Going way back to the last days of 2008 we caught a fast train service to Paris on New Years Eve, arriving in freezing cold weather - much colder than in Bordeaux. We managed to find our hotel without much fuss and checked in. All the accommodation in Paris was booked out for New Years, even the hostels were charging 90 Euros and more for a simple bed. Somehow Tessa, Heidi's friend, managed to find a hotel that wouldn't require me selling my house to pay for. We meet up with Sam and Tessa, had a quick coffee to wake up and went for a walk along the river Seine. We passed Notre Dam, the Louvre, along Ile de Cite, past the Eiffel tower, Arc de Triumph and the ended up walking down the Champs Elysee, probably one of the most expensive shopping strips in the world (rookie mistake - Heidi and Tessa spent a while looking through shops which had price tags longer than phone numbers). Everyone was a bit tired by this point so we went back to the hotel for a nap to get ready for the celebrations that night. One the way home we picked up some champagne, plastic glasses, a few beers and a couple of bottles of wine.
After our nap we meet Sam and Tessa at their room and had a few pre-celebratory drinks, we sort of lost track of time and before long it was 1030pm, and finally 11pm before we left the hotel - the plan was to jump on the subway into the Champs Elysee. We walked to the station and boarded the train, but it wasn't going anywhere so after 10 mins of waiting we asked the guy sitting next to us what was going on, he explained that someone was either running around the tube tunnels or had jumped in front of the train, not sure exactly what had happened but our train wasn't going anywhere soon. We thought we might be spending New Years in the subway which wasn't a great thought. A few people were leaving so we followed them to a different train which took us just past where we wanted to get off originally at the Champs Elysee and the Arc de Triumph, the whole train was nervous, it really felt like a race against the clock. With seconds to spare, the train stopped at the station and everyone ran out and up the stairs. As soon as we made the exit we could hear thousands of people outside counting down, I think we just managed to make it out by 2 or 3 seconds. In the distance the Eiffel tower started to sparkle, all the cars on the Arc de Triumph round-about stopped for a few seconds and started honking their horns and thousands upon thousands of people were cheering - it was a pretty amazing sight. The air was full of champagne corks and the sounds of people singing and laughing as they overfilled tiny plastic champagne glasses. We got kind of swept up in the crowd, and before long we were part of a giant movement of people down the Champs Elysee towards the Place de la Concord. The Champs Elysee is about 1.5 km long I think (rough guess) and it was like one long mosh pit, there must have been close to a million people packed in. It was useless trying to walk, the crowd just carried you in whichever direction it wanted, like it had a mind of its own. It was fun, I thought 'This must be what it feels like to be a penguin in one of those massive huddles. Freezing cold, and out of control'. I started making penguin sounds and a random guy in front started making penguin sounds as well. Heidi said her feet didn't touch the ground at a few points. Eventually we managed to find a spot to break free and somehow we hadn't been separated from Sam and Tessa, we were able to continue our walk towards the Concord at our own pace. The crowd was still immense but very well behaved, perhaps it was the hundreds of police all dressed up in riot gear (just in case). Even though it was far away, we walked back to our hotel as the subway was a nightmare, just one big underground overcrowded mess. We ended our night at around 2 or 3am, not the longest NYE ever but definitely a memorable one, I've never seen so many people in one space and I doubt I ever will again.
The next day was overcast and it felt like the city itself had a post celebration hangover, everything was just a little bit slower or took a little bit longer. Amazingly Heidi and I got up early for some reason, maybe it was just out of practice or maybe we were still a little bit drunk. We caught a subway train north and walked up the steps to Sacre Couer. There was a service inside the basilica but we were still allowed to have a quiet walk around, the decorations of the church are unbelievable, every square inch of the place is decorated. We had some coffee and lunch at Monmarte and walked along to see the Moulin Rouge which was buzzing with tourists. For some reason the city seemed to be full of more Italians than Parisians, it was a similar story in Innsbruck when we were there as well. We meet up with Sam and Tessa later in the day and had a nice dinner out at a local French restaurant.
On our last full day in Paris, Heidi and Tessa wanted to do some shopping so we walked up and down the Champs Elysee and also around the Gallerie la Fayette which is another huge shopping area. Sam and I looked through a few car shops and waited...and waited...and waited (such a rookie mistake).
Eventually the shopping was over, our original plan was to spend the afternoon looking through the Louvre, but time was running out and I’ve tried going through there quickly once before, its just not possible. Instead we decided to go up the Eifel tower, which in retrospect was not a great idea to do during a peak holiday season when the city is busting at the seams with tourists. After a 2 hour wait in line, we were freezing. Heids was uncontrollably shivering and I was even freezing which doesn't happen all that often. We finally managed to get out tickets, and we thought we'd be able to warm up but no, the line continued. It took another hour or so to get up the top, by this time it was getting dark. From the observation deck the view of Paris at twilight was spectacular. The view during the day is great, I've been up once before a few years ago and was impressed, but at night I was mesmerized by millions of little specks of light which traced the outlines of the city and showed us where people were gathering. The Arc de Triumph roundabout looked like someone had shaken a bottle of fireflies, a bit insane - it was so interesting to see 8 lanes of traffic going around in circles with next to no road rules. It almost made me forget the fact that I couldn’t feel my extremities.
We had to leave Paris early and get train to a bus, to a plane, to another bus, then another bus. Even though we had only traveled a few hundred miles from France to Scotland, it had taken all day. Finally we arrived in Dundee, and my dads cousin Roland picked us up. We were soon at Roland and Moira's new house in Letham, a small village outside of my Dads hometown of Arbroath where we got a really warm welcome and some nice home cooked food, such a relief after days of eating mostly baguettes. We had an early night and the next day Roland and Moira took us around the local area and showed us all the closed castles and shops, very nice of them. I guess we picked a really lousy time to visit Scotland from a tourism point of view, but to me this is the real Scotland - freezing mornings, thick frost on the cars in the morning and a good 6 hours of sunlight if you’re lucky. We're so far north here that the sun eventually rises around 9am and started to set at about 330pm, so for lots of the day the horizon is a deep orange and red color, the real twilight zone. It makes all the places we visit seem very eerie. We managed to thrash out a rough plan of what to visit where to go and then hired a car, which was amazingly cheap even with all the insurance.
The next morning was crystal clear and the sun was actually quite warm. Heidi and drove in to Arbroath spent the day walking around the cliffs and seeing the Arbroath Abbey, which is a famous old ruin of a church in which the Declaration of Arbroath was penned (basically the Scottish asking the Pope for independence from the English). We had lunch as a local pub and I got to try the local delicacy of 'smokies' which are smoked haddock. 
For the next couple of days we drove around the Highlands of Scotland, up to a place called Inverness and then down through Loch Ness and Fort Augustus to a town called Oban on the west coast. We managed to meet up with some of my Dad’s friends Les and Jill, who again gave such a warm welcome. It's funny how you can lose contact with people for a decade, but they can still welcome you as if you're family or have been best friends all the time, we've been really lucky meeting such nice people on our trip. We took a ferry to the Isle of Mull off the coast and visited Duart castle, the ancestral home of the Mclean clan (my grandmother's family). The castle was the home for the Mclean clan for hundreds of years, and there are legends that a lost Spanish galleon full of gold was sunk from the castles cannons hundreds of years ago with all the gold lost.
The Isle of Mull is a nice quiet little island but but today there are more Highland cows ("Heeland Coos") than people.
After exploring Mull we caught the ferry bak to Oban then drove back to Letham. We had a bit of a family gathering, more food and drink and talking and remembering and laughing. Good times.
We ended our stay in Scotland with a short stopover in Edinburgh. We managed to meet up with our friend Alina who we know form working at the Arcadia. Alina is an astro-physicist, so we had some awesome discussions into the small hours of the morning about the universe and planets and blackholes etc etc, its so good to be able to talk to someone who can actually explain all that stuff really well. She took us on a tour of the observatory above Edinburgh where she works which gave us a spectacular view of a very cold looking Edinburgh city, the wind was fierce and was blowing puddles of water up hill! We did a few tours through Edinburgh, one of them was through the underground streets of Mary Kings Close. Large parts of Edinburgh was built up over the foundations of old tenement buildings from the 17th century (i think, or it might have been even earlier), and in some parts the new city is elevated by roughly 5-10 meters which means there are cool little underground streets that are as they were hundreds of years ago. Edinburgh has a fascinating history and I really liked it there, I think I'd like to spend more time there in the future. 
The local cuisine deserves a mention; Edinburgh is the home of deep frying so you can get everything and anything you want battered and fried. We had to try the deep fried mars bars, they weren't bad at all. And I also found a beer called Innes & Gunn which I think is now my favorite beer ever, just nudging out Little Creatures.
Overall I had such a great time in Scotland, I really felt like it was a second home, thanks again to everyone we stayed with who showed us such warm hospitality. We were treated to some great scenery in Scotland. At this time of the year we got a lot of twilight so everything looked very eerie and spooky.
We got the overnight bus down from Edinburgh, and while th trip was cheap its an absolute nightmare, but we got here in one piece so I guess its all we an ask for. Abbey's been here for a few months now and has a flat in the Clapham area that we're staying at. This area seems to be where all the other Aussies are living as well, every pub is full of people from Brisbane and Melbourne. We had a couple of days walking around the city of London, did lots of touristy things and spent lots of time in Ye Olde Pubs drinking proper English ales and Scottish whiskey. We caught up with Rowan and his girlfriend Allise last night for dinner and a few drinks, it was great to see a familiar face and talk about home and London. I knew Rowan from working at GKN and we had great time talking about old times at work.
Abbey has been a great tour guide of the city, she even makes up interesting history for places if she doesn't know the proper history. It may not be 100% correct or actually in any way possible, but its very entertaining to learn that batman used to live in the tower bridge or that witches used to live in old Sothwark cathedral. Oh, and full marks to Abbey for taking 3 consecutive sick days off from work to hang out with us, she's showing some great dedication to having fun we really loved hanging out with her all day in the food markets, pubs and tourist attractions.
Today we traveled to Oxford to meet one of Heidi's friends who is studying here for a while, she seems to be a bit of a serial student, having already spent time at Melbourne Uni, Harvard and now Oxford. After a short walk around, it seems like the actual town of Oxford only exists because of the university. The atmosphere here is very relaxed and not at all like the million mile an hour pace of London, everyone in London seems to be in such a rush to get to their next mental breakdown or anxiety attack, its a nice place to visit and work but I'm not sure if I could live there for a long period of time. Oxford on the other hand would be a great place to spend some time, the town is all crooked streets, beautiful old buildings, willow trees and green parks. Maybe when Heidi finally finishes her med degree, I can come over here and study a bit. I think I have PhD envy, everyone seems to be getting one these days. On Monday we fly from Heathrow to southern Spain, then we'll get a ferry over to Morocco for a couple of weeks. (More pics from London and Oxford coming soon)
