Europe Day Six - Loch Ness

                                                                                                                                                              

In the morning we got in a taxi to Loch Ness. (Loch means lake.) We skipped stones on the lake and I found lake glass before we got back in the taxi to Inverness castle. It turns out that in the castle a chief called in all the clans and to show his power he hung some of them and put their heads on spikes outside. Luckily when we got there the heads were not there anymore.

We didn't get to go inside but we got to walk around the front gates. We walked over to the train station and got on our train to Edinburgh. Half way to Edinburgh the conductor decided that we couldn't keep going without any explanation. So he made us get off and wait for the next train for an hour. We finally got to Edinburgh and stored our bags at a bus station and tried to go to Arthur's Seat which is a mountain by the ocean. We walked forever and somehow ended up at Edinburgh castle.

And on the other side of the city was Arthur's seat. We got some really good fish and chips and picked up our bags and got on the hour long bus ride to the hotel.

Total trains: 2

Total taxis: 1

Total buses: 1

Total miles walked: 6.3 miles

Europe Day Five - Cairngorms Reindeer Center

We got up at 7 on the train and rushed off into the station at Aviemore, Scotland. We had pancakes and jam at a little cafe by the train station before getting on the shuttle bus up the mountains in to the Cairngorms National Park. Inside the park is a Reindeer Center to reintroduce reindeer to Scotland where hunters hunted them out of. It is the perfect place for them with the weather, altitude, mountains and lichen.

The first reindeer in the park were from Switzerland. They brought 8 reindeer over from there every 7 years for the first 21 years and now they have 150 reindeer. We got to go to the reindeer pen where they can track their numbers and track their health to see how there doing.

And don't worry the reindeer in the pen are switched out with the other reindeer from the national park. We were given a ride up the hill to where we hiked about 20 minutes into the area they were at. I was carrying the bag of food to the giant square mile enclosure. Some of them were being kept there as it was rutting season and they are trying to control the numbers.

While we were walking the reindeer followed me and the food. We got to hand feed some of them and pet them. It was amazing!

In an hour we had to go so we hiked back and they gave us a ride back to the visitor center where we had some soup and caught a bus down the mountain back to Aviemore. We caught the train to Inverness and walked through town along the river to the hotel apartment. We ate macaroni and cheese for dinner and got some time to relax before bed.

2 trains

2 buses

Total miles walked: 2 miles

Europe Day Four - British Museum

We were out of the hotel by 10 am. We skipped breakfast and jumped on a bus to Buckingham Palace.

We sprinted from the station to the front gate and made it in time for the marching of the guards with the big black hats and the red uniforms. They marched really close to us and it was pretty cool.

 After we went to see the London Bridge but the bus path across was closed so we went to the next thing on our list. The British Museum. It was a huge museum with tons of exhibits.

My favorite one was the Rosetta stone and the Egypt section.

We also saw Greece,

Mexico, and Africa. Sadly the Canadian section was small.

In total we had three hours until we had to go.

We had left our backpacks at the hotel so we picked them up and went to the Euston train station. We got tickets for an overnight train to Aviemore, Scotland. Then we got veggie burritos at Tortilla for dinner before going to the overnight train.

We got three small connected cabins with 3 bunk beds to sleep on. The train was a little loud but we got to sleep pretty quickly.

4 double deckers

1 overnight sleeper train

Total miles walked: 5.1 miles

Europe Day Three - Stonehenge

We got a late jump in the morning and left at 10 am. We had eggs and toast and made it to Victoria Station. We had time before the bus to Stonehenge arrived so we took a stroll to Buckingham Palace and got back in time to get on the bus. We ate sandwiches for lunch on the bus. The ride was pretty boring and lasted 2 hours, but we were finally there. We went in the education center and learned about the Stonehenge. It turns out that Stonehenge was thought to be made as a cemetery for the most honorable members of the tribe. It's over 5000 years old!

Then we got to go up to the actual site. It was huge. And I couldn't help but wonder how they made it. The stones were so heavy it was a wonder how they ever lifted them.

We took a ton of pictures of Stonehenge and when the sun set we got some beautiful pics with the setting sun in the back ground.

Sadly we had to go back to the hotel. We got home late and fell asleep instantly.

2 double deckers

1 coach bus

Total miles walked: 3 miles

Europe Day Two - London Eye

We woke up at ten in the morning and got on the number 12 bus to the London Eye.

We got on the fourth cart of the morning and started our way up. We stood at the front of the cart so we could get the best view of the Thames river and Big Ben.

At the top we could see a lot of London and Buckingham palace. When we got down it was 11:30 so we boarded the hop on hop off golden tour bus. We got a good seat on the open air top. There was an audio tour that we were listening to that was telling us all about the city. 

The first stop we got out on was at the famous Kings Cross Station. (Dad asked us out of ten how much we liked it and we said 9 3/4.) We saw the well known Harry Potter Station and ate lunch at a food market outside the station.

After lunch we got back on the tour bus and got off at Saint Paul's Cathedral. It was huge and the ceilings looked like they stretched on forever. The bus took us all over London and we learned a lot.

Our next stop where we chose to get off was Buckingham Palace. It was a marvelous place. (Sage had been waiting all day to go to the Queens House).

We took our number 36 red double decker bus back to the hotel and had some pizza for dinner at the hotel's restaurant before bed.

3 double decker buses

Total miles walked: 3.5 miles

Europe Day One - The Adventure Begins

We boarded the plane at five o'clock Toronto time. We flew on the plane for six hours until we landed in Dublin and had an hour of wait time at the airport. The flight to London was shorter and only took us an hour. The sunrise was beautiful across the landscape. The plane hit the runway at six in the morning London time, but at home it was one in the morning. We had to take an underground train and another train for an hour and a half. Then we took two buses until we finally got to our hotel and our room wasn't ready yet. So we had great bagel sandwiches for brunch down the street. When we got back to the hotel the room was still not ready and we almost fell asleep on the couches in the lobby. The room was finally cleaned and within a minute we were all asleep. We napped for three hours and got tickets to the London Eye. We got on a bus to the Eye, but sadly the London Eye was shutting down for the night and we just missed the last cart by a few minutes. We got the tickets redeemed for the next day and got some fish and chips for dinner by the Thames river. We got back on the bus to the hotel. We were all still tired and we fell asleep pretty quickly.

2 planes

2 trains

3 buses

Total mile walked: 1 mile