places or if you'll get interested in travelling to Scotland!

- Getting inspired? 

Let's start at the beginning though. ;)

Travelling to Scotland

As Scotland is part of the United Kingdom, you can only either reach this country by plane or by ship - for us, it was the ship. Well, first of all, we needed to get to the Netherlands to hop onto the ship at the Dutch boarder. It took us about 7 hours to get there, a long, but exciting trip :D I'm sure you all know this: If you're with your friends, it will never get boring!

my French class just before heading off 

Fabienne, Alina, me & Sara 

Keep smiling!
- arrival in the Netherlands, let's hop onto the ferry!

We travelled with "DFDS Seaways" which I can advise due to comfort on all the higher decks, safety and professionalism - but be careful, prizes on deck are so expensive! You should better bring your own food. One meal (e.g. pasta or hamburger with fries) is 15€ (18,7 US dollar) and it has a normal size.

When we went exploring our rooms, we felt transferred into "Titanic" movie! The corridors, the 

doors, all the same! :D

... It was a bit creepy though, I have to admit, because the rooms the students had were even beneath the cars' deck which meane nearly underwater! Some people even claimed they could hear the sounds of the wave while lying in bed... I didn't hear them, but well, who knows? :D 

So this is what our rooms looked like:

It's basically just one room of the size of 10m² with 2 loft beds and one very very tiny bathroom in it. The beds are actually more comfy then you think, this is the good thing :D

Enough about our room though, follow me to see the rest of our ship! 

I will not show you all of its 11 levels, but let's have a look at some interesting spots.

the restaurants - there were Italian ones, English ones and some
of other nationalities

Yep, you're not mistaking it! There was even a cinema where
you could even watch some of the latest movies.

Follow me outside!

 ... where the wind is blowing,

... where people are having snacks and drinks

... while others are authentically playing Titanic:

As you can see, there were quite a lot of possibilities for us passengers to keep ourselves busy. If you wanted, you could also do some duty free shopping or do some karaoke later at night in the lounge area. 

My friends and me preferred to watch the colourful sunset and to have some fun outside.The weather was still warm enough (and chances to get seasick outside were smaller, too).

- So why not taking some pictures?

The next morning beautiful weather welcomed us in Great Britain!

"Goodbye" to our room -

- and "hello" to our bus again!

A few hours and bus stops later, we could already catch some first glances at our new home for the next week: Edinburgh!

- Don't want to show you too much about Edinburgh again as this was the subject of my last post! ;)

So let's move on to a really

Impressive trip to Loch Leven - perfect for nature lovers

Land of lochs - let me take you to the ..., magical side of Scotland.

Lochs, or "loughs", are mostly lakes, but they can also be arms of sea.
The one we visited, Loch Leven, is a lake situated in the south-east of Scotland, in the north of Edinburgh.

Walking around the loch, you'll be fascinated by nature's charme, it looks pristine.

This is the spot we stopped at, it was near a little village, I cannot remember its name though.

Instead of exploring the village, we preffered to stay at this place, have a little rest and enjoy the view

Gorgeous. Isn't it?

As you can see, the weather in Scotland is - as in most places of the UK - very changeable. We experienced cloudy, sunny and windy weather only in a few hours.

If you dress in a forsighted way and always bring a rain jacket, you'll be fine :)

Here are some pictures of my friends and me :)

First of all - my French class                                - we're very few ones, not many people learning French anymore in Germany :( 

And look, the weather turned out to be good again at the end! :)

Later in the afternoon, we headed off to Stirling, a city in the east of Edinburgh, it was about an one hour drive there.

On our way we encoutered these funny animals:

They are called 

Hamish

Hamish belongs to the common cattles and originally comes from Scotland.
It gives milk and its meat is gladly eaten by the Scottish.
We didn't dare trying it out though, I have to admit..

Anyway, let's come back to 

the city of Stirling:

Looking at its buildings, it is quite similar to Edinburgh - there are lots of old and high houses and steeples, very nice!

Despite that, from my personal point of view, Edinburgh is still the more exciting, characteristic city to visit. It's mostly commonalities and differences Old and New Town have at the same time which fascinate me - similar architecture, but a different life in the two parts of the town.
In Stirling, you'll find lovely old candy shops between Chinese buffet restaurants and new modern clothing stores with bright and big signs above them.

I don't want to keep you from visiting Stirling though, it's still a nice place to see.
Stirling Castle should be very nice, I heard, unfortunately we weren't there. And its cemetry should be remarkable, too.

In between I'd like to give you some insights in the topic of

food in Scotland

What we, as "typical (and underaged) tourists" enjoyed a lot about Scotland weren't the pubs, but the wee cafés in Old Town. Not like in Starbucks, they weren't crowded, but visited by a few people only, regular customers as you could notice and people like us. The interior decoration was alway very individual and you could see attention to detail in every corner. Every "tea shop" or café looks different and that's what makes them unique.

We tried out a few different cafés, bakeries and tea shops and they were all really nice. The waiters, the food, the ambience.

I can only advise you to at least try out one of Scotland's cafés, you won't find them anywhere else like this.
Oh, and you should really ask for scones, fudge and shortbread! These are delicious little desserts, well known and very popular in Scotland!!

Another place (beside the Elephant House) that should be on top of your list if you're a Harr Potter fan:

Alnwick Castle 

or: the Harry Potter castle

Parts of the 1st and the 2nd HP movie were filmed here, for example the scene in which the Hogwarts students are having their first Broom Flight Class.

We were given a tour by an English guide (the castle is just behind the English boarder) which was really good! - I have to concede I prefer personally guided tours to audio guided tours.
You could ask our guide any questions, his answers were always interesting, but not too long.

Here are some pictures of the castle, of course we were not only shown the set for the HP scenes, we were also told about the castle's history itself and its inhabitants.

Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take pictures of the few rooms we saw inside because they are still inhabitat by an (aristocratic? can't remember exactly) family for some weeks per year.

Another funny fact I need to tell you at this point: Our tour guide always mader jokes about the Scottish people. Whereas the Scottish are always like: "Scottish are the best! Down with the English!" - just for fun, of course... :D

For neutral people like us, it was very amusing to observe such behavior: You just need to hop behind the boarder and you'll meet different people. - Well, actually quite similar, patriotic and lovely people, only with another nationality ;)

Well, folks, I think we've come to an end. 

This is where our journey ended

I hope now you've got a few ideas of which places to visit when you're in Scotland, in and around the area of Edinburgh - and at the English boarder of course! ;)

Let me know how you liked my post :)

See you soon!

Love,

Yoko (: