The British Isles

Does This Count as Island Hopping?

It seemed only logical for us to go from a cold island in the Artic circle to some more islands that did not boast the typical tropical weather you think of when you hear an "island vacation". So off to the slightly less cold but more rainy British Isles!! Where we hoped to see some Scottish highland cows, Irish pubs, and get some English fish and chips.

Also I had to reference this many times to figure out I was referencing things correctly, so just dropping this here:

Our Stops:

Edinburgh, Scotland - 2 Days

We flew into Edinburgh from Iceland and took a bus to downtown. We took a second to take a break in the park under the Edinburgh Castle as it had been a long day already and we were overwhelmed with the amount of people we were around coming from the remoteness of Iceland, we were not ready for this level of hustle and bustle.

Staying at the Castle Rock Hostel was also a different experience compared to our very private camper van, now sharing a bedroom with 12 more strangers, but having more people to talk to. The hostel was a good experience but we were not able to fully enjoy it with only staying one night in town and exploring as much as we could with our time. We discovered that the masses of people in Edinburgh was mainly due to our arrival being during the Fringe Festival, which is one of the largest artistic festivals in the world that happens each year during the month of August. There were street performers from around the world performing for free on the Royal Mile, craft tents set up in a park and an endless supply of flyers getting handed to you for paid and free shows anywhere you looked. We attended a few of the 3,000+ shows, some were pretty good while others were not.

We also enjoyed taking a tour at the Scotch Whisky Experience in downtown Edinburgh. They did a great job of giving an interactive experience to explain why Scotch whisky is unique. We ended our tour with a sampling of our choice whisky in the world's largest collection of unopened whisky bottles (yes, even at 10AM).

Glasgow, Scotland - 5 Days

We took the train from Edinburgh to Glasgow to be in a better location for day trips. Glasgow is a great town that is a little more industrial but has great architecture and history. We just missed being able to see the World Pipe Band Championships but were able to see a few things that Glasgow had to offer: the Glasgow Cathedral, street art, and the Gin and Rum festival.

We took day trips to:

• Stirling- for the Highland Games! Something similar to a community track and field event with cycling and running on an uneven grass track, long jumping events, heavy weight throwing events and the Caber Toss! They also had traditional dancing and bagpipe competitions, beer garden and food trucks. Highlight though was our very own Yamilex winning the 1 lap visitor's race by quite a lead (even with her almost falling on the home stretch) and don't worry, she didn't spend the $5 winning all in one place!

• Inverness- for Nessy! We took a couple crowded trains up to Inverness to check out the town and lay our eyes on the infamous Loch Ness. The town itself was very cute with their own castle, cathedral, and plenty of pubs next to the Ness river. We took a bus out to the tip of Loch Ness to try to get a glimpse of the Loch Ness Monster, but no luck. We were impressed with just how expansive the lake is though, you could not see the other side from where we were standing.

Belfast, Northern Ireland - 1 Day

We were supposed to spend more than just 1 day in Belfast, but we did not get our bus/ferry tickets bought in time.. So an express 1 day tour of Belfast it was! There was so many things to soak in: the City Hall that had a nice free exhibit that talked about Belfast's history, the Belfast Castle that gave a nice overlook of the city, and a few older cathedrals. We learned that the Titanic was built in the Belfast dry docks and now is home to the largest Titanic museum (we weren't able to squeeze in the visit into our timeline). We did see the Crumlin Gaol though, which is an old jail that ran for 150 years, closing in 1996. The jail is now home to a brewery, restaurant and a in depth museum that walked through the history of the jail and the dynamics during the Irish Independence movement.

Dublin, Ireland - 3 Days

We were able to spend 2 days in Ireland's capital. After getting off the train from Belfast, we needed to get some food and what better way to eat when you are very hungry and on a budget?? AN ALL YOU CAN EAT BUFFET!!! Colton likes to use the term "Beat the buffet" as the challenge to eat more food than the buffet costs. And we did just that at Wings World, where their buffet definitely had a large Asian influence on their food choices but it was very good food, and many choices of what you could get (we are talking steam buns, to general Tso chicken, to crepes).

Side note: Here it was also highlighted to us that we should always have the local currency in cash for tipping, as we found out by insulting a street performer by tipping him USD instead of Euro's (because that's all we had). He ended up grabbing the money out of his jar and handing it back to us.

The hype of Bambino's Pizzeria is worth it in our opinion, where they serve pizza by the slice in a little shop that seemed to always have a line out the door. This was a perfect lunch stop before walking around the Dublin castle area and looking at a few of the museums.

The amount of bars in Dublin were overwhelming and had all had live music playing, so our own little pub crawl was the logical choice. We wanted to start at the famous Guinness Brewery, but were informed that the tours were sold out for the next 3 days (not sure if this was due to the FSU vs Georgia Tech football game happening that weekend, but there were sure a lot of American football fans there). But a great alternative to the Guinness Brewery Storehouse, was the Guinness Open Gate Brewery. We were able to still get a pint of Guinness from the Brewery grounds as well as taste some of the other Guinness experimental beers. The pub crawl made stops at the oldest pub in Ireland: the Brazen Head, a beer at the famous Temple Bar (way too crowded and overpriced for our liking, but neat to see from the outside), and plenty of other bars in the Temple street area.

SIDE NOTE: We had our first health issue of the trip. Unfortunately, Yami came down with a rough cold during out time in Dublin. The cold and rainy weather didn't help out the most. There were a few nights of shivers followed by wearing extra layers to sweat out the cold. Although, the nights were rough she still pushed through during the day and made the most of her time in Dublin! Fortunately, we had medicine packed and she was able to overcome the cold by day 3!

Liverpool, England - 3 days

A short plane ride from Dublin got us to Liverpool area, where we stayed across the river from Liverpool in Birkenhead as it was cheaper. One thing that we had not noticed when booking the Airbnb in this area, was that there is not a way to get across the River Mersey between Liverpool and Birkenhead on foot, instead there are subways, busses, or roadways that go through a tunnel under the river.

**One thing to state was that the public transportation here was a bit of a struggle for us. 1) The bus routes changed depending on if it was the weekday vs weekend and google maps did not account for this. 2) Transportation was very limited from midnight until 6am. 3) Be careful when buying daily passes as there are multiple different bus, train, and metro companies that all can go the same route and is manageable just with some upfront research on what pass will take you where you want to go. 4) The buses go into a few bus terminals around the city and there are cases where a bus will be labeled the same number but headed the opposite way you need, so be sure to check which bus stand you need at the terminal.

We had not planned in advance on what specifically to do in the area, so the first morning consisted of us just roaming around from our Airbnb through some larger parks. We then bought a £2 bus ticket over to Liverpool to get some food and wander around more. There are a few amazing museums for FREE that we thoroughly enjoyed:

1) The Museum of Liverpool was 3 floors that covered the rise and demolition of the first overhead electric railway, history of the almost 2nd largest church in the world, the Beatles (of course), and many more topics dating back to before the 13th century. Realistically, we could have spent more than 2 hours reading through all the exhibits.

2) The World Museum has 5 floors full of exhibits that could take a few hours to walk though as well (we spent at least 2 hours here). They had a full floor aquarium, Egyptian exhibit with multiple preserved mummies, dinosaur bones, and many other exhibits highlighting other cultures from around the world. One interesting thing that the museum did was highlight how some of the items got to be on display in the museum, even flat out stating that in cases were stolen from African tribes and then given to the museum years later.

Our favorite places of Liverpool was the Cains Brewery Village neighborhood. This is the location of ArCains, 3 stories of free arcade games for the price of admission of $33 per person. We are talking Packman, MarioKart, countless racing games, and even a Big Buck Hunter! Needless to say we stayed here for 5 hours and got our moneys worth of entertainment. Next door was also an amazing mini golf course Golf Fang that had some wild, unique, and fun holes. We will have to say we were required to make a reservation online and when we got in, there were sometimes 2 to 3 groups on a hole, but it allowed us to jump back and re-play some holes as we waited.

We also took a day trip via train out of Liverpool into North Wales to the town of Conwy to see the Conwy Castle. The town was very neat as the majority of it was contained by the still standing medieval walls. The castle itself was a paid entry to go into and walk the well preserved castle, being able to climb each of the watch towers to give you panoramic views of the river and surrounding area. If we were able to spend a bit more time in the town, we would have liked to try to fish for crabs like a number of people were doing. We watched at the small harbor on the banks of the Conwy River as they would throw a baited line or basket into the water and pull up small 4"-8" wide crabs a short time later.

Show me the Money-breakdown

For the 13 days in British Isles, we spent a total of $3,374.49, and our categorical expenses breakdown is:

Final Thoughts

Quite the difference coming from the secluded Iceland campervan to the populated cities and reliance on public transportation. We loved seeing the various cultures of the different countries on the British Isles. Each one of them was unique in their own way. A quick note on our expenses: there was a large oversite on our part with the cost of eating out vs making our own meals (as you can see by our $17 grocery bill vs our $660 restaurant/food bill over the 13 days). We were never staying in one location for too long so we were always looking for food on the go and keep on exploring before it was time to go to the next location.

One regret that we have was not being able to experience the Scottish highlands more. The locals we talked to always recommended vacationing and hiking up in these parts, and of course who doesn't want to see more of the hairy highland cows??