Travel Review: Edinburgh, Scotland - June 2013

In June 2013 my husband and I travelled to the town of Edinburgh in sunny Scotland. We were up there for 5 days (although we could have stayed for longer). The weather was actually surprisingly good.

While in Edinburgh we tried to be a bit cultural. We attempted to pack in as much as we could into the visit. Neither of us had been to Scotland before. We did not stop long to relax!

On the Monday we got the 7:00am flight from Southampton airport. Flying with Flybe from here was very convenient and the airport has a Costa coffee - so proper sources of caffeine were thankfully available.

Upon arrival it was far to early to check into our hotel. However, the reception staff at the travelodge were more than happy to keep hold of our larger pieces of luggage. This was great as we did not have to carry them around. It was not until we arrived that we realised how close we were to the main town. While there was not an attached food restaurant, the room was surprisingly large. However, it could really have done with a sofa... It was very clean and in a fantastic spot for the price we paid (about £100 for the stay).

We visited many tourist hotspots around the town. It is well worth getting a 24hour or 48hour bus ticket for the city sight seeing bus tours. In addition to a range of commentary options - including horrible histories - it also gives you discounted access to some of the local attractions.

The National Museum of Scotland was one of the many attractions we got taken past. Having caught our attention, we jumped up and off the bus for a nose around. It is really worth a visit. This is really good for family members of all ages. There is lots of practical things to see and do. 

As you come down towards the main high street, in the direction of the Old town, looking up the hill provides a stunning view of  Edinburgh castle. It is a fascinating statue of history. Really worth a visit if you are in the local area and have a day to fill. We choose to pay a bit extra for an Audio tour. This is really worth considering. It does add a lot of time to your visit, however, the information is really well communicated and the tour is clearly marked. It is surprising how much of a history this area has. I would love to go back for a second visit. 

Edinburgh Castl, Scotland - Built on top of an extinct Volcano

We also made a visit to the Scottish Whisky experience. This was a great few hours spent learning about the process of whisky making. If you enjoy whisky, this will allow you to gain a greater understanding of how the flavours are produced and which types of Scottish whiskies you enjoy! We went for the Gold package. This was a few pounds in addition to the basic package. However, it gives you the chance to try a few additional whiskies at the end. Highly recommended that you eat something before entering! Think about budgeting a little for a bottle of whisky at the end - it is a very yummy bit of luxury. We brought a really nice bottle of 10 year old whisky for about £35 with the discount card. 

Me enjoying a glass of whisky infront of one of the largest private whisky bottle collections. 

The selection of whiskies at the bar at the end of the tour

The Scottish National Gallery is also worth a look. For one thing, the historic gallery is free to enter and you can take photos of anything that particularly catches your eye. There is a range of images to suit all tastes. They also host exhibitions - sometimes also free to enter. It can be fun, for those not normally into art, guessing the price of the work. Some can be the cost of a house (although I could not quiet understand the logic). We had to stop for a cup of tea in the cafe to calm ourselves down!

Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh - Highly worth a visit

If you are looking for somewhere to eat the Hard Rock cafe is worth a visit. However, we went in with deal and the menu offered with it was limited. The deal did also mean a reduced entry trip to the Edinburgh dungeons - so it can mean a day of your itinerary in just a few clicks. But the food was good and the atmosphere was really friendly. Highly recommend booking a table as it was packed - you can get the booking sorted when you first do the deal on the internet.

The Edinburgh Dungeons is a great way to spend a few hours. You get to hear some gruesome tales of the old city - so it will keep your teenagers informed and amused. There is one drop down ride, but the photo is really worth taking a look at!

If you need to grab something to eat there is plenty to choose from. There is also a number of pubs and a J.D. Weatherspoons in an old bank that can be accessed from Rose Street. The trick, I think, is just to have a wonder round in the first few days. You tend to un-earth some surprises!

Weatherspoons, Rose Street Edinburgh. An old bank. 

If you find yourself around the Royal Mile and want a tour of the old Edinburgh, Mercat tours is worth a look. They run both Historic and ghost walks. The tour guides really get into character and have a really easy presenting style. The ghost walk in the Edinburgh catacombs was really spooky. We highly recommend the extended tour, it adds a sit down in the 'inn' with a glass of something. It also gives you a chance to hear some more stories. Very family friendly. Don't recommend if children are under 10.  

The Royal Mile, Edinburgh

One of our best days out was with a coach company called 'Gray Line Tours'. I found them after a quick search on the internet. They picked us up from near our hotel in the morning and then their driver took us on a tour. There are a range of tours to go on. However, we choose the one that took us through the highlands and Stirling Castle. It also stopped at Lake Lomard - the biggest open expanse of water by surface area - where there is the opportunity to pay about £10 per person for a boat tour. This lasts about an hour and is well worth it if you have a coat with you. The only thing to thing about when booking the coach tour is the additional expenses of the boat tour, lunch and entry to Stirling Castle. But it was a really great experience. 

Stirling Castle, 

Highly recommend a trip up to Edinburgh. Providing you book your travel and accommodation in advance you can get yourself a relatively cheap holiday. Just avoid the Fringe festival dates as this hikes the prices up. Definitely hope to make it back up there in a couple of years. 

London Coffee Shop Musings (and why they should have a plug socket)

I'm writing this from London. The capital gives the common cafe lover more choices then they could shake a reasonably sized stick at. My hope was that I would be able to stumble across a number of cute independent cafe's that would allow me to get some writing done.

Instead, I lost a good few hours in the British National gallery and became an new fan girl of the great painter Raphael. It's also current worth making a trip as they have Van Gough's Sunflowers images (both versions). They do not let you take photos, so I of course brought the £1.99 postcard from the vendor outside the room. Daylight robbery. In Edinburgh's gallery you are allowed to take photos (with the flash off). So I'm inclined to say London is being a bit tight.

Back to the original point. Cafe's. The first cafe I stumbled upon was called 'Nightingale' and was just opposite the bus stops near Victoria Underground. It was not until I had sat down that I truly realised what I had stumbled across. The unit looks like a converted pharmacist from back in the day (I can claim no expertise in the history of pharmacies). But it looks beautiful and had a lovely crystal chandelier above the sitting customers. The food and coffee was also really good - the first time in ages I've had some decent sour bread. It was a small and rather intimate cafe. A great spot to meet a friend for a coffee. They could be completely forgiven for not having plug sockets, for example, as the tables were being filled quickly. Surprisingly, they did have free Wifi. So useful if you wanted to check bus or train times on your phone.

Nightingale Cafe, London

I quickly headed from this cafe to Trafalgar square. Even when I looked around after the National Gallery, I could still not pinpoint any other independent cafes - they all seemed to be chain or franchised brands. Disappointed, I wondered past 10 Downing Street and found my way to an underground station.

Now feeling pretty hungry, I got off at King's Cross and gave up at the first Starbucks I came across. This place was a very standard Starbucks (except for the leaking sink in the toilet).  It was also full of people using laptops, sketching and a couple of kids in the corner singing along to a Youtube Video. There was also free wifi on the premises. So it gave me the chance to work out where the hostel was I had booked for the night. There were a few scattered plug sockets, but I don't understand why they didn't have more. 

When I was studying, I found a cafe in my local Tescos which had one plug socket next to a particular table. This was the one I usually took. I'd sometimes be there most of the day and spend a fortune on coffees and food throughout. There was always something about working in the shifting environment that sparked my brain down new trails of thought.  I think many cafe's are missing out on potential revenue by not supplying more plug sockets. Especially because people so regularly need to charge up smart phones and tablets. This is something I believe is particularly important for small cafes or ones that a slightly off the beaten track. 

I'm currently sat in a Pret a Manger on Kings Road in London. It is dead apart from me and another guy (also using a laptop) - plus some dude who just wondered in.... I'm sat at a table on in the far corner of the room and the nearest plug socket is about 5 metres from me. Not very practical.

Books have been written in cafes, but we have stopped writing on Napkins and notebooks. In this new and modern place we inhabit we need to provide the tools for our creative minds to enrich us. Granted, there are some smaller venues were the ambiance would be ruined, but the larger chains of coffee shops have no excuse.

Book Review: Twisted Wing by Ruth Newman

Twisted Wing was one of my many charity shop buy bargains. It's a murder mystery story set at Cambridge University. However, the twist at the end makes it a little different to the norm.

Ruth Newman is a psychologist and uses this to great effect as a plot tool. I think I can safely say she uses her knowledge of multiple personality disorder to create a very twisted love story. The main character, Olivia, is as scared and frighted as the rest of the students. However, she has no idea about her significance to the plot. Her boyfriend gets arrested after graduation and she's shocked and horrified.

This is a fantastic murder mystery novel which uses novel plot concepts and has some great characters. Well worth a read.

Book Review: Dara O'Briain - Tickling the English

When I first told my friends I was reading a book written by a comedian I was promptly informed that comedians can't write. I have not read any other books written by comedians, but if this is the case this man is an exception to the rule.

Dara has a really easy and engaging writing style. I found this a great book to read just before going to bed. This is when I usually tend the find the time for most of my reading. He has divided his book by his tour locations and bite size chunks.

He writes the book from the point of view as an Irish immigrant and includes many examples of comedic remarks about English behaviour. Dara has also included my funny anecdotes of audience members from his tour. It's worth reading just for these if I am completely honest. The Bournemouth anecdote did not do us justice.

I have to point out that the tour travel travel plan was completely illogical. However, this was my first autobiography. It has definitely given me the confidence to pick up another. Highly recommended.

Life Hacks - Lets Clear this up. You have been lied to.

About once or twice a week I have a link pop up on my facebook feed. ‘Life Hacks for your home’, ‘Life Hacks for your kids’ etc. I can only admit that there are some awesome ideas. But how many of them will actually help you? How many of them actually meet the definition of a ‘Life Hack’?

Taking to Google to define a ‘Life Hack’ seemed the most obvious choice of starting points…

Life Hack

Informal Noun

Definition: A strategy or technique adopted to manage one’s time and daily activities in a more efficient way.

If we go by this definition, I think there are a number of bloggers who have completely misinterpreted ‘Life Hacks’. Now do not get me wrong, I do not claim to be an inventor of life hacks, but I am a whizz with a search engine.

Our first visit is to the website that got my thinking – it appeared on my facebook feed earlier.

Viralnova.com

Now this website got off to a pretty good start. Using a post-it note is a pretty good fix to clean your keyboard. 

I am a bit of a post-it hoarder and both my home and work desks have a large number of these things hidden in corners of desk drawers. So using these to clean your desk saves you going out to buy something specific to clean and collects all the dust on the sticky end – so very efficient.

Again, idea number three – using paper clips to easily find the end of your tape – is also a pretty smart idea. It saves wasting tape through folding over the corner and we all have spare paperclips around the desk. There are also another few ideas (7/9/10/12/16/18/20/21/22) that do fit into ‘Life Hack category’.

However, some of the ideas create more work for the potential ‘Life Hackee’. Idea number 2 is great for someone who loves recycling. Fashioning your used toilet roll tubes into seed pots does not help you manage your time effectively. It will only make additional work for you. My granddad saves time planting seeds into individual pots by filling an old plastic box with compost and adding seeds. He is nearly 90 and apparently has a better grasp of ‘Life Hack’. Please save your cardboard tubes for idea number 7 (cables lose in a drawer is a nightmare!).

The status of ‘pretty clever idea’ can go to ideas 4, 5, 13 (although standard clothes pegs are cheaper to use than going out and buying trouser hangers), 15 (any sealed plastic container will work just as well… or perhaps recycle an old sweet jar…) and 23. Ideas 6 and 17 are awesome interior design ideas. However, it would be just as easy to stick a blob of blue-tack on your wall then the idea with a tennis ball. The makeup brush holder looks fab with the coffee beans, but it would be cheaper and easier to use sand or something (or just a jar?). Hack 8 – charging your phone in aeroplane mode. In this mode it can’t send or receive messages. It will charge quicker (as less battery is being used), but the only feasible benefit is if your phone takes AGES to turn off and on again. Number 19: using a lazy susan in the fridge is pretty clever, but not very space efficient. What will you do with the corners? 

Note: How to tie a tie (14) is a not a life hack. That is something I had to learn when I was 4. It is just something you need to know how to do. Like ironing (although my husband brought me a trouser press as I end up adding creases with an iron….). Life Skill, not Life Hack.

So a quick Google search lead me to a facebook page (1000 Life Hacks) that is dedicated to supposedly posting ingenious ideas to make your life easier. Having had a look through, there are some pretty good ideas- such as putting lemon or lime juice in shampoo to stop your hair going frizzy. Sounds pretty cool – if anyone can vouch for this please get in touch.

However, at the heart of it, it basically a mixture of ideas that people have recycled from other people. The posts alternate between advice, scare mongering and some really good design ideas

.#1219 – If you listen to music frequently it will reduce the risk of a brain tumour over the course of your life – (http://1000lifehacks.com/post/79589990691)

This really annoyed me. Using ‘science’ to scaremonger is complete pet hate of mine. If they want to post this, they need to post the research. This post had over 100 likes. People, if you see things on the internet it does not mean that it is true.

When I look for ‘Life Hacks’, I want ideas that will actually make my life easier. I want them to fit the definition. Internet users, bloggers are using this term because they know it will lead to you searching their page and seeing their content. Do not be fooled.

Book Review: The Cuckoo's Calling - Robert Galbraith AKA J.K Rowling

The shadowy figure on the front cover should have always been a hint that Robert Galbraith was actually a pseudonym for J.K. Rowling. This was all found out by studying the linguistics of the book in comparison to her previous work. Respect to whoever did the detective work, although someone did also manage to spill the beans as well. 

I found this book a little bit slow at the beginning. However, it was really worth sticking with this book through until the end. J.K Rowling is particularly good at tieing all the strings together at the end. This book is no exception. The ending completely took me by surprise. 

The main character is a war veteran turned private detective - Mr Cameron Strike. The shadowy figure represents him really well. Thankfully this book is going to become a series as you do not fully understand him by the end of the book. When you first meet him, he has just out of a volcanic relationship. He is completely bankrupt as he has been fully dependant on his wife. 

Robin is the lady that joins his office as a temp. She is newly engaged and really excited. However, she suddenly finds that her new boss is not in the best of moods to share her happy news. Having had to follow her partner to London, she's been forced to look for temp work while looking for a "proper job". 

This is another mysterious death plot line. The dead woman was a glamorous supermodel who plunged to her death from a balcony. However, her adoptive brother does not believe it and comes to Strike looking for answers. 

The ending of this book takes you completely by surprise. Highly recommend this book. It is worth pursuing this through to the end. Have added the Silkworm (the Sequel) onto my to-read list. However, it could be a while before I get round to it. My selves are rather full... 

Travel Review: Alton Towers, England

A weekend away to Alton towers. One of our friends did the drive up on the Thursday night. This was a four hour process which eventually ended at a travelodge. The cheapest way to find a hotel is to have a means of independent transport to the themepark. This allows you to stay a little further out and means you have a few extras £'s for souvenir pictures. 

For the park we brought a two day ticket. This was good value for money as the second day only added an extra £5ish to the price of one day. Two days is really required to be able to cover the ground in this park. Especially as when the park is busy as the queues to some of the more popular rides can take over an hour. This might be worth considering if you were planning on bringing younger children. 

If you get bored of queueing, the restored gardens are beautiful. I was very surprised to find a place like that in a theme park. In terms of concentration of guests, there is a serious reduction here. Peace and quiet!

We managed to get on all the big rides. Air was amazing and you go around the ride facing the floor head first. It does actually feel like you are flying - and a little bit less frightening for those who are a little more nervous! Nemisis was great and in an area of the park which takes longer for the guests to move to. It was probably one of the shortest queues. 

The cheapest way of buying ride photos is to buy a 4 photo offer. It allows you to record the number of the pictures of the different booths and buy them when you have made your selection. This allows you to be a bit choosy and not buy them on impulse. 

NOTE: the river rapids ride will get you wet. Either waterproof your bags or at least bring a decent waterproof!

Travel Review: London, London Eye, Aquarium and lonesome wonderings

Last weekend I spent a few days up in London on my own. I was armed with a camera and a combo ticket for the London eye and London Aquarium.

There is something about London I have always found magical. It is filled with office blocks with hidden rooms and important goings on. This fills me with a sort of anticipated energy every time I visit.

This time I thought I would take the opportunity to make the trip on the London eye. I found a really cheap combo trip online - about £35 for both tickets (http://www.londoneye.com/Schools/TicketsandOffers/Default.aspx). After finding some cheap coach tickets (http://www.nationalexpress.com/home.aspx) and a cheap hotel room (http://www.hotwire.com/) the entire weekend only set me back about £150! A pretty cheap weekend for london.

It was an early start. I got onto a coach at 8:00am Saturday morning. The tickets were cheap and a guarranted comfy seat meant I was pleased with my choice of travel.

The London eye is something you should do at least once. If you can time the weather so the sky is clear the view you can see goes on for miles! However, it is really worth checking the weather report the night before. It allows you to time your visit to get the best views. Remember to ensure you leave enough time to queue! I was in the queue for about an hour. There is no covering so highly recommend bringing waterproofs!

It gives visitors the opportunity to see all the iconic sites around London. You will gain a perspective that you cannot hope to get otherwise. What I found really striking was that all the separate districts of London were suddenly all laid out in-front of me. It was a bit like a patchwork quilt. It was relatively easy to get which bits of London were 'old' and which 'new'.

If you do nothing else you will need to bring a camera.

After a quick lunch at the local fast food restaurant (if you want a seat I advise moving a little away from the Thames). I made my way into the Aquarium. Thankfully, having brought my ticket online, I was able to skip past the hour long queue for tickets. Although, the wait is seriously worth it.

The Aquarium is another must-see if you're in London. There is a huge range of ocean life. The sharks and penguins were a particular crowd pleaser. My favourite displays were the jellyfish. The backlight displays made them particually striking. I highly recommend ensuring you look in all the tanks. Two small boys were so excited by the penguins in the next tank that they nearlly missed the two huge Star fish in the Artic display. They were neally half a meter across!

It took me a good few hours to go through the different displays. It is really great value for money.

Really looking forward to my next trip up to London. There is so much still to explore.