Pink Skies and Glittery Streets (Scotland Blog)

b.
Dec 28, 2016
4 min read

Waking up to the tingling of your feet from the cold night with frost crawling up your window – what a cheesy way to start your first travel blog huh?

Let’s try this again.

We hopped on a plane to London, and we didn’t just hop on any plane. We hopped on an A380 which obviously, had me pumped. It was my first time flying to London on the upper deck of the A380 which only added to the excitement. About 13 hours later, we landed in Heathrow, London. Since we’ve been to London several times before, we didn’t stay very long. Instead, we caught our next flight to Glasgow with British Airways.

Flying into Glasgow was definitely a tick, off my bucket list because I’ve really been wanting to go to Scotland upon hearing so many amazing stories about Scotland. We rented a car at Glasgow and headed up to Aviemore which is part of the Scottish Highlands. We decided that renting a car would be a good idea especially because we wanted the flexibility to go to places where public transport isn’t as readily available as it would be in bigger cities.

We arrived about two and a half hours later at Aviemore. We rented a cosy little log cabin that sat comfortably on a hill. By the time we arrived, we had travelled for over 24 hours and as you may

expect, we were drained.

The next morning, we went to a lovely little church in Aviemore. It wasn’t your typical cathedral with massive sculptures and paintings, but it was nonetheless a beautiful service. After the service, the people welcomed us with some hot chocolate and cookies (because hey, who doesn’t like hot chocolate and cookies.) Some of the people we met at church suggested that we should visit the Cairngorm Highland Wildlife Park, so that’s exactly where we went. It was pretty cool seeing polar bears and snow leopards with your own very eyes. Plus, they had this drive-thru-jungle thingy, so you can drive right through it and come face to face with bisons and yaks.

On the second day, we headed over to Loch Ness which owed its fame to the legendary Loch Ness monster (and no, we didn’t find the monster sadly.) They had an exhibition dedicated to the Loch Ness monster and as interesting as it was, I found it kind of creepy (if dark lighting and random shadows ain’t your thing, definitely don’t give this a shot.) Not too far from that was the Loch Morlich. It was completely frozen, so you can imagine the amount of fun we had sliding all over the ice. The view from the lake was simply breath-taking. Somewhere around noon, we thought we’d take a drive around Inverness (where there FINALLY was some shopping.) It’s definitely a bigger town than Aviemore but the beauty of it was just the same.

Did I mention that the sunsets and sunrises in Aviemore are beautiful? Because its definitely something worth taking note of.

Anyway.

The next day, we headed to Findhorn, where the North Sea is. Initially, we wanted to go there simply because we heard there were seals, but turns out there’s so much more to Findhorn than just seals. A rainbow greeted us just across the sea. Both ends of the rainbow could be seen from the beach. There was a nice gentleman with his little daughter and his dogs who showed us around. His dogs were honestly the most exciting part of my day. The beach looked almost exactly like the pictures you’d see on postcards. It had those cute little beach houses, white sand (okay maybe not exactly white, but you get what I mean), clear waters and a rainbow to put the icing on the cake. And not to forget, the barking seals, of course.

The next day, we headed for the Cairngorm Mountains. As soon as we got out of the car, we could hardly maintain our ground due to the strong winds (so much for spending time to braid your hair.) We took the famous Funicular train service all the way to the top of the mountain where they had an exhibition, a restaurant, an indoor Christmas market and a viewing platform. Once again, it was incredibly hard to maintain ground on the viewing platform as the winds continued, but the view was without a doubt worth the struggle.

Upon purchasing tickets to the Funicular train, we were given a 20% discount off the entrance fee to the Reindeer Centre, so we thought why not? Seeing reindeers with my own eyes was really special. They do look pretty similar to Sven from Frozen (don’t mind my childish reference), but they look so much more special up close. Once again, they set up a little exhibition about reindeers which was rather informative. Personally, I do appreciate the exhibitions that they set up everywhere, because it really helps you to understand and learn so much more from that single visit.

I guess that pretty much wraps up our visit to Aviemore. The next day, we took a plane to Glasgow where we finished up our Christmas shopping. Two nights after that, we hopped on another flight to London where we did even more shopping. We also visited the Victoria and Albert Museum. Lucky enough, we also managed to watch the St. Paul's Cathedral Boys Choir sing some Christmas Carols. And yeah…then we came home. All in all, I really thank God for such a memorable trip.

Well, I guess that’s it! Thanks for sticking around and reading this SUPER amateur travel blog.

Till next time :)

ps. I apologize for not taking proper pictures that capture the mood and beauty of Scotland. I was too caught up with taking videos that I completely forgot to take photographs. Sorry!