Berlin to Nîmes (via Prague)

Been a while since we've done one of these, so catching up a bit. Currently relaxing in southern France with a very sniffly and sick Tom lying next to me. He's feeling quite under the weather, so we're getting lots of rest at the moment.

In Berlin we wandered about enjoying the very impressive nature of the city. The focus is on big epic buildings lining the main street - makes one feel very small. We saw the Holocaust Memorial, the Topography of Terror (remnants of the Wall and a detailed history of the Nazi party), plus all the contents of their Museum Island, which is a collection of five museums of antiquities, art and general history. We got to see the Bust of Nefertiti, which I was very excited about, plus a lot of Greek and Roman ruins and statues. All in all, Berlin impressed the hell out of us. It didn't hurt that our hostel was utterly fantastic, with good people, good cheap food, and a good location. We did experience it during soccer though ... my god. The bar downstairs had screens to show the game, and it was literally packed full. We had to show our keycards to be let in, and shoving was required to get to our rooms. Soccer is a horrible thing.

After Berlin we got the train to Prague, fabled land of the cheap exchange rate. Things were distinctly cheaper than the rest of Europe, as they're on their own koruna (crown) instead of the euro. It wasn't quite bargain prices, but it was definitely preferable. There we saw the Prague Castle (less of a traditional defensive castle, more of a palace kind of thing). It had one of the most beautiful cathedrals we've encountered yet, with lavish stained glass and an unbelievable amount of gold and silver. Prague in general is huge on the precious metals, especially as they used to mine silver around the area. The buildings there are uniformly lovely; it's all very old and ornate. We indulged in a massage parlour there and I got my sore feet and back massaged while Tom enjoyed having fish nibble his footsies. We also took advantage of their cheaper shipping and sent even more things home to Australia, as we're done with cold weather now (hopefully)!

Next it was back into Germany, this time to Munich. Munich was less impressive than Berlin, and more expensive (somehow, shouldn't capitals be the most expensive places?). We wandered around the city centre and saw all the lovely old buildings, enjoyed the markets, and then cancelled all tourist activity to go see The Avengers at a cinema there dedicated to films in English. It turned out to be a fantastic choice.

Our second day there we day-tripped out to Hohenschwangau, home to two very lovely castles. One was the famous Neuschwanstein Castle (the one that inspired the Disney Castle) and the other is the one that inspired its creation, the Hohenschwangau Castle. They're both good examples of the mentalities at work - the builder of Hohenschwangau was inspired by medieval knights and knighthood, and thus decided to build a "traditional" medieval castle on the site of another medieval building that was knocked down. His interpretation was a bit liberal, but it certainly rubbed off onto his son, who took the obsession further and focused on epic sagas and fairytales. Quite frankly he was a nutter, and was mysteriously killed off in his forties, unmarried and childless. The castle was left less than half-built, but what is there is so utterly extravagant and over-the-top it seems insane. Very beautiful though, and the area around it was gorgeous - it's up in the mountains, about two hours by train out of Munich, with snow on the mountain tops, waterfalls, and lovely fields. Definitely worth the day-trip!

Paris was our next destination, the legendary city of lights and love and all that crap. To be honest, Paris was the city of long lines for attractions and of expensive everything. We ended up doing remarkably little there if only because paying £9.50 for every single attraction seemed a bit much. We wandered around and saw all the usual sights like the Arc de Triomphe and such, and tripped out to Versailles, however it turns out all the buildings are closed on Monday and we couldn't get in anyway! But we were able to wander the gardens and see the palace at least, so we saved money and spent it all on delicious French food instead. On our last night we made the commitment to go up the Eiffel Tower, which was well worth it. They'd had an incident that closed down one of the ticket booths and lifts, so waiting times were about two hours. Due to it being late at night and having rained earlier we got a bit lucky and waited just over an hour. The view from the top was phenomenal, though I was freaking out the whole way up about the height. Every hour the tower does a light show of flashing sparkles for five minutes, so we got to see that a few times.  All in all, much of Paris was lovely, but it smelled bad and was ridiculously expensive.

We're now down in Nîmes, which is very relaxing in comparison to rush-rush Paris. Things are normally priced here, and it's all sandstone and terracotta roofs - very Mediterranean. We haven't pushed ourselves much, just getting lots of sleep (twelve hours yesterday, including a very big nap) and enjoying the privacy of a double room, which is the first time since Kiruna! They also do hot chip baguettes here, it's kind of awesome. It's a nice place to wander and soak up, and it doesn't ask very much from you.

Tomorrow we're off to Barcelona to meet up with Heather and see the sights, then it's Italy, Greece, and home to Sydney!

Dusseldorf to Berlin (via Kiruna, Sweden)

So we're down in Berlin now, with a stable wi-fi connection (first time in a week or so). We hung around in Dusseldorf for a few days, checking out their great CBD and eating more waffles and sausages. I recommend checking out the pictures of the CBD on Facebook - they recruited an architect to just do a bunch of buildings down there, and they're definitely not the normal type of designs you see in offices.

After Dusseldorf we headed east to Dortmund, which was pretty much dedicated to Dortmund Zoo for us. It's a great zoo, focusing on South American animals and with a fair few hot-houses and great environments for them. They had orangutans, capybaras, giant (and not giant) anteaters, an otter house, nutrias, armadillos, flamingos, a goat petting zoo, and of course SLOTHS. That was pretty much the entire reason I dragged us to Dortmund, and I was not disappointed. They were eating as we got there, and afterwards they worked off the calories clambering around the branches above our heads. One was young and sprightly, and friendly enough that he happily lent down to touch hands and cameras that were near him. Thus I came to shake hands with a sloth and can now die happily. We also had our first bad hostel experience in Dortmund, with three assholes deciding to come in drunk in the morning - the first at 5am who just threw his mattress from the top bunk to the floor and literally fell onto it, shoes and all, and the other two at 6am who just whispered loudly with bathroom lights on. Had to happen some time.

In Dortmund we booked our tickets to and from Kiruna, which was quite the hassle. The first lady declared we couldn't get tickets to Kiruna at all, then bothered to check the system and ask for help from a colleague, and what do you know! We got tickets to Kiruna via Copenhagen and Stockholm. Unfortunately we got into Copenhagen at 10.14pm and left for Stockholm at 6.12am, and with only a day or so's notice had no chance in hell of finding a place to stay for those hours. On the same day, our ATM cards suddenly stopped working altogether, and everywhere in Copenhagen declared they needed PIN for credit cards, not signatures (which neither of us knew ... awesome). That fixed itself at 1am, so we charged into the McDonalds in the station and camped out there for the next five hours watching the drunk Danish. Turns out Danish really like to drink. The rest of our trip was much less eventful, and we had some nice Swedish guys for company on the trip from Stockholm, who explained that the Danish really like drinking in large quantities.

When we got to Kiruna - snow EVERYWHERE. Seriously, one the way up there were the pretty snow-topped pines and all that - Kiruna was just sheer snow and ice with sticks of trees. It's above the Arctic Circle and the highest city in Sweden, and pretty much lives around 0 degrees. During the day with the sun the ice and snow gradually melt a bit, and then overnight it just freezes back up again to make horribly slippery ice. Due to this there is gravel spread over all the streets and sidewalks so people can walk without needing ice spikes. Even so, it can get a bit hairy, especially for Australians who aren't used to walking on ice!

We had intended to walk out of town to see the Northern Lights, but by about 12.30am sunlight was still lingering around, and it was about -5 outside, so we scrapped that plan and just slept.=, catching up on a few bad nights sleep. We headed off the next day after doing more laundry (it rules our life) and headed back down, this time ending up in Berlin. The trains were easier this time, though the train from Kiruna decided that running late was a great idea, making us almost miss our change-over to Copenhagen. Heads would have rolled. But this time we had two nights in sleeper trains, which we've adjusted to quite easily, and got to Berlin at 4am yesterday.

That day was pretty much spent sitting in the hostel feeling horrible due to lack of sleep and showers. Once we could check in to the hostel we cleaned up, settled in, and slept for about twelve hours without bothering about that silly dinner stuff. Then today, actual sight-seeing! We wandered into central Berlin and saw some Wall memorials, plus the Brandenburg Gate and lots of lovely miscellaneous buildings. Then it decided to start pissing down rain (accompanied by thunder) and we called off the tourist stuff early and came back to the hostel with some donuts.

So now, we sit here drinking and generally relaxing. We've got another two nights here, then off to Prague! Until next time.

Maastricht to Dusseldorf

So we spent a week or so in the Netherlands, and today entered Germany, Land of Beer. We've only been here a few hours and already Tom had a schnitzel and pint, and I had a big ol' sausage.

Maastricht was extraordinarily pretty, and also extraordinarily stocked with waffles and icecream. It has not been a healthy holiday. We wandered around the old town square and took in all the nice things, then headed off the next day. Seriously though: best gelato ever. I would go back just for that gelato. And waffles with chocolate inside. INSIDE.

Next stop was Amsterdam for a few days. We made it to our hotel in one piece and settled in, and I noted there seemed to be a party or something going on outside. Then at 1.30am, a loud boom, and a van is aflame. We checked it out later, it's well and truly fucked - photo on Facebook of the interior, as one of the windows was smashed in to light the fire. We found out later talking to a barkeep that that suburb, Osdorp, is well known for crime, and various international bombings are often traced there. Fun! But we never had any issues ourselves, at least.

The next day we wandered into Amsterdam Central, and got a good feel for the place. It's definitely a city of contradictions in the centre - that's the oldest part of the city, and most of the buildings are old, quaint, askew, and quite pretty. But they're all covered up with tacky signs and advertisements for sex shops, weed, souvenirs, etc. It's not a bad thing necessarily, and I really enjoyed it, but it's certainly strange. We had a wander around the red light district, though it wasn't fully fired up by that point. There's a certain point I was fascinated by, near the Oude Kerk (Old Church, basically). It's the oldest church in Amsterdam, and ringed by red light hookers out on display. A very weird contrast, but very suited to the city.

The next day we went on a walking tour, which proved to be a fantastic idea. The tour guide (another Australian) took us through a bunch of spots we never would have found ourselves, got us some cheese, and generally taught us a bunch about the city, including why all the buildings look like they're slowly falling over. We ended up not going to any museums beyond the Sex Museum, and spent some of the evening wandering around the red light district to see it properly at night. Despite some recommendations we decided to skip the sex show experience, as to be honest it sounded uninteresting and ethically questionable. Definitely an enjoyable city though!

We headed down to Eindhoven over the Easter weekend, which was definitely a very different city for Europe. It's been destroyed and burned down various times over the centuries, and thus has almost no historical buildings. It's a very contemporary city, with a big focus on modern design and industrial production. As an example, it's city symbol is a smiling light bulb, as it was home to Philips for decades. Despite this, it's also got some beautiful canals and gardens, which we happily wandered around for a few hours. One of the things we've noticed about Europe - everyone has dogs! I suppose a lot less people have apartments, more townhouse/terrace style places, which means a yard to have a dog in.

Today we departed Eindhoven for Dusseldorf, heading back through Amsterdam (though we found out that wasn't entirely necessary ... stupid train sites not being in English) and arrived in Dusseldorf, whereupon it slowly worked up to rain. We still ventured into the city centre to have lunch and see the Old Town, which has over 260 bars and such places in one square kilometre. It really is just a mass of places to drink!

After we're done here it's on to Dortmund for me to see sloths in the zoo (SQUEEEEE) and then up to Sweden for the Northern Lights!

Belgium and Luxembourg

We've officially worn ourselves out in Luxembourg today. For such a small town, we still managed to get a bit lost and wander a lot!

We arrived in Brussels on Monday and got our first experience in a country where English wasn't the main language (shock, horror!). Most people have understood or spoken it just fine, but the writing has been difficult - at train stations, menus, exhibits, that kind of stuff. But we're managing just fine, and French is pretty easy to decipher with some attention to detail.

Our first impression of Brussels wasn't very good ... they have public urinals set up around the train station and thus the entire place just stank of piss. We managed to get pretty lost until we got internet access, then figured out how to get to our hotel - which turned out to be an epic quest that took us some time. The place was cheap and comfortable, but MY GOD was it out of the way!! Brussels turned out to be about 75% unimpressive and 25% gorgeous. The Great Place in the city centre has grand old buildings that take your breath away, and we found a few other nice spots as well. The rest looked shabby, smelled bad and wasn't very appealing.

We tripped up to Bruge after that, and that was quite a change! The hotel was pretty much next to the train station, and central Bruge was across the road from that. Every part of Bruge just oozes old-time charm, from the frequent horses and carts to the lack of advertising to the cobblestone streets. It's all lovely, and we could have spent days just wandering around and soaking in how nice it all was. Lots of churches, museums, and just generally charming places to see. Also so, so much chocolate and waffles ... pretty sure Belgium has made us a lot heavier than we were coming in! We also met a random Australian who is studying in Rotterdam, Rae, who gave us a few tips on things to see and not to see, which was great! Had a good chat over a complimentary beer from the only Bruge brewery left. They run very educational and fun tours through the actual operational brewery! Tom went up the bell tower (alone - 366 stairs, I opted for a pot of tea in a nearby cafe instead) and we generally agreed it's 'like a fookin' fairytale'.

After our two nights in Bruge we headed down to Luxembourg, though not without mishaps. The existence of a station in Brussels called "Brussel-Luxembourg" (WHY, WHY) caused a problem with us getting on the wrong train and me realising it half an hour later. Unfortunately to people who don't speak English as a first language, asking if 'this train goes to Luxembourg' can be misinterpreted in Brussels. But eventually we made it down, and wow - such a different impression from Brussels! Everything looked pristine but classic, just like a historic city with the money to stay contemporary would. The city is on a bed of sandstone, and it's had some brilliant effects - the river through the city has carved a huge gorge in it, so there's a drastic cliff between the High Town and Low Town, as they call it. It's quite amazing to see! Also a lot of the buildings are made from sandstone, and kept very clean, so everything looked very bright and happy throughout the entire town. It's a wealthy country, and it really shows in the people and buildings (and menu prices).

Tomorrow we're off to Maastricht in the Netherlands, so another new country for us! The Eurail passes have been very useful and worry-free so far, and we've mostly been able to figure out the various public transport systems without a worry. And without the car, it's much cheaper!

Anyway, to sleep - until next time! Photos being posted on Facebook now.

Ireland, Wales and London again!

We're currently lying in bed at midday in London, being very relaxed and comfortable. This hotel is really bad for waking up; our room has no windows, so it stays dark forever and you lose all track of time. That plus we're really lazy.

From Derry we drove down to Galway, which was just beautiful. We stayed at a lovely B&B there and headed to Quay St for dinner. This street is basically the place to go at night in Galway; it's nothing but restaurants, pubs, and a few nice odd shops, all lit up and looking lovely. The next day was unfortunately quite rainy, but we headed out to the Connemara area anyway and saw a little waterfall, a beach in the middle of Irish hills, and some other lovely sights. The rain spoiled it a bit, but felt quite fitting for the environment we were in.

After that we headed down past Limerick to visit Knockaderry and Newcastlewest, the home towns for Tom's boss and his wife. We passed through one particular tiny town that was just bursting with history - old buildings everywhere, abbeys, all of it! Definitely an area we'd like to re-visit. We spent the night at a hotel in Cappoquin after almost dying to get there ... the fog on the roads was incredibly thick, on winding tight roads going up a mountainside, with hairpins thrown in for giggles. Not. Fun. But we rested up nicely and got on the way the next day to Waterford, which we honestly didn't do much in! Had breakfast, saw a church briefly, then drove on to Dublin.

We were in Dublin for St Patrick's Day, and there were tourists everywhere. Probably more of them than Irish! We found a semi-decent spot for the parade - we could see most things - and watched the weirdness. The theme to this year was Science, and the parade floats aimed to (kind of) answer some basic queries such as 'why do we dream', 'how is electricity made', etc. The answers were a bit weird though, as the photos and videos of the float might indicate!

We hung around after the parade for a bit to see the entire city centre become a wasteland of drunks and weirdos, see a shoplifter get forcibly stopped, watch people almost get run over, etc. We then decided this wasn't really for us, got a bus home and some Chinese takeaway and watched a movie in the car. Bah humbug.

Next day we rested up a bit and did basically nothing with our day apart from laundry. Monday was our day of departure, but first we saw the Guinness Storehouse brewery. Quite fascinating and well done actually. Then off on the ferry to Holyhead in Wales! It was relatively uneventful, and we stayed in a lovely little independent apartment there for the night. Then we headed down to Caernarfon and saw the castle, which was utterly brilliant. A very well preserved ruin, as in nothing is inhabited but it very clearly has been well kept. To anyone reading who knows Game of Thrones, it felt very much like Winterfell might. The town itself was fantastic, with lots of quaint little lanes and locals speaking the Welsh language out and about. Wales in general seems very, very attached to its cultural heritage, more so than Ireland or Scotland. The north is even more concentrated on this, with huge amounts of castles built and preserved, a very strong use of the Welsh language, and a lot of Welsh patriotism everywhere. In Ireland they used the traditional Irish language on their official signage with English translations, but you didn't see much Irish on shopfronts or non-official writings. Wales had Welsh on basically every store or piece of writing anywhere - very charming, and a very silly language to read!

After Caernafon we had lunch in Machynlleth and stayed the night in Cardiff. The next day we saw Cardiff properly, including the lovely St Fagans open-air museum. It's basically a collection of old buildings such as a 'castle' - really a manor house - all restored and with original furnishings and items, showing how life used to be in Wales. We also saw a bit of the Roman history at Caerleon, which I desperately wanted to see due to it being used in a much beloved book series of mine! After Cardiff we went on to Cricklade, a little town about an hour north of Stonehenge. We stayed the night in a pub/hotel that has GOT to be the most askew building ever. Once above the ground floor everything tilts very strangely, which amused us no end. Great place though, filled with charming old pubs and such.

The next day was Bath, which was just beautiful. The Roman baths there are quite well preserved, and have been fixed up and expanded upon several times over the centuries. The town itself was beautiful, as they've evidently kept to the Roman dignity of buildings and prospered well over the years. I highly recommend that one to anyone travelling Britain. After that we travelled to Salisbury for dinner and stayed the night outside Amesbury, ready to hit up Stonehenge in the morning.

We got there in time for a nice breakfast, and then did the walk around Stonehenge. It really is a wonderful sight to see, and to imagine fully put together. A lot of history and speculation going hand in hand too. After that it was back to London, to return the rental car and check into our hotel for another few days. We met up with Emma for dinner and The Hunger Games (good movie) then rested up before doing Windsor Castle and Legoland the next day.

After oversleeping a bit we headed out and caught the changing of the guard at Windsor, and toured the grounds. The State Apartments were closed, which we guessed are the nice official rooms inside, but as that shaved £10 off the entry price we were completely okay with that. It's a lovely castle, utterly huge and well maintained, with beautiful gardens and artifacts just everywhere. They also had a Diamond Jubilee exhibit there of photos of the Queen throughout her life, which was actually quite good. After that we got the bus to Legoland, whereupon Tom exploded with glee at being surrounded by Lego and Star Wars at the same time. Turned out that weekend was celebrating the opening of the Lego Star Wars exhibit, and people in costume were overruning the park and generally being awesome. We went on a rollercoaster and got wet on a white water kind of ride, and generally got to see lots of cool things and be annoyed by lots of little kids. Tom pretty much lost his mind with happiness the whole time!

Anyway, by the time I'm done writing this it's almost the end of our last full day in London, which has been spent doing very little - more laundry, and discovering the Brick Lane/Spitalfield markets, which it turns is Hipster Central here. We kind of just turned a corner and BAM, hundreds and hundreds of hipsters swarming the road and selling produce, clothes, foods, just everything. We avoided that on the return.

Tomorrow, we get the train to Brussels and begin the mainland leg of the journey! Photos will be up on Facebook when possible; currently the internet here is so bad Facebook won't even consider the possibility of uploading. Ouch.

Glaswegian Adventures + Northern Ireland

Our time in Scotland is done, and I write this from our B&B in Londonderry/Derry (depends on who you ask). It's been an interesting couple of days!

On Wednesday we wandered Glasgow with Heather, our friend who now resides there (another Australian). We did a spot of shopping and got nice proper hiking shoes, saw the city centre, and Tom experienced seaweed beer! The next day we headed up to the Highlands, Inverness in particular. There we did a lovely walk around Loch Einlan (with its own little ruin on an island) and saw the Highlands Wildlife Park, which had an awesome little safari feature. We saw a polar bear! Having him in an enclosure near some deer seemed mean; the deer and he were just staring each other down. We got back on Friday and went to see The Dark Crystal, which was both awesome and a hoot. I think everyone forgot how often the Chamberlain makes his weird 'hrrrrrrmnn!' sound.

Saturday was an incredibly lazy day, which wasn't originally planned but was in fact awesome. We did do a bit of Glasgow sightseeing, wandering around to the Kelvingrove Museum and seeing some of the university architecture. Heather made us incredibly awesome pork and apple sausages! Turns out UK sausages are far superior to Australian ones. We were going to head out to Glasgow comedy club The Stand, but tickets were sold out :( Instead we went drinking and dominated the jukebox!

Sunday we made a day trip to Edinburgh and went to see the Zoo. This turned out to be a fantastic decision due to the huge number of awesome penguins. We also got cute monkeys, lots of kickass predators, and many more. We went to Edinburgh Castle afterwards, but it wasn't taking any more people that day. So instead I got a new Scotland pin for my satchel and we had a delightful early dinner before tripping back to Glasgow and going to see The Presidents of the United States of America (band, obviously). They w;ere actually pretty fucking awesome and fun, and played their entire first album.

Monday we sadly left bid Heather and Glasgow farewell and traveled down to Cairnryan for the ferry over to Belfast. This was done at the most breakneck pace we could manage due to the need to check on before 11am and our big delay getting to an internet cafe to print out the confirmation. We had accepted we were probably going to fail, and turned up at 11.10am, only to be told this was fine! I haven't been that relieved in a long time. We chilled out on the ferry for a few hours - which was pleasantly calm, after being warned we'd probably get seasick - and then popped off to Belfast.

Belfast and much of what we've seen of Northern Ireland can probably be best described as "grim". There are some lovely buildings such as the Town Hall (with a great exhibit on Belfast's history) and the Victoria Square shopping centre, but much of the back streets and buildings are very much damaged and vandalised. While everyone was quite friendly, the town itself just doesn't look very welcoming.

After poking around there for a few hours and seeing a movie we drove up to Coleraine for dinner. Turns out at 9pm not much is open in Coleraine! We had one of those genuine small-town experiences were strangers walk into a bar and every head in the place turns to look. Everyone was friendly though and we discovered garlic fries - FUCKING EXCELLENT - at a local 'Chinese' restaurant. We stayed the night in the van up near the Giant's Causeway and went to see that early this morning. It was great fun and makes you feel like a kid, clambering over all the rocks. Once that was done we came to Derry and did some of the tourist things - walked around the still-standing city walls (left over from the 1600s), saw a museum about the history of Bloody Sunday and civil conflict in Derry, saw a few lovely churches, and then came out to the B&B with our very chatty hosts.

So there's a lot of activity summarised very, very quickly!

London to Glasgow

Alright, doing a proper update to this thing! We left London 2nd March and arrived in Glasgow on the 6th March. We drove through a lot of little towns and stayed in a few bigger ones, and generally loved it! I'll go through town by town:

Oxford: we drove up here and stayed in a caravan park overnight, and had a delightful pub dinner - two fish and chips for £7! All the drinks here are in pints and wonderfully cheap, from about £2 - £4 for your average beers and ciders. The next day we tripped in and saw a few campuses of the Oxford University (turns out there's 42) and wandered around the Ashmolean Museum looking at very old things for a fair while.

Nottingham: this place was just awesome, though very gimmicky with Robin Hood stuff. We arrived there late in the day but managed to get into the last tour around the Galleries of Justice, which was a fantastic attraction. It's a tour through the Nottingham Courthouse and prison underneath, with character actors and lots of information on jail-life and shipping to Australia (which was weird). We ended up staying in a hotel at the last minute, as the caravan park reception closed early and we decided fuck it, we needed a shower and a warm room. The van is great for travel, but the duvet can't keep your face warm when it gets to zero!
The next day we headed to the City of Caves, a huge range of man-made caves under Nottingham. There are up to 1000 years old from the first settlement in the town, and were used for bomb shelters, shelter for criminals, tanneries, and kinds of fun drunken past-times. Nottingham likes to drink. After that we headed up to Sherwood Forest in the pouring rain and traipsed to the Major Oak, a massive tree there. It's 10m around, largely hollow and lovely to look at. We didn't linger too long due to the rain and mud, but we did see a squirrel!

Lincoln: owner of a very beautiful cathedral. We turned up there too late to get in and instead braved the utterly FREEZING winds to walk around and look at it, then sought refuge in a local pub for dinner. We stayed road-side that night (and kind of regretted it due to the intense cold) and went to the Lincoln Cathedral the next day. It's honestly one of the most beautiful buildings I've ever seen, and with restoration would probably be as lovely as St Pauls in London.

Scarborough: the same day we went through Scarborough briefly. We did a spot of shopping for some cold weather gear, wandered along the beach-front (English beaches are hilarious) and then buggered off to Whitby!

Whitby: probably the favourite of this leg of the trip. Whitby is a small town with next to no chain stores, no real cinema, and a lot of charm. We stayed in the best B&B of all time with the nicest hosts possible, and had a fantastic seafood dinner at The Magpie Cafe. Turns out magpies in England are pretty little things and Australian magpies are a whole different species. Whitby also has a fantastic Abbey, but unfortunately it was closed over this period so we could only admire from afar. But we did get to feed ponies, so it all balances out.

We also briefly stopped in Penrith for lunch, but to honest there's not much to say there - old English buildings, but not so nice as to be exceptional. Tom didn't like the cheese on his panini, if anyone cares.

So now we're in Glasgow, which outdoes Melbourne for changeable weather from what we've seen so far. It's moved between overcast, raining, and blinding sunlight every few minutes, and even had sleet that almost was snow for a while there. We're staying with Heather in her shared apartment and spent the first day wandering and doing some shopping - we all got proper hiking shoes - and tomorrow are tripping up to the Scottish Highlands!

So that's that - photos on Facebook :)