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travel United Kingdom

5 Restaurants to Visit in Old Town Edinburgh

Edinburgh is one of my favorite cities I’ve ever traveled to. Just walking around, you can feel the history all around you. There’s just something about sitting in a pub that’s older than the United States by almost 200 years. When my friend David told me he would be speaking at a design conference there this summer, I decided to write a small guide. Most of my blog posts have just been overall recaps of my visits to Edinburgh. In this post I’ll dive into 5 of my favorite spots in Old Town Edinburgh, where I spent most of my time, to grab a drink and some delicious food.…

travel United Kingdom

Four Days in London: Days 3 & 4

As temperatures cool down and autumn rolls in, I’m left dreaming of autumn in the UK. Autumn in London was delightful and dreamy, and Scotland even more so. Autumn is my season: it’s my ‘hopelessly romantic’ season, where I want to do every cliché activity that embodies what autumn is. I want to be cozy, drink warm autumn themed drinks, and sit in front of a roaring fire. But I digress, I’m here to talk about my last two days in London this summer.…

travel United Kingdom

Four Days in London: Days 1 & 2

It’s September 1! Already. Oh my goodness, and what better day to continue my UK travel posts than today in honor of Harry Potter! I adore London. It’s a city that from the moment I stepped foot there, it felt right. Finding my way around the city was easy, using the tube a breeze…having a pint in a pub, it’s all just…right. I had big plans this second time to the city, all my places marked off. The focus of the trip and whole reason my family and I were abroad was for Depeche Mode, so it was fitting in what I could around that evening. It felt like I didn’t have enough time to see all I wanted to see this trip…there’s so many places I want to visit still. London keeps calling me back. I guess I’ll have to go!…

travel United Kingdom

A Drumnadrochit Stay in a Scottish Bed & Breakfast

If there’s one thing I could change about my and my partner’s trip to Scotland in 2015 it would be that we could have spent a few days in the Highlands, as opposed to doing a 12 hour van tour with a few short stops. But I hadn’t planned our stay very well and the tour was sort of a last minute decision I made. Mostly because I wanted to go to Loch Ness, where we got to go on a boat ride for about an hour round trip before hopping back in the van and taking off down the other side of the country. This time around, following basically the same route, I planned one night’s stay in Drumnadrochit at the Springburn B&B. That way we could continue on our way down Loch Ness and through Glen Coe through the Trossachs and back to Edinburgh.  …

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London Part 1

Deep down there is a part of me that is an idealist. I get a romantic notion in my head about the way something should be & make me feel. I had this idea about autumn in the United Kingdom. I’m not sure why specifically autumn, and I’m not sure why specifically the UK. For years I have felt a pull from Britain. The idealist in me likes to think I had a past life there…but it’s probably because half of my heritage is from Britain. Anyway, after a direct flight from Seattle to Heathrow, we touched down in London, exhausted, and made our way through Heathrow and took a cab into the city. We stayed in a lovely little flat called Villa Fitzrovial, about a 5-10 minutes walk north of Oxford Street, but being jetlagged and finally getting settled at 5PM UK time, we crashed…woke up at 1 AM, crashed again, and then managed to role out of bed still feeling funny, but ready to take on the day. The view out the back of our flat. All of the brick is so charming.…