Top Things To Do in Edinburgh

Google Images- The mighty Castle

Edinburgh Castle- It's the city's main attraction! Admission costs £16 for an adult (£12.80 for unemployed) but you can still get great photo ops from the entrance. The castle itself though is definitely worth a visit if you have the budget and time. The entrance is at the top of the Royal Mile, easily signposted and hard to miss (just look for the nice house on a big rock)

Google Images, Holyrood Palace

Holyrood Palace and the Royal Mile- Walking the Royal Mile is a MUST, it covers the majority of the places of history in Edinburgh including Holyrood Palace (admission £11.30). At the top end of the Mile is Camera Obscura, a great attraction for all ages (£12.95). http://www.royal-mile.com/placesofinterest.html shows all the places of interest on the Royal Mile.

Arthurs Seat

Arthur's Seat- In easy walking distance from the centre of town, it provides the best views in the city!

Whiskey Experience- Near the top of the Royal Mile, tells you the history of whiskey making and includes tasters, tours from £13 (cheap enough for the tasters!)

The Monument- The most poignant figure on Princes Street, and you can now climb the steps to the top!

Google Images, penguin parade

Edinburgh Zoo- Home to Britain's only pandas and koalas! Also holds a penguin parade throughout the day, such a great day out! £16.50 admission and to get there hop on the 12, 26 or 31 bus heading South/ West.

National Gallery- Princes Street is also home to the Scottish National Gallery, showcasing some magical pieces of art and the works of famous Scottish artists. Admission free, yippee!

Google Images- Nat Gallery

These are my personal top 7 but theres also the Dungeons, Real Mary Kings Close and the city bus tours which are all equally as good, showing you the best of what Edinburgh has to offer!

Don't forget to try haggis!

Edinburgh; The Low Down

Edinburgh!

My home from home, I spent the 2013-14 academic year studying there and it was amazing! A city with amazing transport links, history in every direction and bagpipers on every street corner.

Google Images

There's never a bad time of year to visit, however I'd definitely recommend it at Christmas for the markets and the World famous Hogmanay or Summer for the ever popular Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

It has an international airport that serves Europe and the UK with budget airlines such as Easyjet and Ryanair, it also has direct flights to the US with United Airlines. To get from the airport to the city centre you can take a tram (£5), the 26 bus (£1.50) or the airport link bus (£3.50?) and also a taxi. It's main train station, Edinburgh Waverley, is centrally located in the city on Princes Street, trains leave every hour for London stations and every 15 mins to Glasgow. 

There's many budget sleep options, theres hostels off both the Royal Mile and Princes Street, ranging from £9pppn for a dorm bed proving Edinburgh on a budget is infact possible! 

Google images

Eating out in Edinburgh; there's a little bit of everything on the Royal Mile, for cheap fast food head to the Princes Mall, underground next to Waverley Station, there's also lots of little cafes and eateries in the back streets around Princes Street. 

A piper next to the train station, welcoming you to Scotland!

Nightlife in Edinburgh is AMAZING, weekdays tend to be busy with students from the city's 4 universities whereas the weekend tends to be full of stags and hens, so i'd definitely recommend a weekday (trust me, it's so much better). The best clubs are Shanghai, Silk, Cabaret Voltaire and Hive (only for the Brave). Entry tends to be cheap with some doing £1 mixers. If you're staying outside of walking difference, there are night buses that run 24hrs, it's £3 each way or £3.50 for a day and night ticket (bought between 6pm and 12pm).

Departing Arthurs Seat, some times it's a good idea to ditch the path

Edinburgh has it all- A castle, a palace, a mile, pandas and a shed load of whiskey. It's easy to see the majority of the city in a day but to really embrace it, I'd recommend two or three days. Unless you're really into medieval history and have a lot of time, I wouldn't recommend buying admission to the Castle as you can still see the castle from all it's glory for free with great photo opportunities. Before sunset, you must must MUST climb up Arthurs Seat, it provides the best view of the city and to watch the sunset is even better. The park where the seat is situated is next to Holyrood Palace, the start of the Royal Mile which ends at the Castle. This provides a great few hours. I'm going to do a separate post of things to do so keep watch.

The best advice I could give to someone visiting this magnificent city is to hit the Royal Mile then ditch all of your maps. Exploring the city I found more than I could ever imagine, all the little alleyways and staircases are what make Edinburgh so great. I once found a pub in one of the 'secret' alleyways! 

On our way up to Arthurs Seat

Edinburgh all in all, is a great stopover and a perfect insight into Scotland!

Sorry for the disappearing act!

It's been nearly two months....

I AM THE WORSE!

Things have been very hectic lately,  I'm studying for my degree full time whilst working full time...maybe a stupid idea! I'm thinking of the end point though, my degree in hand and a nice amount in the bank to further my travels with!

Basically, posts will be slower now yet they will still be here and on my twitter!

Thanks for the perseverance, you are all gems!

Lisbon to London

Route 1- Lisbon to London

43 days, 34 cities, 14 countries

Home-Lisbon (2)-Porto-Madrid-Valencia-Barcelona (2)-Avignon- Nice (2)-Chamonix (2)-Milan-Pisa-Lucca-Florence-Rome (2)-Bologna-Verona (Lake Garda) (2)-Venice-Bled-Ljubljana-Pula (2)-Zagreb-Budapest (2)-Bratislava-Vienna-Salzburg-Munich (2)-Prague (2)-Berlin (2)-Hamburg-Copenhagen-Amsterdam (2)-Antwerp-Brussels-Paris (2)-Bruges-Calais-Home

All stops are one day unless otherwise specified, italics state that it is simply a quick stop.

All easily accessible by train

This post is also found on the Europe page on the right hand side

Cape Town to Johannesburg/Pretoria via the Garden Route

Route 1- Cape Town to Johannesburg/Pretoria via the Garden Route

 1 country, 6 cities, 17 days

Cape Town and surrounding areas (Cape Peninsular, Hermanus, Stellenbosch etc) (5) - George/ Knysa/ Oudtshoorn (4)- Tsitsikamma NP (1)- Addo Elephant NP (1)- Durban (1/2)- Drakensberg Mountains UNESCO (1/2)- Johannesburg (2)- Pretoria

This is one of the most common routes in South Africa with the option to head east to Kruger NP or head north through Botswana/Zimbabwe to Victoria Falls.

The route is one that is done regularly by small overland tours or is easily done by independently by transport companies such as Baz Bus.

This is also found on the Africa page on the right hand side

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Small Group Travel; The Lowdown

Small group tour travel is seen as one of the major marmite topics of the travel industry. You either love the security and (normally) organised manner of having everything planned for them, OR you hate the restriction and repetitive nature of them.

So...

Never fear

For Selina is here.....

Here's my opinion on it:

Since I was tiny I've wanted to backpack Africa, but as a young (19 years old) female, I don't think it would have been the most appropriate thing to do, despite great transport companies in South Africa etc such as Baz Bus making it a lot easier these days. I looked at many different tour companies such as Intrepid, G Adventures and Gecko Adventures, all in all they're very similar, all providing the same sort of camping overland experience and many camp sites being the same. I decided to choose to travel with G Adventures, although they are sometimes slightly more expensive than their competitors I felt they provided more information about their trips (it seems little but when you're handing over money that you've spent hundreds of weekends working your butt off, you're reluctant to hand the money over), they have 'YOLO' tours aimed at 18-39 year olds, no single supplements (HURRAH!) and finally, the majority of the meals were included.

It should be noted that I LOVE the planning aspect of travelling (so much that I want a career in it)

and didn't choose tour travel so they'd do the hard work for me

When you arrive at the starting point, it's usually a twin room in a hotel/lodge- you can have your own room but for a surcharge. They room you up with someone of the same gender and usually near your age, most people were a bit apprehensive of this after having a long flight BUT I loved it! My roomate and I felt as though we were having a sleepover when we were 11 again! It's also nice because you have someone to go to the welcome meeting with and the very first day on the bus. It's the little things in life after all....nobody wants to be the person sitting alone.

Throughout the week everyone mucks in, whether it's emptying the tents and mattresses out of the truck, cooking or doing the dishes, it sounds stupid but you really do get a sense of teamwork from it, even in the first day, which enables you to get to know your fellow travellers. In the middle of my trip we had an one night, two day excursion to the Okavango Delta, if I was to book this an excursion from a hostel I really don't think this would have been as amazing and life forgetting, simply on the basis I was stuck on the this island in the middle of nowhere with people I knew so their was no awkwardness (especially with the bush 'toilet'), and noone was offended with my over-competitiveness playing uno because they'd been used to it the last three nights.

Personally I feel one of the best bits of overlanding is you dont have to worry about transport, especially in Africa where public transport is either non-existent, unsafe or an expensive tourist based bus...this is where tour travel wins! Your guides know exactly where they're going and when they're going, making you arrive in your destinations at the perfect time, everything is ran to precision YET it's unregimented.

Another important point to note issssss....the guides! I don't know if I was lucky or all guides are like this but I couldn't praise mine enough. Their passion and knowledge was second to none, they were easy going and just great to be around. You didn't feel like you were unwelcome and they became friends by the end of the trip. I even got taught how to cook an upside down cake in tin foil on a braai...life skills!

So overall....my experience with tour travel was amazing! I couldn't recommend G Adventures more!

But, I'd only do tour travel for places where I wouldnt feel safe or it was difficult to do so

I hope this helps with the great debate!

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Hitting up Hartbeespoort

So you're stuck for a few days in Johannesburg, and lets be honest there's not much going for it in the city and it has now been voted the Worlds most unfriendly city. Well the answer to all your problems is...Go to Hartbeespoort! About an hours drive from Johannesburg, the town is based around a dam and has the perfect one day itinerary, home to four main activities- An elephant sanctuary, the bush baby and monkeys sanctuary, market/small shopping stop and a cable car up a mountain to look over the Hartbeespoort Dam.

Aprox an hours drive from JoBurg Airport, situated just left of Pretoria

The Elephant Sanctuary

http://www.elephantsanctuary.co.za/hartiesabout.htm

The sanctuary has 5 elephants, as you need approximately 1000 hectares per elephant! I chose the elephant interaction program. It starts with an elephant keeper showing you around the elephant, talking about the anatomy of the animal, followed by feeding an elephant (like a vacuum cleaner!) and then walking trunk-in-hand with the huuuuuuuge animal. Until I had done all of this, I never realised just how big an elephant was. It should just be noted too that all the elephants there are rescued and have NOT been taken from the wild.

I admit I was a bit weary of the place first, after going on safari first and seeing hundreds of elephants in the wild but once I saw how they were treated and the sanctuary owners' passion for the elephants, my opinion soon changed, it is a fantastic place with such good intentions! Once in a lifetime stuff!

ANNNND, elephants eat 250kg of food a day! Extreme!

BOOKING ESSENTIAL.

Elephant Kiss

Post elephant kiss

Bush Baby and Monkey Sanctuary

 http://www.monkeysanctuary.co.za/

Only tours are available here but thats not an issue! It's a wooden walkway through the forest home to hundreds of different breeds of monkeys and lemurs that live freely in the forest with no fences to separate them. There's also two rope bridges that are AWESOME suspended between two mountain gorges. Just beware, the monkeys know how to pickpocket!! My friend lost her glasses to a Capuchin!

Night in the Museum anyone?!

Aerial Cableway

http://www.hartiescableway.co.za/

If you love a good view (like myself, as I go on about them enough), this is a great way to see what Hartbeespoort is all about, the Dam. It's also has some great eateries on top of the mountain and at the cableway ground station. On the top there's also a few trails too.

Hartbeespoort Dam

 I'd definitely recommend a day in Hartbeespoort if you're 'stuck' in Johannesburg for a day or two, good places to stay will offer a reputable taxi firm who will transport you to the places for the day. It is also possible to buy all three activities in a combined ticket from the Elephant Sanctuary website.