Munich, Sep 2013: Part 1

To end my lovely summer before returning to Glasgow, and to uni, Ewan and I travelled to Munich, Germany for a week.  (excuse the stereotypical plane picture)

We were lucky enough to have both our flights and accommodation paid for us as a present for Ewan’s 21st from his parents.  This left what little money we had to be spent on food and drink!  Our flight arrived at around 9.30pm so we went out to grab a bite to eat and sample a German beer.  Our hotel was a two minute walk from the main square in Munich, the beautiful Marienplatz.

We were still playing round with the settings on my brand new camera at this point so I’m a not happy with the quality of some of these but here we are loving pizza.  I love places where you can get pizza by the slice, seems to be an abroad thing!

The next day we went to explore the hotels surroundings and scope out some attractions we wanted to see.  Luckily the sun was shining bright, not like the forecast had told me (I was convinced it was going to rain the whole trip).  It’s such a beautiful city and seemed to have a very laid back atmosphere.

The road up from our hotel was covered in designer shops and I tried my hardest to act/look like I could afford them!

We then went for a walk round town and found a lovely German market, not far from our hotel.  It was so warm and sunny that before we headed out for lunch we needed to head back to the hotel and rethink our outfit choices – we were melting!

Once we were more suitably dressed for the heat we went to Sausalitos, which is a chain in Germany, maybe other places too.  They do great cocktails and Mexican.  I got nachos and Ewan got chicken fajitas (so adventurous for our first lunch in Deutschland!!).

We then went for some more exploring and to St Peter’s Church which was the most beautiful church I’d ever seen!  

 

More pictures soon… 🙂

Edinburgh, July 2013

Ewan and I are spending the summer apart as I’m home in Shetland working and staying with my family while he stays in Edinburgh for work. The week after the Rolling Stones I went to visit him, as well as to do some flathunting in Glasgow for next year.

Here are a few pictures from my trip mainly consisting of sunshine, cocktails and food!

London, July 2013

It’s a whole month since I was in London and I still haven’t blogged it so here goes.

We flew to Heathrow on the Thursday and I feel like we packed in a hell of a lot between Thursday and Sunday!  I just love how much there is to do in London.  I’ve been 4 times and had a totally different holiday each time.

This is our hotel – The Park Grand.  Don’t be fulled by it’s fancy exterior; it’s basically just a glorified Travelodge!

We were there in the height of the heat wave so it was around 30 degrees the whole time which was great.  On the first day me and my parents had a Vietnamese lunch near our hotel and then sauntered around central London, had a few drinks in Leicester Square and went to China town for tea.

Mam and Dad checking out the cakes and pastries!

 I managed to catch up with my friend Harry on the Friday.  We wandered around in the sunshine and had lunch al fresco in the park!  It was really nice to see him as we don’t get to see each other very often and he has just turned 21 and graduated from his theatre set & costume design course. 

That evening, we went to Loch Fyne for our tea which was absolutely delicious but let down by the service.  It was obvious that they were in such a rush to get rid of us!  Our mains came while we were still eating our starters, they took food we weren’t finished eating and thrust the bill at us when we were going to order more drinks.  We the went to a bar across the road for some cocktails which I unfortunately can’t remember the name of!  The staff were lovely in there.  We then went to the theatre to see Fences which was so so good! It was in a small intimate theatre and is about a black family living in America in the 50s and I can’t recommend it enough.

Saturday was the Rolling Stonesday (!!) then on Sunday we went to Notting Hill and Portobello market before heading to the airport.

Unbelievably I didn’t buy a single thing  while we were there!! Very disappointed in myself. I did go shopping in Edinburgh though which is where I headed after London to spend a week with my boyfriend before going home again to work.  Blog post coming soon…

 I seem to have found myself with three summer jobs but hardly any shifts!  Hopefully it picks up as I am skint.  In the meantime here is a huge mishmash of what I’ve been doing in my joblessness, other than applications.

I painted my nails with newspaper which was a lot easier than I expected. Here’s the WikiHow page I used. It honestly took no longer than normal nails!

Lovely photo of Nanny and my brother’s friend Jim! My brother, his fiancee and my nephew are all home just now too so both my brothers and I had people over at the weekend before we went out. It used to always be so busy but since we all left home it’s been ridiculously quiet. It was good to have a houseful again!

I’m going to paint my room and furniture over summer. Don’t think I like any of the samples I got but I’m thinking a mint green if I ever get started.

Can’t get enough of Snapchat. I cannot quite describe how delicious Vimto lollies are. If you see them, buy them.

These photos are an insult to how beautiful they really are but you cannot beat a Shetland sunset.

I customised these shorts that I’ve had for about 5 years to cover up the edges which were starting to wear (no wonder!).

Sunny skies on the way to work.

Cooking up a veggie curry.

I found this old magazine scrapbook I used to keep when I was about 16 because I was super cool!

Lerwick by night.

Trip to Fine Peerie Cakes with Lynn. (Shetland dialect for ‘nice little cakes’)  Had some butternut squash soup followed by a delicious chocolate banana cake!

My brother, Kevin; his fiancee, Annika and my nephew, Lukas.  We went exploring!

Hay’s Dock – Outside Mareel & the Museum in Lerwick.

These photos are all from St Ninian’s Isle beach in the South end of Shetland which is the largest tombolo in the UK and where the St Ninian’s Isle treasure which is now in Edinburgh Museum was found.  Read all about it here!

Hopefully my next posts will be less sporadic although I only find out each day if I’m working on that day with one of these jobs I’m doing which is pretty annoying and doesn’t allow me to make many plans!  It’s all about the money ca$h dolla though and it’ll be worth it when I’m in London in a few weeks and Munich in September! 🙂

The Hidden Lane Tearoom, Glasgow

This post is about… wait for it… my new FAVOURITE cafe in Glasgow. The cutest little tearooms ever hidden down a little lane you’d never normally even notice. Hence the name.

I’ve been training to volunteer with Glasgow Action for Mental Health – a fantastic organisation which I’m loving being a part of so far! Because I live in the city centre and my friend Ross lives in the lovely West End of Glasgow, I usually make him come to me. But as my training is right next door to his flat, I’ve been stomping on his territory. We decided to “go for a coffee” this Thursday and Ross suggested this place.

It does table service which I’m a huge fan of. I think the whole coffee chain thing is a bit impersonal and not very charming. Unlike The Hidden Lane Tearoom. The Hidden Lane Tearoom has charm down to a ‘tea’ (See what I did there?!)
My pictures of Ross are a bit rubbish because of the window behind him but here’s him pondering over their menu of various teas and coffees, including teas I’d never seen before…

This is me being indecisive about how to pose! Do I look at the camera?! Do I look at the menu?!

The cafe is covered in lots of cute little details and decorations.

Ross and I both went for scones, although it was a tough decision with loads of delicious looking cakes. I only realised there was Oreo brownies afterwards or I probably would have gone for them. But the scones did not disappoint! Ross went for a “London Fog” which is Earl Grey tea with steamed milk and vanilla. You can also get a Glasgow Fog in Glasgow, not in the tearooms though, which is a similar idea but with coconut I think. I had a chai tea with steamed milk.

I was trying to get a good photo of Ross pouring his tea but he’s not very good at it and spilled everywhere.

Don’t these cute cars just fit perfectly in the little lane?

All in all – a lovely day out and a great break from this month’s constant revision.

You can read more about the Hidden Lane Tearoom (which was started by someone who got made redundant twice in one year) here!

Kragerø, Norway: Part 1

In the Easter holidays I took a very exciting trip not only to see where my brother and his fiancee live for the first time, but to see my new nephew!!

Both were beautiful, especially Lukas.

We flew to Oslo Torp which is a small airport, roughly an hour and a half away from Oslo. From there to Kragero itself is another hour and a half drive with some beautiful views.

It was late on when we got there so we had some cheese, olives, ham, bread and wine then headed for bed. The next morning we got up and grabbed some breakfast and Sophie did a cheeky spot of colouring in before we got the ferry across to town.

The ferry journey is only about 15 minutes long but I got very snap happy! You can also drive around but it takes longer.

Apparently in the summer time Kragero is very different, full of tourists and you can hardly see the sea for boats! I’m very keen to go back in the late summer.

How Norwegian are the houses?! I’m such a tourist.

We went for a stroll around town and had a look in the shops before heading for lunch.

I absolutely loved these water bottles. I think I might need to buy myself some for next year’s flat.

For lunch I got a delicious chicken pesto salad. Others got chicken wraps, salmon wraps and omelettes. (It seemed to be a very healthy cafe)

Then we headed for the ferry back home but (because my brother got the times wrong) we missed it! It wasn’t really a bad thing though because it gave us a chance to go and buy some wine and explore a little more. The children had great fun feeding the swans and playing in the snow.

Coming soon: Part 2, the christening!

St Andrews in the Square

I thought I’d start my blog with “what I did yesterday”.  For a treat and a catch up, my best friend, Ross and I, went out for lunch.  I was keen to go somewhere new and we decided on Cafe Source in St Andrews in the Square.

It’s a bit of a hidden gem, in the middle of some kind of “undesirable”/rough areas surrounding it and the only reason I know it’s there is because I viewed a PERFECT flat there last year, which I unfortunately didn’t get.  Maybe next year!

I had grilled chicken with a mixed leaf salad, croutons and shavings of parmesan. It was yummy! And actually a nice healthy salad, unlike most restaurants it wasn’t drenched in creamy salad. You can see the menu here.

Picture of St Andrew’s in the Square, which is also a music venue, stolen from merchantcityglasgow.com. Tried to link it in the picture – think it worked, but I’m still learning all the html malarkey! Apologies for my lack of, and poor quality pictures; I wasn’t planning to make it in to a blog post but since it’s a first attempt you can cut me some slack 🙂

FINALLY – I got a result of 76% for a uni report today. This is the first time I’ve got a 1st class result in 3rd year (4 year course) which is what I’ve been aiming for so I’m pretty chuffed.
Hope I did OK on post #1. x