Italian adventure

I guess the easiest thing is to just start from the beginning...



We got into Pisa at 10:30 pm and set out to try and find our way to our hotel. We decided a taxi would be easier than trying to figure out which bus would take us there.We stood near the taxi line for a few minutes sort of in shock of being in a country where English is not the first language. This was the first time being in that situation for both of us. We felt silly trying to say things in Italian but you could tell people appreciated the effort.
The hotel was a three minute drive from the airport but ended up costing 9 euros. Most of that was a service charge that is tacked on to most things in Italy. I would recommend finding another mode of transportation if you are ever going there. Our hotel was pretty nice and right beside the train station, which is why we chose it. Once in our room we read through the Florence section in our Italy book to figure out what our plan of action would be the next day. Our room had nice shutters opening onto a little balcony. We took a few pictures opening our Italian shutters onto our Italian balcony with our gorgeous Italian view -- a palm tree, a road and some train tracks.

It was raining when we woke up, which was quite disappointing. We were hoping to see some nice Tuscan countryside on the train from Pisa to Florence but because it was rainy and overcast it was nothing spectacular. It wasn't all because of the rain though; it seemed like the train tracks went through the ghettos of Italy. We did see some nice houses on hills (Italy is a lot more hilly than I was expecting) surrounded by Cyprus trees.
Once in Florence we found our hostel, dropped our bags off and went out to explore the sights. The first thing we came across was the San Lorenzo Market which is a street market filled with stalls selling mostly stuff made from leather. There were a lot of belts, bags and wallets. They were also selling the typical tourist things like t-shirts, pictures and mini David statues (Amy wanted to buy said statue but I told her it was too tacky!). I bought three Italia t-shirts as my souvenirs. I normally wouldn't buy three t-shirts of the same place but they had a deal going on that was too good to pass up! The had a selection of shirts that were one for 8 Euros, two for 10 or three for 12. I had picked out two and Amy was going to get one but she couldn't find one that she liked. Well, I wasn't going to buy only two when I could get another for 2 Euros! So, I ended up with three t-shirts.
We had a map of the city but mostly just ended up walking around taking pictures of whatever we happened to pass. So we weren't expecting to see the Duomo when we did. We were walking along a narrow street when we turned the corner and BAM! there it was. I turned the corner first and even yelled "whoa!" right in front of an old couple because I was so shocked to see it. It's size is shocking but mostly it was the contrast in the colours of the buildings around it. Most of the buildings in Florence are done in yellows and oranges but the Duomo is white, pale pink and green. This was the only building we went inside, mostly because it was the only free one! It was quite dark inside so we couldn't get good pictures, but we did happen to get some of the paintings on the dome. Construction started on the cathedral in 1296...1296! isn't that incredible!?!?! The dome is what makes this cathedral so famous. It is self-supported and was built without scaffolding. You can climb to the top of the dome, but we both decided after the four flights of stairs we had to climb to reach our hostel, that the 450 or so steps to the top were not doable. However, we'll use the fact that it was overcast and it wouldn't have been a great view anyways as our excuse :)


After the Duomo we got our first taste of gelato. Before we left we read up on how to tell if the gelato was homemade or not. You are supposed to check out the colour of the pistachio flavour and if it is a lime green it is not homemade. Apparently, sometimes they put food colouring in it to make it a brighter green colour, but if it is made au naturale it is a darker green. With that in mind, we wandered around (there is a gelato shop around every corner) until we found a shop with the appropriate pistachio colour. We got two flavours each, Amy got pistachio and strawberry and I got coffee chocholate chip and ferraro rocher. Delicious! They all tasted exactly like the real thing. We got gelato three more times on our trip (we couldn't resist!) and the flavours were banana, coconut x2 (it was that good!), panna cotta, coffee and lemon.

The rest of the day we wandered the streets taking pictures, going into tourist shops, as well as some normal clothing stores, and window shopping at all the delicous bakeries and delis that are on every street in Florence. Around 8 we decided to have dinner and found a cute little restaurant near our hostel. Amy ordered pasta with an egg cream sauce and bacon and I got pizza with mushrooms, mozzarella, tomatoes and salad. The salad turned out to be some kind of bitter leaves and I ended up scraping most of it off. The rest of the pizza was good, though. Once back at the hostel we did some research on line about Pisa and went to bed praying for sunshine.

We woke up to a beautiful sunny day. We decided to walk around Florence for an hour to see some of the buildings in the sun. The day before Amy had seen a mask (like the ones worn at costume balls in movies) at one of the vendors in the market and decided thats what she wanted as her souvenir. Unfortunately, we couldn't find it again so instead she got some beautiful scenery pictures.

Once back in Pisa we went directly to the Piazza dei Miracoli, which has the famous tower as well as a duomo and baptistry. We were both very excited to see the leaning tower and have both said it was our favourite part of the trip. The tower is something you learn about as a child, so to be able to see it in person after all those years is amazing! A trip to the leaning tower wouldn't be complete without a few famous 'holding up the tower' poses. We felt a little silly but it had to be done. They turned out quite well, too!





Pisa is a cute little town with a lot of cafes and what looked to be some good shopping. Unfortunately, all of the shops are closed from 1-3:30 for a siesta. We definitely felt as though we didn't have enough time in Pisa. Our flight left at 4:45 which meant we only had a few hours in Pisa before we needed to get to the airport. You could easily spend an hour or two at the tower and surrounding buildings.
All in all our first major trip went smoothly, with the only problem being that it was too short. For our next trip, we are planning on going to Greece for four or five days. Before we left Canada we didn't think we would be able to go to Greece because we figured the tickets would be too expensive. Amy found some good deals though and we're thinking about heading there at the end of February. Let's hope everything works out!

St Andrews

November 1st we took the train from Edinburgh to St Andrews. It took an hour to get there and cost about 12 pounds each, return. The train station isn't actually in St Andrews, it's in a small town called Leuchars thats a 10 minute bus ride from the city. We arrived at 10 and had all day to explore. We stopped off at Starbucks for a quick caramel macchiato before heading over to explore the castle ruins. We were very lucky with the weather that day. It was a beautiful, sunny day with blue skies, and no rain! We spent a good two hours walking around the ruins. Not a lot is left, except the lower half of the outer walls...and the ultimate loo with a view!

The castle was built in the early 1400s and was in ruin by 1689, a relatively short histroy by castle standards. Some interesting things inside the castle are the dungeon and the mines. The dungeon, called a bottle dungeon, is the best preserved of its kind in Scotland. There is only one way in, being lowered (or, more likely, thrown) down the hole, and only one way out...death. To save some time, I'll copy and paste some information about the mine and counter mine.
During the seige of the castle by the Earl of Arran in 1546 - 1547. The French / Catholic attackers dug a seige mine in an attempt to (literally) undermine the foundations of the castle. The idea was to remove a large quantity of supporting rock from under the foundation, while supporting the roof of the mine with timber. When sufficient rock had been removed, the timbers would be set on fire and thus become unable to support the weight of the wall and foundations. The defenders of St. Andrews castle were well aware of the mining attempt, and dug a counter-mine to try to intercept the attacking mine. Guided by the sound of the attackers digging, and racing for time against the attack, their counter mine was much smaller and branched off in different erroneous directions.The two mines eventually met where the ladder is in the picture below. The mine was re-discoverd in 1879 when the foundations for a house across the street from the castle were being layed.

The mine was very cramped. You almost had to crawl on your hands and knees to get to this ladder. Only Katie went down, but it was probably 3 times as big down there. It was pretty interesting.

After the castle we walked to the beach, past some of the St Anderws University buildings, as well as the house that Prince William lived in while he was a student there! The beach is right beside the Old Course (for those who don't know, that is the first ever golf course). It is the very beach that parts of the movie' Chariots of Fire' were filmed at. The tide was out so we walked along the sand and picked up some nice shells. We then walked to the old course, which isn't very big, and stood at the first hole to watch some golfers. There is an old members only club that only men are allowed in. The only day that women are allowed in the club is St. Andrews day, which is the end of November.


After lunch we walked to the cathedral. What an amazing place! The ruins were beautiful and humongous. It would have been wonderful to see what the cathedral looked like when it was first built. We bought tickets to walk up St. Rules Tower, which is a tower with 158 tiny, twisty stairs, to get a wonerful view of the whole town. The cathedral was started in 1160 and took 150 years to complete. The cathedral area is made up of a few different religios buildings. There are gravestones around the grounds, mostly dating from the 1800s. Many of the gravestones had names of at least one child that died before the age of 5.



We walked around the grounds for a while before heading back into the town to browse the shops. There was a fish and chips shop that sold deep fried chocolate bars for a pound. Katie heard about these on a TV show several years ago and had to try one. It was delicious! We had a snickers bar and the chocolate was all gooey and warm...yummy. We also stopped at the local bakery and picked up some desserts to bring back to Edinburgh for our flatemates. Again, we ran into the problem of having all the shops close at 5:30. Our train wasn't due to leave until 7:45 so we had some time to kill. We lingered over dinner and then took a taxi back to Leuchars to catch the train back to the city. It was a long day with a lot of walking but St Andrews in an amazing town with a lot of history and character. If you want to see more pictures we have a flickr account at www.flickr/iheartscotland.com

Northern Scotland Road-trip

On October 6th, we left on a four day road-trip to the top of Scotland. We took a bus from Edinburgh to Inverness, which took about three hours and cost five pounds return. Can't beat that! We had that day to explore Inverness, which wasn't very exciting. When we were thinking about which city to move to, Inverness was one of our considerations. There are about 80,000 people living there, which makes it seem like a fairly decent sized town. The downtown area is rather small, with not a lot to do. There is a nice mall there (of course we had to check it out!) but since it closes at 5:30...yes, we said 5:30...we didn't have a lot of time to shop. In fact, all of the stores, besides restaurants, close between 5 and 6 (that includes Edinburgh and other cities we've been to) so we ended up reading in our hostel room for most of the night. Not a very exciting start to our trip, but at least we got a good nights sleep.

The next morning we took a taxi to Enterprise to pick up our rental car. Amy was the driver and was a little nervous about driving on the other side of the road and car. She did very well though, and Katie only had to tell her to get to the left side of the road a few times! Once you get past a certain town, most of the roads turn into one lane. There are 'passing zones' that you have to pull into if a car is coming the other way. Although it was kind of annoying to have to pull over all the time, at least Amy didn't have to worry about staying on the right (and by right, I mean left) side of the road! We spent most of the morning driving to the very top of Scotland. Our goal was to get to a town called Durness, where we knew there was a huge cave you can go in. When we got there, we were surprised that they were even allowed to call Durness a town. There were maybe five buildings in a cluster, most of them homes, and that was it. We don't even know if there was any kind of store. There was a beautiful beach in Durness, which we walked around for a while. The tide was coming in, though, so we had to leave quickly!


About five minutes down the road was Smoo Cave. There are three different caverns that you can go into. The first two you can walk to, the third you have to take a boat to get to. There was no boat available, but if there had been we probably wouldn't have taken it. The opening to the third cavern barely looked big enough for a small boat, and while doing research of the cave we read that passengers have to lie down as the boat is going into the third cavern or they won't make it. Interesting, but kind of scary! To get to the second cavern you walked along a wooden platform that was above the water. It was very dark and we could barely see anything. There was a waterfall, so it was also very noisy. The darkness, the deafening noise and the fact that we were the only ones in the cave freaked us out a little and made us get out of there rather quickly.
















After leaving the cave we drove to our hostel in Tongue. It was really nice with beautiful views overlooking a lake. Tongue was another one of those towns with nothing to do so we stayed in the hostel and played Pictionary with two of our roommates. One was from Burlington, ON and the other was from Syracuse, NY. The were backpacking together and hitchhiking their way across the top of Scotland in the opposite direction that we were headed in.
The next morning we drove to Thurso to pick up some sandwiches for lunch. We were headed to Dunnet Head, which is the most northernly point on the mainland. We bought some lunch to go and two millionaire slices (amazing desserts...bottom layer is shortbread, then a layer of caramel, then a layer of chocolate) and drove to the point. The cliffs were amazing. Think Cliffs of Doom in Princess Bride. It was a beautiful, sunny day and we could see the Orkney Islands in the distance. Once again, we were the only ones there so we had the cliffs to ourselves. It did start to rain, so we ate our lunch and dessert in the car, with the ocean and a full rainbow in front of us.


The rest of the day was mostly spent in the car, with a few stops for pictures. We did stop at a few castles but because it was late in the season, they were closed. One castle we went to was open, though...our hostel for the night! We stayed in Carbisdale Castle, which was built between 1906 and 1917, so relatively new compared with most castles. We had read about this castle quite a few years ago and always thought it would be neat to be able to sleep in a castle for a night. We were quite excited to be able to fit it into our schedule. We spent most of the evening exploring the castle and trying not to get lost. It is said to be haunted, and they even have pamphlets for you to read, but we both decided we would wait until we left the next morning before reading them. We actually wanted to sleep that night! Two of our roommates were Austrailians who had been living in Edinburgh for about 5 months, so they told us about good places to eat and things to do.

The next morning we drove back towards Inverness. Before we dropped the car off we headed over to Culloden Battlefield, the famous moor where the Jacobite army fought the English in 1746. We have to confess that the reason why we know so much about this battle and why we are interested in it is, again, because of the Outlander series. However, when you are standing in the middle of the field you can't think about anything besides the thousands of men that fought and died there. There is a brand new visitors centre with lots of information about the events leading up to, during and after the battle. There are also cases full of artifacts that have been found on the moor during the years. Unfortunately, we had to get the rental car back so we didn't have as much time to look around as we would have liked.

















While we were waiting for our bus back to Edinburgh we ran into the two North American girls we met at the hostel in Tongue. We had coffee with them and ended up on the same bus back to the city. We knew they didn't have a place to stay so we offered up the couches in our flat. They ended up staying for two nights and we had a lot of fun showing them around the city.

First Trip to the Highlands

For Katie's birthday on September 26th, we decided to do a day trip to the highlands with one of the many tour groups in Edinburgh. The tour took us to a few different places including Glencoe, Fort William, Fort Augustus and Loch Ness. It gave us a nice taste of the highlands, but it made us realize that renting a car and doing our own tour is a much better option. The tour lasted 12 hours but covered a lot of miles and was mostly spent in the van, with a few short breaks for food and picture opportunities.

The first stop was to meet Hamish the highland 'coo'. Hamish has in interesting history. Back during the days of Mad Cow Disease, the government decided that the best way to deal with it was to kill all cows under the age of two. Hamish was under two, but as he was already a famous tourist attraction, the workers of the coffee shop next to his home petitioned for the government to spare Hamish. They did, as long as he never came into contact with other cows, and now 12 or so years later Hamish is still a lonely tourist attraction.

While we drove to our next destination, Glencoe, our tour guide told us about something called Make Tracks Scotland. It is a company that offers independent walking holidays throughout the highlands and other parts of Scotland. Some of the tours take 8 or 9 days, walking anywhere from 12-20 miles a day. It is a great way to see parts of Scotland that you can only see by foot. There are no wolves or other predators in Scotland, which makes walking through the highlands a relatively safe thing. On our drive we saw three people who were making the journey from Glasgow to Inverness.


Glencoe was beautiful, but has a rather bloody past. We won't go into great detail, you can look it up if you want, but the basis of the story is that in 1692 the highland chiefs were ordered to sign an oath to King William...or else. Because of bad weather, among other things, the chief of clan MacDonald of Glencoe was late in signing the oath. Captain Campbell and his men were ordered to go live with the MacDonald clan, where they were at first told to collect taxes. The Campbells lived with the families for two weeks before they recieved word from the King that they were to slaughter the clan for being late in signing the oath. In all, 38 men were killed in their homes or as they were trying to flee and 40 women and children died of exposure. It is now nicknamed the Weeping Glen.
The next major stop was Fort Augustus, home of the famous Loch Ness. It's amazing to be able to visit places you've heard about your entire life. Loch Ness is probably one of the most famous places in all of Scotland. Fort Augustus is rather small, definitaly a tourist town. Part of the bus tour was a boat ride on the famous loch. Before we got on the boat we bought fish and chips and ate them overlooking the loch. Neither of us are huge fans of fish, but this was amazing! And not just because it was covered in batter, the fish actually tasted good by itself. The chips were also amazing. The best chips we have ever had, and after trying a few fish and chip shops in Edinburgh, they are still the best chips. We can't even describe why, they were just amazing! The boat tour was about an hour long. Loch Ness is actually a HUGE loch. It is more than 700 ft deep and 23 miles long. Lots of room for Nessie to hide in. Unfortunately, we didn't have any sightings of the legendary monster.
After a few more stops for photos, we were on our way back to Edinburgh. It was a long day and at times it was difficult to stay awake on the bus but we had a great time and were happy to be able to see the mountains we have read and dreamed about for years. It was definitaly a birthday to remember!