Tuesday October 16/Wednesday October 17 (has taken two days to write this post lol)
Holy moly Tuesday already (just double checked, yes it is Tuesday) :P Right now we are on the train from Paris, France to Lucerne, Switzerland. Since the last blog entry we've been to visit the Piel Castle (its a ruined castle but still amazing and has a king and queen!), rocked the piel castle pub in ulverston and also played in Milnthorpe (strange crowd but awesome pub owners who gave us delicious honey rum!). We then drove all around Scotland (where Gav proposed!), back to Lancaster for the music festival and then spent a couple of nights in Paris.
Scotland was amazing... We stayed in Glasgow and then drove from there to visit Inveraray Castle (Gav's family is directly related to the Duke) and on to Arisaig for the night. We then went over the sea to Skye, after which we headed back to the mainland and visited Plockton for a late lunch, checked out the Eilean Donnan Castle and stayed in Balmacara. The whole of our drive along the western part of Scotland was stunningly picturesque - we passed by so many lochs which were accompanied by untouched highland mountains. In the mornings especially a lot of lochs were completely still and reflected views of the mountain and clear skies in their water - so cool! From Balmacara we drove up to Inverness via loch ness - and the drive to loch ness I think was one of the most beautiful parts of the drive - stopped for lunch in Inverness at a cool rasta cafe and continued on to Aviemore where we stayed the night. While in Aviemore we decided to take the opportunity to walk to the summit of Cairngorm Mountain, which is accessible by train but we walked instead! It was steep and took us an hour or so to get to the summit but when we got there the view was stunning - just looking out across all the other mountain tops around us, some of them snow-capped. We also had the summit all to ourselves (a group was walking down as we walked up) so it was extra special! It was at this point that Gav handed me his phone which was playing "new day" by karnivool (our song :p) and asked me to take a video of the view from the top... I was a little suspicious at this point but still wasn't expecting to turn around to see him on one knee, with a ring, asking for my hand in marriage! And of course I said yes! We stayed up there (freezing our butts off!) for a while enjoying this new ecstatic feeling before making the long trek back down the mountain with the prospect of some lovely cairngorm hotel food very clearly in our minds. From Aviemore we drove to Edinburgh for our final night in Scotland. W O W - what an amazing city. Beautiful and unique and so full of history! Unfortunately we didn't have time to explore it as much as we'd have liked to but we'll definitely go back there! We enjoyed dinner at one of Jamie Oliver's restaurants which was delicious (this was our second "celebration dinner" haha), and checked out the hard rock cafe in Edinburgh too :)
The next day marked the beginning of the Lancaster Music Festival, so we made our way back down to Lancaster via Dumfries to meet with the Maitland clan chief Ian (my mum's family clan) and his wife Anne, for a beautiful home-cooked meal and lots of very interesting info about the history of Maitlands and of Scotland. So happy we met and spent time with these two LOVELY people!
From there we went to Lancaster for a bit more Kindread craziness! Played a strange first festival gig at the Uni, then went out with everyone in the band that night (we had some more celebrating to do!), managing to drink the bar out of jägermeister (3 shots for £5 and we had a group of eight people so it wasn't too hard!), and stayed out until 4:30 in the morning dancing to 1920s records! Kinda hurt playing shows at 3pm and 8pm the next evening with not much sleep... But those shows were fantastic! The first was in an old cellar which has been converted to a pub - pretty cool, but quite hot! And the second show was in an old church - this show totally went off!!! Had so much fun and pretty sure we had about 200 people in there enjoying it with us! (Check out the video footage on the Kindread facebook page soon). We stayed that night with a really lovely couple - Jules and Jasper - who were so friendly and accommodating and had the cutest old doggy (Heidi) and a mega fluffy, friendly pet rabbit (Otter) who I got to snuggle! They also fed us a big breakfast in the morning and it was so cool watching the rabbit hopping around the backyard while we were eating and chatting :)
Sadly after that night it was time to leave the Kindread crew, but super exciting as our next stop was Paris! We got in a bit later than we expected though so decided to stay two nights. What an amazing city! The language barrier was pretty tricky the first night (didn't help that we were still tired and had a cab driver that didn't like westerners! He was saying "Otrish" and I was saying "you mean Austria?" and he thought I was saying Australia so he thought we were stupid and kept saying we're american! Rudeness! But after that everyone was pretty nice really. We walked from our hotel near the Palace Opera to the Eiffel Tower and had lunch there - very posh :P And the Eiffel tower is just amazing - much bigger than i expected! After lunch we got on a bus tour of Paris and then explored the main shopping strip, did a bit more walking around, made our way back to the Eiffel tower to see it lit up and then walked back to our hotel and crashed out! The next morning we were up early ready for the train trip to Lucerne, Switzerland. As soon as we arrived we were greeted with breathtaking scenery of alps towering over the lake. Lucerne is a really cool little place, lots of friendly swans, clear water (could see lots of little fishies swimming in the water) and lots of cool old buildings too. As you can imagine we had to sample some Swiss chocolates which were divine! We had dinner that night at the "Old Swiss House" which was built in 1858 and had the most delicious food!!! Managed to get about a third of the way thru dinner before resorting to speaking English too! Haha... Gav ordered the house specialty which was very special - veal schnitzel prepared and cooked in front of us! Plus "noodles" (spaghetti) with a sauce made from the same
breadcrumbs/parmesan as the schnitzel and a tonne of butter. I had a big plate of various super tasty veggies (have been so deprived of my veggies and I have missed them so much!) and to make it even better they were served with spätzli which I really love - little housemade German noodles that are cooked and then pan fried - super yummy! We topped this off with the restaurants "famous" choc mousse and "famous" tart! Needless to say we are feeling very fat today... But our taste buds are extremely satisfied! Presently we are on our way by train from Lucerne to Venice Island.... So excited about getting to Italy!!! And though I still haven't quite caught up on sleep I can't sleep on the train cause the scenery is just too beautiful!!! Lakes and snow-capped mountains and cute villages and houses dotted up high in the hills (don't know how they go out or get home!)... Definitely keen to spend more time in Switzerland...
Anyway after that essay it time to say ciao for now - will check in again soon!