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London, Paris, Tokyo....

...well, two of the three anywayThe view from our Tokyo hotel room down to the street
The view to the horizon
We Will Rock You at the Dominion Theatre

...well, two of the three anyway!

Yes, I´ve been slack at updating the blog constantly through. What can I say, I´ve been out enjoying my holiday, not staying in writing about it :P

We head off from Tokyo today and will be home tomorrow. I´ll do some catch up posts for London and Tokyo then.

Highlights from London and Tokyo have been (not necessarily what would be seen as traditional holiday high points):
London

• Seeing the crazy squirrels in Hyde Park and enjoying the retreat from the hustle of the city - we even had a picnic lunch there one day
  
• Watching ¨We Will Rock You¨ at the Dominion Theatre and getting up and joining in for a number of the songs. A large part of the fun of this one was seeing all the people who didn´t know what they´d got themselves into and who didn´t want to stand and clap :)
• Visiting the British Museum and seeing the cool glass roof over between such old buildings
• Shopping in Vivienne Westwood and Agent Provocateur in London

Tokyo

• Realising I haven´t totally forgotten my Japanese and it comes back more each day
  
• Walking along Omotesando and through the Omotesando Hills building
• Wandering through various department stores in Shinjuku
  
• Exploring the stationery sections in department stores - I love Japanese stationery
• Eating dinner entirely from convenience store food - yum!
  
• Meeting up with my friend Nobuko for lunch - we lived together on the Gold Coast when I was at Uni
• The view from our hotel room at night - our travel agent Maria is a saint - we got an excellent upgrade here in Tokyo and also in Singapore
• Catching the train from Narita to Tokyo and going through similar looking country areas to where I lived in in Nagano all those years ago - the good memories came flooding back and I had a silly grin on my face
  
• Buying local sweets in both the UK and Japan

Alistair may well have different hightlights, but he´s not writing this blog :P

Last couple of days in Aberdeen

Amanda, Alistair, cousin Laura, cousin Lyn and Lyn´s son Cameron (the cheeky one making us laugh!)

We had a busy couple of days at the end of last week.

On Thursday we went out to afternoon tea with Aunty Margaret and Uncle Eddie at the Gordon Highlander´s Museum, which was lovely. That evening we took Derek and Carol out to their local, the Ferryhill, for a wonderful dinner.

On Friday we headed to Inverurie and visited Alistair´s Granny with Uncle Ian again. Following on from that we met Ian´s daughters Lyn and Laura, as well as Lyn´s son Cameron. All the girls were at school. Once Aunty Kath had finished work we went to lunch with her and Ian.

That evening we had dinner at Valentine Drive and said goodbye to Aunty Cyn, Uncle Gordon, Jenna, David and Georgia.

Derek and Carol kindly drove us to the airport early Saturday morning and we have spent nearly a week in London.

We´ve had a great week here in London, but I´ve run out of time to blog tonight. :( I must get some sleep before we fly out to Tokyo in the morning.

Using Cameron´s choice of words as we were leaving Inverurie - ¨See ya stinkies!¨. Alistair, Laura and I nearly fell on the ground laughing at that gem :)

Photos of Fraserburgh

The Fraserburgh town square
The Fraserburgh harbour
Photos just for Jenny :)

Alistair and I went exploring on our own during our last week in Scotland. Thanks again to Uncle Gordon for so generously lending us his car so we could get around.

We drove up to Fraserburgh and then had breakfast in Peterhead. These are both small towns up north from Aberdeen. I really enjoyed driving around in the scottish countryside - it is so pretty and green compared to Oz at the moment.

Visiting Baxters and Huntly

The whisky shop at Baxters - yes more whisky! Well, when in Scotland....
Dean´s shortbread factory in Huntly

While away for the weekend we also visited Baxters - home of lots of yummy food. They had a number of shops onsite, including an old store that now houses a wide range of whisky. It was surprising how many we had tried.

We visited Huntly, where Alistair´s Granny used to live. There is a big shortbread factory here, and the smell of the place was unbelievable - the whole area smelled like sweet sweet shortbread and it really made you want to eat it. We sampled quite a few types of shortbread there :)

Overnight in Keith - and more whisky!

Alistair, Derek and I sampling Macallan at the distillery
The Strathisla Distillery near Keith - the shape of the building is used for the Whisky Trail and much of the advertising for this area due to the unique shape.
The Macallan Distillery
The original house at the Macallan Distillery
Alistair and I at the house at Macallan

Unsurprisingly, our time in this area had a lot to do with whisky as it is in the middle of the whisky trail. We went to Macallan and sampled the whisky and delicious whisky liquer. We drove all over the countryside and saw a lot of distilleries and also all the whisky in storage.

Carol´s family is in Keith and we stayed overnight there. We had a lovely dinner with them and then sampled more whisky by the fire. Carol´s mum cooked a great roast beef dinner including ´nips and tatties (parsnip mash and potato mash for the Aussies). We followed up with a divine lemon meringue pie. Carol´s dad was very generous in bringing out quite a few of his wonderful whiskies to try and significantly added to Alistair, Derek and my count of whiskies tried. He had some wonderful single malts I had never even heard of and I enjoyed them thoroughly. I giggled over the sound of the glug glug jug we used to put water in our whiskies and now Carol and I both want one for ourselves.

Next stop - Loch Ness

Urquhart Castle ruins on Loch Ness
Carol (sideways?? sorry!) standing above the ¨no climbing on walls¨ sign taking photos :)
A trebuchet at Urquhart Castle (sideways!). It is absolutely HUGE - the people look small next to it.
Alistair and I at Loch Ness - can anyone see Nessie?
Derek falling into Loch Ness

We headed for Loch Ness on Sunday morning after breakfast. It was bigger than I expected and quite beautiful. It was also closer to Inverness - I had this impression that it was well off the beaten path, but it didn´t take us long to get there.