Cruise 2015

Dane and I went on our first cruise. Dane was the one that initiated and did everything. He called me one day and was like "I bought a cruise." I think he felt bad that I was so cold in Iceland, Scotland and England. It was a big surprise but we ended up having a lot of fun.

Dane and I worked out a lot and both got to goal weights. If I ever go on a cruise again I think I will be like 5 -10lbs under my goal weight to make up for all the weight gain we gained on the ship. There was a lot of buffet style food that it was hard not to keep munching on especially the soft served ice cream. The dinners were really good.

The excursions were by far the best part. We went to Mexico, Belize and Honduras. Our first excursion we went snorkeling in a blue lagoon and then we went through a water cave with headlamps and life jackets. Both were very fun.  I started learning Spanish in August on duolingo to try to prepare for the trip but I didn't learn it well enough or I didn't learn the right things. I suppose knowing how to say ' I eat an apple' isn't very helpful. In Mexico Dane and I weren't sure how to buy anything due to our lack of Spanish and our American currency.  The cave was pitch dark and there were bats and spiders. I thought it was really neat I never imagined myself being somewhere like that.

The picture above is in Cazulmel, Mexico. The beach was beautiful. We were given quesadillas and tacos. Dane and I forgot not to eat anything fresh (that has been washed with water) and ate pico and we payed for it dearly the next day.

The next day we went to Belize. I think Belize was my favorite because we got to see the culture a lot more. We had a two hour bus ride and I felt got to know the country and culture more than any other one. We went to a Mayan temple. It was so sublime!

It was really neat to be able to walk on steps that were built so long ago. I love trying to imagine their culture and think about who they were. Note to self. Bring bug spray!

Our second to last stop was in  Honduras at the Isle of Roatan.  Roatan was interesting. We went zip lining and we went to a zoo. Zip lining was fun and I'm glad I did it but I don't think I need to do it again. It wasn't as fun as I wanted I guess. The zoo was really cool. They just had these animals that were trained to be comfortable around people so they were free to roam the forests and came down and got on your shoulder. 

 I was so happy to be on a real bridge in a real jungle. It was just like the movies :)

The Isle of Roatan is known for having pirates. It kind of opened my eyes to how horrible pirates were. They came in and turned the natives into slaves. So did Christopher Columbus. 

Our last excursion was in Costa Maya Mexico. We went on a catamaran and went snorkeling. It was so nice and fun. The coral reef was beautiful. 

The ship was nice. The food was good. The activities seemed kind of focused on older people like bingo and 70's music trivia. I am really glad we paid extra for a deck in our room. that was really nice. I have a hard time reading if there are noises. Reading on top of the ship wasn't the best for me since there always seemed to be a lot of music. The smoking area didn't have as much but there was smoke. Reading on our deck worked out. 

Things I learned for next Cruise:

- bring cash in one and five dollar bills for tips (not for the ship where it is included but for the excursions)  

- bring bug spray

- in poorer countries do not eat any fruits and vegetables 

-bring more shorts/ tank tops and less pants 

- lose more weight than ideal weight

We went to Disney world after the cruise. We probably should have went before the cruise. One it should be less crowded (people not on Christmas vacation yet) and two after going to a real jungle seeing a fake jungle kind of dampened the excitement. We did learn something about Disneyland too you can get your fast past tickets up to thirty days in advance. That is what we should have done. All the good fast past things were sold out. 

We learned that even if hotels have the word Disney in it it does not mean Disney owns it. Our hotel was named Walt Disney Dolphin. This matters because when taking shuttles from the airport the Disney bus (which is the cheapest) only allows people who have a "Disney hotel" ours did not count which was frustrating. 

I loved the balmy weather 80 degrees was so perfect! 

Something that I discovered on this trip is that the businesses seem corrupt. When the ship docked at the ports it seemed like all the businesses were American. They had a section where all the cruise people could go and then they tell us don't venture out of here because it isn't safe. I am not sure how much money goes to the countries that we are in which is infuriating. I tried giving people tips but I am not sure what else I can do. 

Glasgow and Goodbye Europe

Getting out of Orkney was a little challenging. They have an airport but a very very small one. We went to the Orkney airport  from there we were scheduled  to go to Glasgow. All the planes were delayed. We waited for about three hours and our plane hadn't  left Glasgow yet. The plane leaving to Edinburgh which was three hours late was leaving and said they had two extra seats for anyone wanting to go. Dane ran up to the front and got got those two seats. It is about and hour drive from Edinburgh to Glasgow. I had no idea why Dane was in a rush to get those tickets. As far as I knew we didn't really have very set plans in Glasgow.

It turned out that we did have plans very big plans. Dane got concert tickets to the Idina Menzel concert for our anniversary! I was very surprised. And I felt kind of bad he took us to Europe I thought that was more than enough for a graduation/birthday/anniversary present.

The concert was a good one. 

We met a lot of people in Glasgow that were very hard to understand. They seemed extra annoyed that we didn't understand their accent too. 

We went on a tour bus that told us about everything in the city it also allowed you get off wherever and then catch another tour bus later. That ended up giving us a lot of information and we enjoyed it. 

We didn't buy things in the other cities figuring that Glasgow would have all we needed for gifts for other people. That plan didn't work out so well. Glasgow didn't seem to have the best stuff. We wish we had bought something in Orkney or Oban for example. 

Overall we had an amazing trip. It was very cold though. I have never bought so many hot chocolates in my whole life. Dane loved the temperature.  The picture below is a picture we took in Texas showing our thermal heat. Dane and I are very different. We did have a few nice days though. I learned a few things about Dane and myself too. Dane is a very happy camper it takes an awful amount to upset him. It seems the harder it gets the more optimistic he gets. I am the opposite and need to work on that :) 

 Goodbye Europe! I hope to see you again soon! Oh yeah in the airport there was this whole fleet of what appeared to be the equivalence of boy scouts except they were in kilts. I thought they all looked very nice.

Overall, I am happy we did public transportation however, there were a few places a car would have been nice. Mainly in Iceland and parts of Scotland (Orkney).

The Orkney Islands

The Orkney Islands is not inhabited by a lot of people. When we got off the ferry trying to find a bus to our hotel became harder than we anticipated. It was really weird they actually had us go on a school bus to get nearer to our hotel. After the school bus we then walked a fair distance to our hotel. When we went to Orkney there was a famous music festival going on. We learned that if you raise your arm when a bus drives by they should stop. I wish we knew that in Oban but maybe it only works in Orkney.

The picture below is a picture of the St. Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall. St. Magnus Cathedral has a lot of history. The founding of it was started by an earl. It took over 300 years to make this Cathedral. Because Dane and I went to Kirkwall (the capital of Orkney) during the music Festival There were a ton of tourists! The church was very very hard to see anything everybody was taking a million pictures.

We didn't do as much as we would have liked at the music festal. We missed a day due to us walking to our hotel and having no other buses to get to kirkwall that night. So instead we had one day and part of that day Dane made sure we some of the very old sites. Hence, we only went to one thing at the music festival and that was a poem discussion. The guy presenting studied old viking poems and interrupted them from old Norse. It was very interesting learning what he felt people needed to know and to learn about those old poems.

The 'town' of Skara Brae was one of the neatest things I have ever seen in my life. Skara Brae is a prehistoric village where people from the neolithic ages lived about 5,000 years ago.  It is so weird to imagine who they were and what they did. The whole village was under ground I kind of know why. It was freezing! The wind was so strong! Dane says it would have been warmer back then but I'm not convinced. 

The village was neat to see. They got all their food from the ocean and had each home connected with tunnels to other homes there also was no sign of any kind of hierarchy everybody was equal. 

These stone circles were also so praiseworthy. This circle is called The Ring of Brodgar. I wish we could get a picture of the whole thing. They are incredible to look at and it is so neat to be able to think about who these people were and what they believed in. Why did they put up these stones? We didn't end up going to Stone Henge it was out of the way and we have heard there are always a million people. I was fine with missing them because we got to see these. 

Getting to the Orkney Islands

Getting to the Orkney Islands was a major feat. It very far away from a lot of Scotland. A lot of people we talked to had never been to the Orkney Islands even if they lived in Scotland.

We left Oban on a Sunday and so there were not very many buses. We ended up going to the wrong bus stop and saw the bus driver ride right past us. The next bus came 4 hours later. It was rainy and cold and most places were closed on Sunday. A chocolate shop eventually opened up and we went in there and got hot coco and fondue. It was really yummy and warm!

Because we got on a later bus stop it got rid of a lot of time we would have spent in Inverness. It was raining hard in Inverness on a Sunday so I am not sure what we would have been able to do anyways. 

Dane's Aunt convinced me to read Outlander and I wish I had at least gotten through the second book before I went to Scotland there was  lot of history in Scotland that I had no idea before about and I feel really bad.  Had I read it before I would have tried to go to the Culloden Battlefield. We had a short amount of time in that area oh well. 

We then took a bus to Thurso, Scotland. We had a pretty long walk to our hotel in Thurso. Dane got reservations at a hotel right next to the ferry which would take us to the Orkney Islands. The walk was long and cold and I was sad when the hotel didn't have a bath oh well. It was an adventure right. 

Dane really liked Thurso. He felt like he was at the end of the world. 

The next morning we walked more around the shoreline and took in it's beauty and then we took the ferry to the Orkney Islands. 

Oban, Scotland

From Edinburgh we took a train to Oban, Scotland. Oban I think was my favorite city in Scotland that we visited. It is right next to the ocean and you can really smell the ocean. We got there kind of late and we couldn't get any Internet connection. That was a little nerve wracking but it worked out fine because our hotel was right on the coast. We just had to keep following it until we found our hotel.

Dane paid extra on his phone plane while we were in Europe. It worked out for the most part going back I would want to have some kind of GPS to be safe. He doesn't agree.

I really liked where we stayed in Oban. We stayed at a place called the Corriemar House. The lady that owned it was super friendly. The place was very cute and had good food.

As I mentioned before we got there kind of late that evening so the next morning we went to the information center hoping to go to the Isle of Iona. It turned out that the ferry didn't leave that often so we missed the first one that would have let us have a lot of time on the isle. There was luckily a different one but it gave us a lot less time. To get to the Isle of Iona you have to take a ferry to the Isle of Mull and then take a bus ride all the way to end of the isle and then take a ferry to the isle of Iona.

As we waited for the ferry to go to the Isle of Mull we took a boat ride to see seals. It was fun to see all the different islands.

Below is a picture of us on the Isle of Iona. The abbey is behind us even if you can barley see it. The abbey has a history with vikings. Which of course is the main reason Dane wanted to see it. It was funny on the bus we were on there was this huge Christian group who wanted to see the abbey. They wanted to see it because of completely different reason than him almost opposite reasons. 

Iona and Mull were absolutely breathtaking! They have such a unique landscape. 

Sometimes my anxiety gets the best of me and I don't want do certain things because of limited time and getting a seat on the bus etc. But, Dane convinced me that we should go deeper into the Hebrides since we had time and were just waiting for the bus. I'm so glad we did! It was so gorgeous! You did have to be careful though in the grass if there were these yellow plants growing and you stepped on them there was a huge puddle of water. So sometimes it was impossible not to step on them and ended up getting wet feet but it was a lot fun anyway. 

The picture below was taken off our ferry going from the Isle of Mull to Oban.

When we got back to Oban we went to McCaig's Tower. It was a neat structure with a neat view of Oban. 

Goodbye Oban until we meet again! 

Edinburgh

We then took a train to Edinburgh. We ate at a place called Oink which had hog roasts. It was pretty good my sandwich had a little bit of haggis. I didn't really care for the haggis. Dane and I discovered that some of Scotland's toilets are really hard to flush. They need a very specific technique it seems. At Oink you had to pull the handle down as fast as you can and then let go.

 We went on a hike to Arthur's seat. That mountain was very very beautiful! We had to carry all our stuff for that hike but it wasn't that bad. I am really happy we only took backpacks on our trip. It saved us a lot of hassle. We could carry it for far distances and put it under our seats on buses, trains and airplanes. Arthur's seat was very very windy when we got up to the top. The view of Edinburgh was awe-inspiring.

Coming back down from Arthur's seat we came across this old abbey that we thought was pretty. 

We then went to the Palace of Holyroodhouse or Holyrood Palace. They have it opened up for the public when important people aren't there. It was a pretty good tour they give you headphones for free and you can learn all about the different parts of the palace and about different people in history etc. You are only allowed to take pictures outside. 

York

 York was a pretty stunning city. It has a wall surrounding it and it has a few rivers.

The wall has a ledge that you can walk on 

York has a castle called Clifford's castle it is now just on a hill the mote is gone but seeing the castle in the city is pretty amazing. 

There is a medevil street called the shambles that we walked through. It is really small a car can't fit in it and you are just surrounded by old shops and buildings. It just seems like you are back in time when walking on it. 

We went to a Viking museum. That museum was really interesting because it actually had a ride on it.  It is called Jorvik Viking Centre.  Vikings lived in York for awhile and so archeologists have found things there and put them in the museum. 

We ate at a Indian resataunt that was pretty good. When we were looking at going to England one of the tips we were given was to get Indian food. We ended up getting it in York. We went to a place called Taj Mahal Indian cuisine. We had this mango juice drink that was delicious! It was right next to the river and had a nice view. The food was good too. 

York was a really neat city. The wall makes it feel so unique and old.