Easter 07

So i've finally gotten around to writing about what we got up to over the Easter weekend..

better late than never!!!

What makes a good road trip great...

1. good company

2. a car

3. amazing countryside..

so 2 out of 3 aint bad!

As you all know... i had my first ever visitors over the easter weekend, and what fun we had...

i've been looking forward to having KT and A come to visit since they decided to come... i had the biggest smile on my face all week leading up to it!

it's hard to describe the feeling you get when you actually have something planned for the weekend..

plus i got to prove to my housemates that i had friends! :O)

one of the hardest things i've found over here is not having close friends near by, just to hang out with, drop in on short notice on, or to just talk to when you feel like it... (time differences suck!)

yeah you meet loads of people... but it's not the same as having someone that you've known for ages to chat to... (lol even if you haven't met in person much!)

our adventure started on saturday with me heading out to the airport to pick up the rental car... which was meant to be a 3 door VW golf, instead we scored the ugliest car ever lol(sorry if any of you out there have one... just totally not what i was expecting...)

kind of a crazy car like van thingy.... OMG it was the ugliest car ever... hahaha but it did have a sunroof, and air conditioning!i had to keep checking the bay number... lol didn't believe it when i saw it, and the keys actually opened it!it was a kia thing... lol

managed to navigate myself back from the airport to the flat by way of the sat nav my flatmate lent me... lol and after debating with the crazy piece of machinery as it was telling me i'd reached my destination... about 10kms from where i wanted to be!

but i worked it out in the end..(the sat nav had a way of making you do crazy things...and pretty much what it wanted you to do... you did... otherwise it got mad, and sent you on a random goose chase!)

headed into to the city center and met up with KT and A at the Bus station around 5pm...

The two of them looked excited to be off the bus finally... after a 9 hr journey from Dublin...

though they did get to experience their ferry ride across from Belfast to scotland...

caught the underground back to Byers road, where we went on an alcohol buying spree, in the supermarket!

before heading down the road to my flat..where they had the pleasure of meeting the first of my flatmates R, (lol see R i do have friends!)

after droping off all bags etc we decided to take a mini road trip over to edinburgh... so we headed off around 6pm and after a slight detour past the armidillo, and being told by the sat nav to drive down a bus only street, we were on our way out of glasgow!

A decided to take the role of driver (and he did a great job!)so KT and i sat in the back and chatted the whole time... (poor A... think 36hrs of constant chatter!!! lol)

hahaha got to see the random red sheep on the side of the motorway (some farmer decided to paint all his sheep red, for art.. and i'd heard about it, but didn't know where they were... but we found them! nothing like driving along and then there's fields of red sheep!)

took us about an hr to get to edinburgh, and after a few wrong turns we saw the castle in the distance... managed to find ourselves a car parking spot at the bottom, and headed up thousands of stairs to the top (they're not kidding when they tell you it's a hike!) and when we got to the top, there were these security guys stanging there stopping peoeple from going up to the front...seems they had a function on at the castle and someone had hired the whole castle out...

took a few pictures before being given the all clear and actually allowed up to the gates!

though we were closely monitored by this guy dressed in army attire!

lol we must have looked like we were about to jump the fence or something..

after the castle we headed back down the stairs to where we'd parked the car, and thankfully we had no parking ticket!

drove around a bit, before deciding on chinese for dinner..
ended up at this all you can eat chinese restraunt, just off the main drag, and it was food glorious food!

talked to a radnom stranger again, and had him following me all over the place, till i lost him!

dessert was great... except for these weird jelly like things that A found and made us try, one was coconut, and the other mango, and they had a kind of jelly like creme brulee type texture that was just wrong!

but the icecream was great...

got in just in time, as about 30mins later a whole group of guys on a stags night came tromping in... the stag with this blow up sheep/cow taped to his head... lol took us a while to work out exactly what they were about... they all just walked in and started helping themselves to food, before even having a table assigned... kind of amusing watching the chinese run all over the place trying to stop them!

hahaha

i was going to attempt to take a pic but forgot,

after we'd eaten way to much we went to pay...realised i had no wallet... (eventually found it back at the flat...must have fallen out of my bag)and only had a few pounds between us.... tried to use a card but it was declined... so KT went out to see if there was an atm anywhere lol leaving A and I in the place... A had paid his portion of the bill and we were awaiting change... and we suggested that we should make a break for it...however he wanted his change... hahaha

so he went to the loo, the change came, and i was just waiting for him to come back and we'd decided if KT wasn't back we were going to make a run for it...lol the owners must have thought we'd do that cause they had two people constantly standing right next to us! KT came back after having no luck with finding any atms...but somehow we found enough to cover the cost before escaping out of there...headed down princes street (the main shopping street) and admired the castle all lit up at night...

before heading back to the car so we could head back to glasgow..

decided to have a bit of a drive around Edinburgh before and managed to navigate ourselves around a bit!

eventually set the sat nav to home, and headed off... following the sat nav's directions... ended up taking this narrow littleroad through the back of edinburgh which started to look more and more like a one way street the further we went along it..and lets ust say the cars weren't pointing in the direction we were...by this stage there are people everywhere, we were outside a club! selling cheap drinks!) and they had police everywhere trying to organise and keep things under control

anyways the police man comes over and is like "where are you going?"and A was like "home" pointing at the sat nav... hahaha

and was "not this way you aren't"told us there was another cop at the end of the road that'd fine us if we went any further!

so A did a 12 point turn on the narrow road, and tried to knock a few drunks over and we headed back the way we'd come..stupid sat nav!

eventually we got our bearings, and found our way back to the motorway... home free!

got back in around midnight i think...

there's a good thing about my flat mates.... they're never in bed early... so we didn't wake poor R up, she was still up

had a few toxic drinks... (we need to learn how to pour i think KT!)

before KT called it a night!

hahahahashe was lets just say a little tired! ;o)

decided to try get an early start, and planned to leave at 7am the next morning...

went to get sheets for the fold out couch, while A was getting it out.. and had a bit of trouble with the finding of sheets!lol much to the amusement of the two of them!!! lets just say Duvet covers don't make for good sheets!

hahahaended up finding some fitted sheets... hahaha well we made them fit!and headed to bed...

wasn't until i had a shower that i was like um... i need to wall to stand up!

headed to bed..

Easter Sunday...

woke up before the alarm and switched it off!

and couldn't bring myself to get out of bed!

Heard someone get up and go have a shower, and though oh shit, i forgot to tell them how to turn the hotwater on! (they're very power conscious here so everything that's not being used is turned off...including the electric hot water!)

needless to say poor KT had to have a nice cold shower! (still sorry about that! but funny!)
lol after a breakie of vegimite toast! we headed off about 830am... (hahaha so much for our early start!)

set the sat nave for stirling, and headed off...

A volunteered to drive again... headed along the same way and back down the bus only lane, and along past the armidillo!!! hahahaha (it's a bizzare shaped building, kind of reminds you of a mini sydney opera house...)

took us about an Hour to get to stirling... where we could see the castle there but couldn't work out how to get ourselves there... hahahait was up on a hill... so after going round and round in circles we decided to head on from there, and forget about the castle!

back on the motor way, and on towards Fort Augustus (the town at the bottom of the lochness)
as you travel north in scotland the main roads tend to get narrower and narrower, and before long we were on like a country road, driving through the rolling hillsabout 30mins into this we were driving merrily along where out of the corner of my eye i spot a lone bagpiper on the side of the road, and we pull over...

hilarious... driving in the middle of no where and then whamm bagpiper and mini souvineer store!

lovely views out over a loch in the middle of the hills...and A summed it up when he said, "so this is scotland"nothing like standing in the middle of nowhere looking at rolling hills for miles and having bagpipe music going in the background...

A spotted a convoy of coachs coming along, and we sprinted to the car, and got out of there just in time to get in front of them!!

hahaha too funny...it was busses run!

so we headed on...

stopped a bit further along the way to laugh at other tourists, at a memorial...i love tourists taking pictures...hahahathey amuse me

the whole trip had us spotting Harry potter bridges! lol and i looked it up after we got back, and we didn't really go past the right one... but then they all look the same!

Stopped in Fort Augustus, and had lunch at the only cafe in the town!

my meal came with crisps... (aka potato chips! crazy!)

headed off on the scenic drive along the lochness... and it wasn't until we were driving along that we realised that when we were in fort augustus that we hadn't actually looked at the loch itself! hahaha

anyways!
it as lovely driving along looking out over the loch, stopped midway along at urhart castle... castle ruins on the loch itself... A actually took a picture of the castle itself i just liked the sign!

headed on from there in search of the visitors centre... R had told me there was a lochness monster in a pond out the back... (so that was our whole mission... to find the lochness monster!)we found the visitors centre and there was this huge fiberglass monster out the front... hahah after climbing over it, and posing for pictures... much to the confusement of the tourists around!

we headed back to the car...

then we found it...
the monster itself!
ahhahaha so parked and took our token pictures, before having alook around the shops... mission completed..

decided to continue going the way we were and headed, and set off... came to the end of the loch, and convinced A to stop....(cant go to the loch and not go swimming in it..)

so we stopped at lochend ... and parked and headed down to a no public access beach... as you do!

and took some pictures looking back over the loch..

Convinced A to come stand in the loch... and somewhow we got KT in there too!!!

lol she was so anti it!!!!

hahaha(but come on it made it more entertaining, even if we had a hard time feeling our feet for the next ten mins!)

turned around to head back and notice that there was a house full of people standing there just watching us! hahahahaglad we could put on a show for them too!

headed back to the car and headed up to Inverness...

got to witness a funny accident as we were waiting at the round about, this guy came flying off an up and over a pole..the funny bit was at how fast the guy got himself out of the car... he was almost out before it stopped moving.... car was totaled though... (and no one was hurt,...)

got out at inverness castle and took some pictures... hahaha without shoes on!

classy

it was lovely and pink...

debated where we'd go from there, and finally settled on heading back... it was getting late, and it had taken us 5hrs to get up there...headed back inland along the motor way, before convincing A to take the Scenic route...

hahaha

lol the sat nav had a hissy fit, telling us to make a U turn!

lol and eventually it gave up and gave us another route...here we were in the middle of nowhere again... on this one laned road going up and down the hills... it was what you imaging scotland to be...sheep on the roads hills, and no one to be seen for miles...

hahah that is until a random car comes along the other way....had a few frights... but say some true scottish scenery, and eventually ended up pretty much where we began!

but what an adventure..

had a rolling adventure in the boot, chasing apples from side to side as they rolled around...as the car went round corners and such!and provided the entertainment for us and the car behind as i caught the buggers!

lol did they want apples when i could reach them easily... NOPE!:O)

eventually got back to glasgow, must have been aroung 9pm...

where they got to meet my other flat mate C (the scottish one)... hahaha before we headed off to the shop!

after buying some snacks etc for the trip home on the bus and some supplies for breakie... we headed back where we cooked the good old 50p Pizzas! (not to bad either!) and salad... before starting on the drinks!!!

hahaha KT holds her alcohol rather well! and we all headed to bed about midnight..

Monday

After a bit of a sleep in, we managed to get out of bed!, some of us not feeling all that great!...had the famous eggs benedict, ala KT...yum!

lol

and irn bru (lol great for the morning after!!!)

before looking at the time and realising the two of them had to be at the bus station in 30mins to catch their bus back..

so quickly organised everything, and set out for one last trip...

managed to find the bus station! yay... and they headed off to catch their bus back to dublin.... nothing, like a 9hr bus trip to look forward too!!!!

it's such a long way to come on a bus (18hrs on a bus) for 36hrs in another country...

BUT i'm so glad they came...i was the best weekend i've had in scotland...