Europe Trip 2010 Part 4 - Edinburgh

Edinburgh is Scotland's capital city. not a massive city, but they have huge and beautiful old buildings that makes me feel like walking back in time. the buildings are built in a way that to me they look like a massive wall with rooms that people can live in, it has windows and doors and tunnel like alley ways. this 'walls' are separated with each other by main roads, and winds along with the road along Edinburgh's hilly terrain. with almost always gloomy weather, things look almost creepy but beautiful, like nothing, no city, i've even seen before.

so carrying on where i left off..

arriving in Edinburgh
from Newcastle, we took the 6.08pm train to Edinburgh. we arrived at Edinburgh Waverley Station and my wife's friends who live there came pick us up and we went to their house just outside the city. we stayed home, chatted and i went to bed while my wife stayed up catching up with her friend till late. the next day we started out early to Edinburgh Conference Center in Heriot-Watt University Edinburgh, the place where the conference will be.

the Conference Centre
the uni was pretty big.. and has 2 kinda nice place to go have a walk on a nice day called 'the lawn' and 'the loch'. the loch is an area with a pond where birds and ducks swim happily. the loch is like a garden on a hilly area. our friend told us that during winter, when snow covers the whole area, they'd go there to play in the snow. wow that would be fun, especially to us who grow up in a country that has summer all year.

during the stay, food was not really an issue. halal restaurants are everywhere (as compared to Adelaide), and if i dont feel like travelling to the city (which i always dont), the student shop at the convention center sells microwaveable halal food at their halal food fridge thingy.. and to keep costs lower, we brought some canned food and instant noodles all the way from Adelaide. hehe

on the 3rd day of the conference, we went to dinner in the city with a big group from the conference. there were around 20 of us.. of different nationalities - malaysia, australia, USA, poland, kenya, canada, brazil, and others i couldn't remember where they're from.

the next night, the conference dinner was held at this place called 'Our Dynamic Earth'. it is sort of like a science centre but tells the story of our earth. it has a massive lobby with glass walls around it where you can see Arthur's Seat behind you and Edinburgh's skyline around you.

the last day, the water heating did not work. knowing we have a long day ahead of us (we had to check out in the morning, and i have to wait till the conference to end at 2pm) we showered anyway. it was, although summer, a very cold day. it's always cold in Edinburgh i think. later that day i came down with a cold.

that really sucked because we planned to stay in Edinburgh city the next two days and spend time sightseeing. in the end we did all the sightseeing that i can endure. we went to Princes Street and Royal Mile for shopping, for souvenirs mainly. the Princes Street Garden is a very pretty garden with an awesome view of the castle from there.

on the next day, final day in Edinburgh, we went to Edinburgh Castle (theres a very long queue for tickets, but the line moves rather quickly. spent 45 mins in line). there are lots of museums in the castle, and at no extra cost at all. later we hiked up Carlton Hill and had a mini picnic with a very beautiful view of Edinburgh city.

then we went to shop for more souvenirs and head back to the place we stayed, our friend's house. at 7pm we went to the train station and took the train to Glasgow^^

Europe Trip 2010 Part 3 - Newcastle

my brother have been living in Newcastle since (around) 2000.. and i have never visited him even once. so now that i have finally arrived at Newcastle Airport, though exhausted, i really couldn't believe i'm there.

my wife and i took the cab to my brother's house which isn't too far from the airport. the long journey from Adelaide to Newcastle had made me very slow, and caused a little communication issues. the cabbie had an accent, i thought it was a very thick scottish accent, but i just found out people there actually have a different accent called Geordie accent. i don't know what the differences are but i know this.. both accents are not at all like aussie accent that i'm so used to now.

the first thing i noticed about the road in Newcastle, there are a lot of roundabouts. in that 20 mins ride to my brother's, i think there were 15 roundabouts (i lost count after the 5th). the road is narrow, and people drive skilfully fast that it scares us a little bit. and astonishingly.. we never heard anyone use their horn even once.

so we arrived at the house at around 2pm. we didn't do anything else but stay home and catch-up with our sister-in-law and her kids. the last time we saw them was 3 years ago. later that day my brother came home from work and had some afternoon tea. for dinner we had some kebab delivered to the house.. how convenient is that! i couldn't imagine how cool that would be if we can have any halal fast food delivered to our home back in Gawler.

the kebab was different too. well, different from what we have in Australia anyway (which is different from the ones in Malaysia). the meat is a lot thicker and so is the bread. the kebab has a lot of meat on it and a lot less vege, while the kebab here in Adelaide has the same amount of meat and vege, on a thin bread; and in Adelaide, kebabs are called 'yiros'. maybe it is a different thing.. i don't really see the difference. but anyway i kinda fell in love with the UK's kebabs :P

on the third day in Newcastle, we went to a car boot sale. 'malaysian student's favourite pastime' someone told me. i always thought car boot sales are the same everywhere. there are not many car boot sale where we live, just garage sales scattered everywhere every now and then. but the car boot sale here in Newcastle (and the UK i assume) is a lot different somehow. we found almost everything there, literally, and way beyond cheap. i find most the things there are not unwanted things people might call trash, they are in really good condition. we ended up buying 12 books (paperback novels) and the whole lot was £4!

our excitement have caused us to forget, those books do weigh a lot

during our stay in Newcastle, we went to this factory outlet shopping mall called the Royal Quay and had a look around and did some shopping. the things are cheap and even cheaper when we were there because they were having some summertime sale going on. we went to Whitley Bay, a beach, for a short walk and had ice cream. it was after all summer (and not the kind of summer we have in South Australia). on the last day in Newcastle we went for a drive around town and a short stop at the Quayside. a lovely view of the River Tyne and all the six bridges, and The Sage Gateshead (a massive building shaped, to me, like a massive futuristic glass cocoon) across the river.

Newcastle was fun. love the city, not too busy, but big enough a city.

we left Newcastle Upon Tyne on the 4th day of our trip. took a train from Newcastle Central Station to Edinburgh Waverley Station, Edinburgh, Scotland!

Europe Trip 2010 Part 2 - Departure

South Australiawe were to fly on MAS from adelaide to heathrow, with a 2 hour transit at KLIA. we deliberately chose to fly MAS so that we can have that short stop.. maybe have some KFC while waiting. but 2 hours was not a lot of time, so we were a little worried that we won't have time for that KFC. i know KFC isn't something special, but to us, living where their KFC isn't halal, and to watch their commercial every day, we kinda miss all those unhealthy fast food.

so our very long journey began early in the morning. planned to hop on the train from Gawler to Elizabeth, then get on the bus to the airport, but there were some things to take care of and we were running a little late. so we asked a friend to drive us to Elizabeth. the good thing about it was that the drive only took 20 minutes but if we took the train it probably will take 45 minutes.

anyway, off we went, with one big bag and one carry-on bag each. the big luggages are both half full at this point. this was one mistake (not too big a mistake tho) for us travelling to Paris and London.. big bags will slow you down and a real hassle if you plan to hop on the their train. so next time we'll go there (hopefully) i'll try to pack even less things

our flight from Adelaide airport was on time. checked in at the kiosk to skip the long queue, and only had to stand in a short 'Bag Drop' line. quick and easy and there was no problem at all. :D

the 3.00pm flight to KL took around 7hours. that is a long time to sit in a plane.. but MAS planes have those in-flight entertainment thing, i think they call it 'Select'.

the 'Select' in-flight entertainment has movies, tv shows, music and games on it. it has a 6.5inch screen that is not too clear but works all right. some of the movies had subtitles rendered into the video with a raw a little too big fonts that sometimes are a little annoying (considering the small screen).. but it isn't too bad.one of the movies i saw was Slumdog Millionaire. it already had subtitles of their own so it does look better, however, those subtitles are probably meant for at least a TV display. so at some parts, the subs were so small that i have no idea what they were saying.

the food was actually pretty good. i had lamb korma with basmati rice which was a great because it's something malaysian. it comes with a dinner roll, salad, crackers and cheese, and a tiny drinking water. at least the main dish is still something malaysian :D

Kuala Lumpur International Airport
we arrived at KLIA on time, at the main building. we quickly made our way to the 'Arrivals' to meet friends waiting there and have our KFC. this was a transit stop, so we did not have to wait for our bags nor check-in again. so we chatted, laughed, and about 30 minutes before our 11.40pm flight to London Heathrow, we realized that our flight got delayed to depart at 1.10am. if we'd checked earlier, we could've taken our time.

in the end, we finally took off at 1.35am, we finally flew out to London. this time it is a much longer flight, a 12 hour (ish) flight. they served dinner (or was it supper.. maybe a very early, heavy, lunch @_@) and i had beef lasagna which was not too bad but i was kinda still not hungry but i forced myself to eat anyway.. it was probably around 3am in KL i think. i noticed the food was packed differently from the ones we got during all our flights to and from Australia. different caterers i guess.. and i think the food in Australia bound MAS flights are a lot better.

after that meal i was so stuffed that i couldn't sleep. and when i decided to watch a movie, there was this problem with the in-flight entertainment system of the plane that they had to shut it down for 30 mins. i tried to sleep anyway but even after the Select rebooted i was still wide awake, but extremely fatigued. it was dreadful. so i randomly selected a movie that i have already seen, and probably 15mins in, i was already asleep. when i woke up, washed up a bit and started watching movies again. so the grand total of movies i saw in both flights was 9 movies.. all of them i have never seen before!

London Heathrow
we arrived at Heathrow Terminal 4 at around 6.30am. the terminal looked rather shabby i think.. and gloomy. maybe it was the early morning. we had to wait for a bit until we got our luggages and then had to stand in a very long line at the customs and immigrations. that was not fun, waiting in line after travelling for over 20 hours (including transit and all the bus ride from home).

thankfully everything was smooth there and the next thing we had to do was find our way to Terminal 5. it was not too hard, just that for someone arriving there for the first time, we did were a little confused at first. all we had to do was get on this inter-terminal train (which i think is free) to Heathrow Central Railway Station (which is for terminals 1,2&3). then wait on the same platform for the train to Terminal 5.

we got to Terminal 5 rather early, checked in for our 11.50am flight to Newcastle. T5 is not a big enough airport for the amount of travellers there. and to check-in, we must use the 'check-in kiosk' and then head to the many bag drop counter. anyhow, waiting for our flight, we ate some sausage buns we brought from KL, then we realized there was no rubbish bins to throw the wrappers away. i find that interesting. we walked around the terminal to have a look at the shops. we did not buy anything.

finally we arrived in Newcastle at around 1.15pm. we were exhausted, rather hungry but too tired to feel hunger. we took the cab from the airport to my brother's house not too far away. the cab driver asked 'where to' so i said the address. then he said something more than 4 words long.. and i couldn't understand a word he said. maybe i was too tired.. or maybe he had an accent i have never heard before. maybe it was both