Vegan meal at Hundred Monkeys

Glastonbury! Home of one of the worlds largest outdoor concert. We missed the concert in our planning, because the tickets were sold out already by October 2008. For those who have attended stage 13 in Alberta, this is like stage 13 on drugs, a lot of them. There are 177,000 festival go-ers who paid for thier tickets, about another 10,000 who sneak in, and then the 25,000 people who run the show. SO, imagine a barren farm, that in the matter of two days, turns into a city of over 200,000 people. Needless to say, as we were arriving into Glastonbury on the 1st day of the festival, traffic was horrible. It took us about 5 hours to get from London to Glastonbury, train and 2 busses.

After that little set back, we were in for smooth sailing. Almost. We spent the time in Glastonbury getting to know the locals and seeing the few sights. This is the legendary home of King Arthur, the mystical Thorn bush of Joseph of Arimathia (Jesus's Uncle), and the Chalice well.
It is also a very spiritual place, the town centre is filled with alternative healing clinics, alternative book stores that sell books on healing, usual powers, magic and paganism (I picked one up myself! To add to our traveling library), as well as people who doTarot readings and psychics.
It has a very comforting feel to it. There have been a lot of crop circles that have appeared in the area since the 1950s and Ewa was really excited to find a tour that took you around to all the different recent ones. But we found out later that not many tours were offered and private ones were way out of our budget, would have been so amazing to be able to see one in real life!
The first night after our grueling time in traffic, and the thundershowers we went out for a bite to eat in a traditional pub in the lower level of a B&B. The pub was decked out just the way you would imagine an old-school British pub would be. Cozy, low lighting a lot of locals pulled up to the bar and a great pub menu! Fish and chips and a steak sandwhich! This was our first real taste of English fish & chips and the obligatory warm beer! We headed back to the B&B that we booked (No.1 Park Terrace) and called it quits.

The next morning the traditional English breakfast that the owners cooked up was amazing! The food was delicious and hot right from the grill! Eggs, bacon, sausage, grilled mushrooms and tomatoes and toast. Fresh fruit, coffee, teas, cereal... a real cookup! The rain continued and so we walked around the town, dodged the rain spent a few hours in the local shops and bookstores. When the rain let up in the day, and we spent the night outside of a local pub, meeting a few of the local Glastonbury townsfolk. Two of the people that we met were cooks at the local 100 Monkey Cafe. Some were amazing new age hippies with a great out look on life. They had convinced us (Chad) to hike up the Tor that night and see the sunrise from the top. To fuel up for the journey we headed to a kebab shop for a bite to eat. Yes, Kebabs, the worst idea since Donairs after the pub. The place was packed, full of young kids, drunks and random hungry people like us :) Then things got a bit ugly when a drunk guy (probably in his early 50s) and all of his drunk buddies started yelling at the clerk behind the counter that they made his pizza wrong - I wanted grilled tomatos not tomato sauce! So Chad being the nice guy that he is tried to calm them down (bad idea) and said something along the lines of Come on man, tomato tomato, give the guy a break. Yes that was a fantastic idea... the guy then proceded to call Chad a Fukn idiot and to keep his mouth shut..eeep. More yelling swearing, and spitting as he was yelling, his buddies joined in and we were threatened for a good five ten minutes while I stood between Chad and the drunk guy telling him sorry, no problem.. getting spat at, pleasant. Bloody marvelous! ha. A random stranger tried to help us out and stepped inbetween us and got attacked by them. When they finally left we were a bit shaken up. Luckily they were not waiting outside for us as promised and we just went back to our B & B. We didn't feel like heading out to the Tor to watch the sunrise anymore :( we just went to bed feeling very lucky to have escaped the drunks.

The next day, we awoke to beautiful sunshine and another great breakfast. After meandering around a little while we decided to hike up the Tor, an old hill that used to be an island when the area used to be flooded. In the midevil ages, dams and dykes were built to divert the waters, creating the praries around Tor today. There are remains of a castle tower on the top of Tor and there have been archeological digs that date back to the 6th century when King Arthur was supposed to have lived in the area.

The Tor

After hiking down from the Tor we stopped at the Glastonbury Abbey, where the remains of King Arthur were supposed to have been fond in late 1186. The Abbey was a focal point of the Christian religion in England for four hundred years. In the early 1500's it was abandoned as were hundreds of other monasteries throughout England.

That night we were off to visit our friends from the 100 Monkey Cafe. This little cafe is a great; organic, locally produced and grown,a shop that has amazing food at really good prices! The top picture is what Chad had to eat that night.

Glastonbury Abbey

written by  ECRadventure on June 27, 2009 from Glastonbury, United Kingdom
from the travel blog: ECRadventure's Travel Blog
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The Highlands!

Welcome to Scotland! Land of Rain, Sun, and Midgies. This place is a bit like Alberta in the fact that the wheather can't really decide what it wants. It's fluctuates between cold and rainy to hot and humid within minutes. Thats why we now have two umbrellas, apparently we can't share. No that's not true, we can, but the hight difference makes it difficult.
We got into Glasgow in the early evening and arrived at the worst hostle probably in Scotland. The Globetrotters Hostel should be burned and then rebuilt, or maybe just burned. Generally we are not picky regarding where we sleep, but I think we now know that a bed is simply not enough. I will spare everyone the gory details lets just say we could not wait to get out of there. Our entire time in Glasgow was spent away from the hostle because that's just how aweful it was.

Our rental car for our highland adventure!

James and Margaret's graves in Lesmahagow

Having supper at Aros Cottage in Rhu

Having supper at Aros Cottage in Rhu

Aros Cottage!

From Rhu we travelled to Fort William driving along Loch Lommond, which is quite the big Loch. We are still not sure but we think a Loch in Scotish is a Lake, makes sense to us. We stopped for a short while in Oban and went to the Oban Whiskey distillery and bought a small bottle of scotch. We arrived in Fort William in the late evening where we stayed at Farr Cottage for the night, to again find ourselves the only guests. The next day we went on a hike of Ben Nevis. One of the highest mountains in Scotland, Ben Nevis was a great hike. The entire area is emerald green and really made us feel like we were somewhere in Canada, a little piece of home away from home. Just as we started our hike it started raining, but we just kept on going, most the beginning of our hike we were covered by a canopy of trees. We hiked up and up the mountain walking alongside waterfalls. We got to a clearing seeing a huge waterfall in the distance and decided to walk towards it. After walking for a bit you could feel the Midgies biting..or was it something else. After 5 min we were attacked! Attacked by black flies, midgies and God knows what else. So of course Ewa, is flailing her arms and trying to outrun insects that apparently have not eaten for a while, some huge some little; all awful! We lasted in the clearing for maybe 10 minutes before literally running back to the protective forest and the hike back to the car...scenery was worth it! Now, each of us covered in bites all over our legs, arms and torso were on to the Isle of Sky!

written by  ECRadventure on July 1, 2009 from Rhu, United Kingdom
from the travel blog: ECRadventure's Travel Blog
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The Isle of Skye

From the hike at Ben Nevis, we were off up the highlands to the Isle of Skye. The road was treacherous, but the scenary was amazing! Rain off and on, and narrow, curvy roads made the trip interesting! We pulled in across the Skye bridge onto the island a little later in the evening. We were staying at the Saucy Mary's guesthouse, which was a decent place to stay.

The island is quite large and we didn't get much time to explore it. However the views and the walk along the beach we had in the evening made it worth the trip! Due to the hot day, the Fog rolled in off the ocean and provided an amazing view. We were mostly alone along the walk, which was a nice quiet time to enjoy our scotch! That night, we got treated to disco music until 3 am, and then drunk conversations to lull us to sleep until 3:45 right outside out window. Ahhhh

Ewa and Chad on the Loch Ness Cruise

After the cruise we continued up the road to Inverness. We were told that there was supposed to be a Scottish bagpipe and highland dancing parade through the town, but it was on the night before we got into the city - Missed it by one day! We ate supper at a fantastic restaurant and waited for 45 minutes to get into a local pub that was playing traditional Scottish music. After waiting, we found out that there was a £8 cover, and decided that we were too tired to last long enough to make it worth while. (With the exchange, that's about $14 each, just to get in). We headed back to the room, and relaxed there.

The next day, we were up early again for the long drive back down from the highlands to Perth. We stopped for the afternoon at the Palace of Scone, once home to the Stone of Destiny, where old Scottish Kings were crowned. We spent the day touring the palace and the gardens outside. There was also a Scottish game fair going on right outside the Palace, where traditional hunting methods (archery, clay pigeon shooting etc) was going on. We didn't have time to visit, but we could watch from a distance. Perth is a beautiful little city-center baised town that makes walking very easy! We spent the evening walking around the city, before settling down for a bite to eat at Paco's! Hahahaa.... first Mexican food on the trip! That evening, we took the owners of the B&B Kinnard house up on their offer to use the library. It also, I might add, have featured a complimentary decanter of Port and one of Scotch. It was a good night in reading and sipping on the digestives.

The next morning we were off to Edinburgh! Before we hit up Edinburgh, we stopped in at the Rossyln chappel. A highlight of the trip so far for Chad, because this chappel is steeped in mystery and symbology linking the Holy Grail, Knights Templar, Paganism, Christianity and so many other conspiracies throughout history. The chappel is under renovation, but it is open to the public. The carvings and intricate work done are breathtaking to see. It is hard to imagine the amount of work that was completed to build this chappel. We weren't allowed to take any pictures, but I would recommend googling it, the interior is amazing. There are so many depictions of Pagan characters along side of Christian symbols which is very rare in christian churches.

Rossyln Chappel

We'd like to thank Damian, Tricia, Jim & Gina for sponsoring us for the rental car! It really was great to be free to go where you want and we appreciate the wedding present!! After Rossyln we checked in, dropped the car off at the airport, got groceries and the night was almost over, or so we thought. After dinner and meeting some of the people at the hostel, we settled into the chill-out room for a quiet night and to watch a movie. After getting to know Patrick and Noelle from Germany a little, we decided to head off to the pub for a few drinks... which turned into quite a long night! We had a lot of fun getting to know them and hanging out in the pub! The oddest thing is that Patrick is almost a twin to Chad's good friend Bryan Colvin back in Calgary. Some of the pictures on our flickr account capture this, and others don't capture it as well, but in real life, after a beer or two, it's hard to tell the difference, especially because so many of their mannerisms are the same too!

Patrick and Noelle from Germany

Day two in Edinburgh saw us wandering the city, checking out the Camera Obscura and optical illusion museum and having a quiet night in. The third day we spent updating pictures, e-mailing and the blog. We ended our last night in the UK with a Ghost hunt on the 'Terror tour' going through the underground city of Edinburgh. The tour took us into the underground vaults which support the South Bridge and were constructed in 1785. By 1830 they were abandoned and remained empty. This eerie setting is home to dark, mysterious and often tragic apparitions whose ghostly presence leaves a lingering sense of immense sorrow and deprivation. Visitors have stumbled backwards in response to a malevolent lunge. Witnesses testify to the presence of the cobbler who labours industriously. A little boy, laughing playfully, has held visitors’ hands in his cold grasp as a brown dog with long, wiry hair runs between their legs. It was creepy going down under the city with a group of 8 of us and one guide who told us all about the history of the vaults and the various strang things that have happened on previous tours. When entering the Vault Ewa got a bit nauseous and generally just freaked out by the whole thing. But in the end we did not experience any strange phenomena, but it was definatley worth going.

written by  ECRadventure on July 8, 2009 from Edinburgh, United Kingdom
from the travel blog: ECRadventure's Travel Blog
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Hang on tight!

Amsterdam! Back on the mainland! Amsterdam is amazing and fun and out of this world. The red light district, drugs of all kinds and friendly people. We were only here for 3 days but it was very memorable. Our hostel was a few blocks away from the red light district, which always made for a very interesting walk home at night! It is a little strange sight to see if youre not used to it, a lot of doors with ladies standing behind them and then watching the propositions and acceptance/decline of the offer.

Drinks with Nadine

Amsterdam street

Day two we didnt get up to much. We walked around the canals, and ended up at Vondelpark, just relaxing and taking in the sites. That night we met up with some friends we had met in Spain. Oli, Robert and Matt. We met up at their local hang out and caught up on all of our adventures over the past few weeks.

Testing out the new bike

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