Edinburgh and Stockholm trip

Just 3 days after my resolution post, I am off for the 1st adventure of the year. Wow, did I plan to write my resolution so that I can achieve it right away ?? hahaha...

This time is a 5 days trip to Edinburgh of Scotland and Stockholm the capital of Sweden.
Its a budget one, backpack, and organised by ourself just by checking on the internet.
Flight from London to Glasgow (5pounds), Glasgow bus to Edinburgh, Edinburgh back to Glasgow, Glasgow flight to Stockholm (10pounds), Stockholm back to London (10 pounds).

Edinburgh is a very pretty town, with very nice feeling. It feels like its tranquil, quiet, less busy and the town just give a very harry potter like feel, castles, old english buildings etc..... I like Edinburgh alot better than other city I been to so far. It is also relatively cheaper. I prefer to stay there than London. Just that some Scottish people are abit lansi, so are the london ppl here.

I think this will be my post with most pictures.







First, was the day I arrived in London Stanstead Airport, with snow n frost on the ground, never seen that happened in London before, so took picture of it. ( Since when london became so cold?)

2 hours later, we landed at the Glasgow airport. Below is the train station from Glasgow airport to its city centre. For geographical facts... Glasgow is the largest city of Scotland, while Edinburgh is the capital of Scotland. Scotland itself is a country and part of the UK.

Here is the picture of the central train station in Glasgow.

The city centre view of Glasgow. Guess what, the buildings shown below are actually the Borders bookshop. Nice architechture and design from the outside. Actually in these places ie(Edinburgh and Stockholm), even Mc Donalds can look like this in the outside, but you go inside... za dao... its mc donald.. haha

Mac Donalds??? I wonder y they dont have a better name, it sell furnitures here.......

This is the city of Edinburgh.

The 2nd day of trip, we visited around Edinburgh. It was misty and cold, well it snowed the day before when we reached. Winter is not too great for trips.... Daylight too limited, wake up 9am, walk half day 4 pm dark. Its even worst in Sweden where they have 6 hours of daylight only. Then, when you walk out the whole day in winter, the wind will make ur face red like sunburn, but its more like "frost burn", dry and peeling off skin. The lips are just the most painful 1, as i thought my lips are already immune to cold, well still bleed here... And I had to buy a lipbalm from pharmacy here. Drink water also pain..... no choice la trip wo. Enjoy only....

We tried to visit the Edinburgh castle, but ... we found out there is a cheaper offer when we buy the tour ticket which gives more entries to few more sites + bus rides.

So we went to the tourist information centre. The best place to be if u r lost.

Bought tickets and hop on to a double decker tour bus. Sat on the upper deck, and enjoy the view and wind. STupid wind...

The first stop was the Royal Botanical Garden. Claims that they have the most collection of China's plant outside china.

I have a feeling that we were wasting time here. It just look like another park in London.

Then they claimed to have the largest hothouse, n we paid 3 pounds for it. WEll it is quite large for the glass house, but, why the heck we pay 3 pounds just to see some random ponds like the one beside the road in Malaysia ??

Does this kinda place look familiar ?? Beside mrr2 road also got la.... Zzzz

Lol, banana trees, bushes, and the glasshouse is so warm.... from outside 0 degree come in 30 degree.... Zzzzzz...

The next stop is the Royal Britannia Yatch. The 1 that the queen and the royal family of Great Britain travel with it. To me, it is not that interesting, but we still wasted time with this yatch. So below are some pictures I took... (if you do find it attractive)

The captain's dinning place.
the queens's room.
The place where crew sleep in.

Then, its near dark already and its only 3.30pm.... most of the tourist sites are going to close. But we still manage to visit the Palace of Holyroodhouse. I dont know what is it, but no pictures are allowed inside. It must be some sort of place where the old time King and Queen stayed in it.

Above is the picture of the palace.

the Scottish Parliment. The building won the best architecture award.

We were surprised that they let us in to listen to the parliment, real 1 le..... they were discussing about some education act. The next day the act was approved n it was in the papers.

One of the restaurant/cafe here. It was one of the earlier place where JK Rowling wrote her novels in. Not quite sure if its Harry Potter. It was fullhouse, so we cant get in to eat...

That night we went for a very special tour. The Edinburgh underground ghost tour. It was not scary, but I enjoyed it. The person who was guiding was interesting. He wore those long robes and a hoody and he is good in telling stories and make those atmosphere. The scary thing is, we actually went to the graveyard and he told us some stories there.

The 3rd day was a fine sunny day, good that we visited Edinburgh Castle at that time. One of the best place I visited in this whole trip, the only place in my mind that I visited. Well, I want to visit lochs and other castles in Scotland, but my friend say its stupid to go there see lakes.... I m totally speechless.....

Alot of nice views around the castles. There were exhibition inside the castle, once again I find them fake and not interesting. Most of it are like models in museum.

This is the prison in the castle. Well all fake models.... doesnt much fascinate me.
However, I do like the castle design and architechture. Its really awesome.



Ok, time to leave Edinburgh after that.

This is the outside look of the backpacker's hostel we stayed in. The 1 wif green door and sign. Cool place right?

Sweden!! The place I say has the friendliest ppl in the world. Almost all of them speak fluent english. When we were there, at bus stops or station, people would come and approach us, say hi, and ask if we need help or directions. Besides, those people who gave directions will slowly entertain us while making sure that we would get to the place clearly. So we came out with 1 theory, the place with less chinese, is the place that we would be treated well. Imagine Malaysia.. hahaha. would that ever happen?

Stockholm is even more expensive than London. Their currency is Swedish Kronos. RM1=2.3 krono. Well, 1 burger king meal cost u 40-60 kronos...Most their residence are older generation. Retired ones I have to say. The city itself consists of many islands. Just like a city on water, very beautiful, (but I didnt get to see much.. eh why?)

The swedish lift. Not a blackjack table! When u hit, the card doenst come to u, but the lift will. The dorr will open the door for u. If you dont press the dorr, the lift door wouldnt open, no matter how hard u pull.

The map...

Below is the hostel we stayed in. By the way Stockholm were covered with snow and ice. We were lucky because right before the night we landed, there was a few days of snowstorm, where the temperature dropped to minus 19 degrees. The locals said: " why did you come to Stockholm during winter??" But still the time we were there was the warmest they said. Temperature was well above 0.

The 4th day, we visited the cultural museum in Sweden. The building is nice from the outside. But inside is crap. Luckily under 18 admissions are free. Well ... I am under 18 of course hahaha!

Inside they show u design of sweden... arent those Ikea chairs ???
The view from the 4th floor, the main architechture of the museum is wonderful, the exhibition is really crap... and waste of time.

Then, we paid 7 pounds to visit the cultural village, mostly dead in winter. wtf .... waste of money and time. These are what inside it.

The old cash machine..
Dead rose gardens

They even have a small zoo... only see tis guy there eating dry sticks.....

These are some of the land views in the so called village.


Some goose walking on the road.
A view of Stockholm from top the hill.
And a small tobacco museum inside which planted 3 tobacco plant. Wow, never seen tobacco plant before.... here it is ...........

I rather walked on the river bank like this and enjoy the Stockholm pretty water scenary. Iced waters with boats.

But I didnt get to, because my friend wanted to visit the vasa museum. The museum is about a sunken swedish ship. See below how it looks like. The crappiest museum I been into so far. Display 1 wreck ship that we cant even get on to it... n lots of pictures models and videos. Boring hell.. And guess what, they wanted to stay inside for 2.5 hours. I got dulan finally, forced my friend to give me his phone for time and tell them I am going off for my own walk.

Ahhhh the best walk I had in life myself. But only limited time of daylight and one hour as that was 4pm that time. One of the best sunset I had too. Walking along the water of Stockholm is just great. I wished I could have half a day myself to walk aroud Stockholm myself!!

Thats what happen in poor planned trip. I couldnt do so because all the schedules are tight, bus and train times. Then we cant communicate without phones + we didnt know how to meet up when we are lost.

This is the ship in museum. Below are my walk walk photos. Compare urself n tell me which u will prefer.

Some of the ice still float and melting. You can see these birdies stood on it.
Evening on the slippery icy walkway. Its muddy and snowy as well.


There wasnt much people passing by, I sat on the bench and enjoy my time and view.
Then have to camwhore myself, to keep memory that I existed in that place that moment before ..haha.
Ah, as night falls the city glowed in lights.

I think there were much more awesomes sites crossing the river to that side of the island. I didnt have time to cross over there.
Regreted that I had not enought time. 1 hour pass and I had to meet my "friends" back at the museum... arghh...

Their police spelt as polis .. dunno whether they are fat n needs to drink coffee too.

The 5th and final day, not much of time. Woke up late at 10.... everyone too tired for so many days of walking.

These pictures below I manage to catch for the very last hour I will be in Sweden, while running on the streets.

The last place we visited was the city hall. This is where the Nobel Banquet is held every year. Winter it seems empty and closed.

Conclusion 3 weeks holiday visited 3 countries... Not so bad la. Start of term at last, 2nd and final academic term for this year. Have to start working on it.

2009

Every blogger posted their summary for 2008 and new resolutions, so will I......

Looking back, I didnt have much post this last year, sometimes not even once a month. So, here I shall add some bits and that of what happened in a year. Perhaps, I can find my memories here, years later.


2008 is the year spend completely abroad, and just some holidays home. Its been a hard time for me for the big 1st half of the year. Nobody understand my harsh times, but yea.... I think it will be the last time I dropped my tears ....its all over now.

It begins with a countdown at Westminister, the bank of the London Thames river. There were few millions (this estimate is real cause it came out from reports) of people all gathered at that small area that night for new year countdown. The packed feeling, the worst I experience so far. I couldnt move, couldnt see, and it was drizzling. Thirsty, wet, soaky, and stuffy. London's population is definately much more crazy than KL. After that, we walked home and reach at about 5 am, imagine stucked there for 4 hours because of massive amount of people. I shall never go to such celebration again. Its nightmare....
" I'm not going, but you can go there and experience it once I guess. Once is enough....haha" said my cousin brother (2nd year UCL) at that time. Well, for shits... of course!!!!


Then, I had the 1st chinese new year celebration abroad, with friends. We make a super steamboat with all finest ingredients we can find, all the mushrooms, prawns, fish, mussels... roast duck, meat.. cost for the whole dinner goes up to 600 pounds for 20 over people, crazy. Then came the potong stim part. Because I remember it was a weekday (cny eve), our noise annoyed the neighbours. Those british people doesnt know what sort of crazy random party we r having and they complaint. And so, the securities of the hall asked us to stop the party immediately. !@#%%## I who always get annoyed by the British's random party became super dulan after that.

Another memorable thing I did in Imperial college is the participation in Malaysian Night. Its like a yearly culture event for Malaysians in UK. 2 nights of performance which budgeted up to 10000 pounds production. I was part of the dancers and dikir barat ( small role only). About 500 audiences showed up in 1 night, thats alot. Performing on stage is really a different feeling. I remembered we practiced like crazy for all the weekends and wednesdays. It took up about quarter of my free time in 1st year.

Time flies, and 2 term of studying in 1st year was over. Which means all the lectures of the 1st year is over... and all left? Revisions and exams and 1st year's done, so fast!! Now I knew studying time in uk is actually that little, only 20 weeks of lectures per academic year. Its about 19th of March when term ends, Easter holidays after that. I had a smashing birthday party this year, sadly 1st time experiencing that. Got eggs smashed on my head and cakes. For the previous years.... I had it normally....

During that time, before the change of winter to spring, London was extremely cold for 2 days. It snowed. So excited for the 1st snow seen in my life, so I just walked outside alone with an umbrella, others didnt care much. Lol. After that, I went back Malaysia for Easter holiday. Didnt study at all back home, just remember lots of mamaking, pooling and some shopping. The only special thing I did was caving in Gua Tempurung. Joanna and Ai Woon had to drive however...skillful. It was quite fun, just muddy and sandy. After that went to Ipoh for nice food, the chicken hor fun and ipoh white coffee. Really nice, missing these flavours now.

Then 2 months of exams period in London again. And I had my 1st guitar performance in the small concerts. It was during the very last of the exams period, so didnt practice well...Went clubbing for the 1st time after exams in London. Went to a place called Bournemouth too. The trip was quite costly, about 200 pounds for 3 days 2 nights. Not a high rated trip...

3 months of summer holidays in Malaysia. Expected alot of fun and things will change. Well things changed, but didnt have fun. Surprisingly, didnt go anywhere, except to go Gua tempurung again the 3rd day I arrived here, then Singapore. Went lots and lots of mamaking sessions. Work for the 1st time in life also, for near 1 month. Found that work is utterly boring and unchallenging. Maybe because I work as a computer servicer, my work is just going around checking computers. Die die also wont take work like this next time, although its easy. Ahh, I remembered the day trip to Melacca. Nice food, but hot hot day. Singapore, might be different; but to me, its just another KL. More organised in the transports, thats all. I prefer KL.
1 more comment bout Singapore, you may find teenagers are mostly girls. woo! Because all males kena NS ..hahahahaha.


Came back to London reluctantly because bunch of friends in Malaysia rocks! Everyday do basic chores, tutorials sometimes and cook. Hate life this way especially with all those shit happening that we need to solve. But in this way time past even faster than I think and 3 months got over again, which brought 2008 to an end. My year ended with the trip of the year... maybe best trip I had so far. A ski trip to France! All white snow for christmas, but not too enjoyable, very special.
Finally, guess what I did for new year's eve ? Sit down in a room, DotA... =.='''' , nobody got any special plans. Since I came here, my years count by the academic year I spend in UK, so the new year didnt really mean much to me already.

Resolutions??

1 simple one. Explore the world in 2009 and do more things in life!! No more regrets. And I must utilise my time more especially during summer.