This is a guest post from Jemma Porter of Jemma Eat World. Jemma is one of Edinburgh’s most popular food bloggers, although given the name of her blog she clearly has food blogging world domination plans. Based in Scotland at the moment I asked Jemma, as an expert on both food and being Scottish, to put together a post on Scottish ‘cuisine’. I’m sure you all have your stereotypes about Scottish food, so we’ll see whether this post serves to enforce them or to tempt you to try some of its finer culinary delights.

We Scots have a reputation for eating unhealthily. To paraphrase Dylan Moran, we deep fry our food three times to make sure it’s dead. Some Scots do make a concerted effort to stay fit and healthy. Take my friend, for example. He decided that he wanted to shed some pounds before his wedding, so embarked upon the ‘soup’ diet. Which to him meant eating two sandwiches with each bowl of soup and a bag of crisps afterwards.

I’m not sure he got the point.

We do have some great food up here. We have some truly awful eating habits, too, so before you arrive in Scotland prepare yourself for the good, the bad and the ugly side of Scottish cuisine.

The Good

Scotland is renowned for seafood. Our langoustines are exported to the finest restaurants in France. Our smoked salmon, scallops and mussels have a reputation that preceeds them. But for a true taste of Scotland, look out for fish chowder cullen skink. Cullen skink is made with finnan haddie (smoked haddock to non Scots), potatoes, onions, and milk.

I was tempted to put haggis under ‘bad’ or ‘ugly’ based on the worldwide perception of our national dish. Although it may sound gruesome, haggis is delicious. If you’re squeamish about offal stuffed into a stomach, ask yourself: when was the last time you ate a sausage? Because it’s the same thing. Haggis goes well with everything: and Scotland’s international foodie community has embraced it too. On the streets of Edinburgh you can find haggis pizza, haggis quesadilla, haggis pakora, and haggis burgers. One shop even sells haggis flavoured chocolate.

For a cheap and easy Scottish side dish, you can’t go wrong with a bit of skirlie. Simply chop up an onion, fry it for five minutes until it’s soft, and then throw in a couple of handfuls of porridge oats. It’s rare to find skirlie in restaurants, but if you’re at a traditional Scottish meal it will probably make an appearance. It’s quite dry, similar to cous cous, and harks back to a time when Scots survived mainly on oats.

Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tessawatson

The Bad

When you’re offered a full Scottish breakfast you’ll find the usual suspects on your plate. Eggs, bacon, black pudding, beans… and if you’re lucky, a slice of fuit pudding. Fruit pudding is sliced fruit cake with cinnamon and raisin, fried of course, and added to the breakfast. It doesn’t exactly taste bad, it’s quite tasty actually, but I’ve been assured by James that frying cake is not normal anywhere but Scotland.

On the topic of unholy fried foods, most people return to the same old chestnut: the deep fried Mars Bar. But unless you’re born and bred in Scotland, you might not know that it gets worse. Introducing ‘pizza crunch’. For the uninitiated, pizza crunch is deep fried pizza served on a bed of chips. The majority of Scottish chip shops were founded by Italian immigrants, and to ingratiate themselves with the locals they deep fried everything.

Crunchy!

The Ugly

The munchy box was introduced to me by a friend from Falkirk as a box of tasty delights from the chip shop. Chicken pakora, onion rings, chips, donner meat, even a small pizza, sometimes. But the truth is far from delightful. As far as I’m concerned a munchy box is what is left over at the end of the night, scraped up and served in a pizza box. It’s one of those ideas that seems amazing until you do it, and then you slowly turn green and wish you had listened to that common sense voice in your head. This is something that you are unlikely to find east of the M9, although there are rumours that a few isolated kebab shops in Edinburgh deal in these foul boxes of doom.

Scottish goodness?

Jemma is the owner of Jemma Eat World, a food and travel blog following her travels as she eats her way around the world. Keep up with her progress by following her on Twitter or Facebook.

The angriest ram in Aberfoyle

I remember the first time I visited the ‘real’ Scottish countryside. It was about three of four years ago and a couple of friends and I had decided to take the train up to Fort William to explore Glencoe. I was amazed by just how beautiful it was. More importantly I couldn’t believe that this scenery was pretty much on my doorstep, just a few hours by train, bus or car from Edinburgh. I vowed to spend as much time as I could exploring Scotland.

Sadly I haven’t really kept to that vow. The fact that Loch lomond is just a short drive from Edinburgh has been niggling at me for months. Why haven’t I been to see it? Why don’t I get myself organised and go visit? After I got tired of asking myself these questions I decided “Right, Sunday we’re going to see Loch lomond. The end.”

We did and it was one of the most beautiful trips I have ever taken. Although it was only a day trip from Edinburgh and although we didn’t really have to travel far, looking through the photos it’s just as beautiful – if not far more – than any exotic or overseas location I have travelled to. It’s funny, we’ll travel hundreds and thousands of miles to see somewhere else but often neglect the real treasures which are just a car journey away.

Setting Off

After briefly stopping to get petrol, some snacks for breakfast and a quick DIY lunch, we were on the road. Getting to The Trossachs from Edinburgh is pretty easy once you find the route, AKA the Trossachs Trail. We found it pretty easily and despite being slightly distracted by Blair Drummond Safari Park we managed to speed on cruising down country roads in search of Loch lomond.

When we’d set out at the start of the day, the focus had been on seeing Loch lomond. Being honest, we saw so much more and Loch lomond was only a tiny part of it. The Trossachs is a huge area of land and we could easily have spent weeks exploring, driving down tiny country lanes without any clue as to where they would lead. First though, we would require a bit of lunch.

Lunch Time

Thankfully we had grabbed a few rolls and some goat’s cheese from the supermarket. Now it was just a case of finding the perfect stopping point.

Well you aren’t going to be short of perfect, scenic stopping points on the West Coast of Glasgow and it wasn’t long before we rolled into a parking area by Loch Venachar. With the exception of one other person fishing, we had the whole area to ourselves. Jemma set about making lunch and I strolled about taking in the scenery, snapping up as much of it as I could.

Some lake 'side view'

Walkies

We drove on a little bit more before coming to another car park. There was a short, 30 minute walk marked out which apparently led to a viewing area so we decided to give it a go. If I’d had paid attention in geography class I would have noticed that the map highlighted this was quite a steep route but nevermind, that goat’s cheese needed walking off anyway.

Viewing spot ahead

The view from the top

The long and winding road

Some Close-ups and Scenic Shots

It was so beautiful I decided to try a little close-up photography. For a beginner, I think they came out pretty well. Any tips for improvement, please sent them through.

Loch Lomond

Eventually we did make it to Loch Lomond. I remember learning a song in school called ‘The Bonnie Bank O’ Loch Lomond’. You might have learnt it yourself.

O ye’ll tak’ the high road, and Ah’ll tak’ the low (road)
And Ah’ll be in Scotlan’ afore ye
Fir me an’ my true love will ne-er meet again
On the bonnie, bonnie banks o’ Loch Lomon’.

Learning it at ten years old I had never grasped the true meaning. I had always presumed it was a romance song and had never paid too much attention to it. Reading up on it, Wikipedia says that ‘the low road’ “refers to the traditional underground route taken by the ‘fairies’ or ‘little people’ who were reputed to transport the soul of a dead Scot who died in a foreign land – in this case, England – back to his homeland to rest in peace”. Just a little history and culture for you. 

Perfect Perch

Loch Lomond and The Trossachs are a short drive (just over an hour) Edinburgh. Regardless of whether you’re just visiting Edinburgh or Glasgow, or whether you’re living here full-time, there’s no excuse not to go visit and experience what can only be described as ‘the real Scotland’.

Walking with sasha in the orange groves

I’m quite lucky. A few years ago my parents (and my brothers at the time as well) decided they were fed up with living in Ireland. They wanted a better quality of life and were going to live in Portugal again. I had lived there for about five years when I was younger, from the ages of two until seven. I don’t remember a lot about it. I remember being in a Portuguese school and a couple of other fragments but not a lot sadly. Worse than that, I don’t remember any Portuguese which is such a shame.

I’m lucky because when other friends go to visit their parents they usually drive down the road or perhaps even go visit them in another part of the country, but I get to go to Portugal. To the Algarve just outside of Silves where they run a bed and breakfast called Duas Quintas.

Portimão And The Museu De Portimão

I’ve been to Portimão a few times but Jemma hadn’t. Portimão is a lovely little city which with beautiful cobbled streets and a lovely waterfront area. It’s the capital of sardines and we spent the day learning about (and eating) sardines.

Learning about Sardines

Mmm!

Visiting A Vineyard

I love wine and this year I’ve been taking an evening course to learn all about it. I started in January at beginners and am now on the second level. It’s a lot of fun and if I had more free time I would definitely take on more evening classes. So being in Portugal it made sense to go visit a vineyard.

Cellars at Quita Dos Vales

In the wine tasting class there are two parts, the academic part where we learn about how wine is made and about grape varieties and the second part, drinking. Honestly, I really enjoy learning about wine and how it’s made. It’s great fun to drink it obviously but I still enjoy getting to use my brain at least once a week.

Quinta Dos Vales was a great experience. We did a little tasting, sampling a red, a white and a rosé. I don’t usually like rosé but this was lovely and dry. In fact I’d happily drink it again (if I could get it easily in the UK). After that we did a tour around the vineyard, learning how wine is made and fermented before taking a quick look around the grounds. I’ll definitely be visiting more vineyards in the future.

An unusual sideline for a vineyard

Walking in the Algarve Countryside

We took two massive walks in the countryside near the B&B. Although plenty of people visit the Algarve every year to see the beaches and coastal areas, one of Portugal’s unsung songs is its countryside.

Apparently these shorts are fashionable

Sasha (my dog) didn’t do so well. Every time we passed some shade, she decided it was time for a break. In the end we all had a swim in the reservoir above.

Sasha gets a few lengths in before us

Eating Some Goat

Something that’s almost impossible to get in the UK, especially in a restaurant, is goat. In Portugal however kid goat (cabrito) is still eaten and served in restaurants and it’s delicious. We went into the mountains to a local restaurant to find what was apparently the best place in the area to get goat. They weren’t lying, it was absolutely amazing.

Source: JemmaEatWorld

If you’re visiting Portugal and in particular the Algarve, don’t just stick to the beaches and places like Albufeira and Praia da Luz – explore the countryside. It’s absolutely beautiful and it’s great for walking. It’s a different side to Portugal and one that absolutely shouldn’t be missed.

I haven’t had a ‘sun holiday’ in years. I’ve done the whole backpacker thing all to frequently, couchsurfed my way around New York, France and Eastern Europe and even when camping in Norway in November. The last one I admit was definitely a very bad idea. So although it was unusual for me to be the one actually suggesting a “sunshine, beach holiday” that was exactly what I needed. Backpacking has its charms and its definitely a great way to see lots of places cheaply, but is it relaxing? There’s a lot to be said for a sunshine break and this was going to be it.

What winter in Edinburgh is like

So, after a surprise Valentine’s gift (I was hoping for something nice) from my better half me and Jemma (of JemmaEatWorld.com) set about looking for somewhere that was warm, had plenty of wine, beautiful beaches and wasn’t Spain or Portugal. Don’t worry I love Spain and Portugal, they’re just places we’ve both been to a lot. In fact I lived in Portugal for a few years so despite loving it, I wanted to try somewhere new.

Although we both wanted a beach – or at least a relaxing – holiday, I was still adamant that it had to be somewhere a little different to anywhere else we’d been to. I’ve been to most of Europe so this makes things quite difficult. I’m not sure how, perhaps it was simply by seeing where was cheapest to get to and then narrowing down our list, but somehow we ended up looking at Sardinia.

I use Google images a lot when deciding where to visit. Travel for me is a very visual search and 10 blue links on a page isn’t going to tell me whether I want to go visit or not. Sardinia, with it’s beautiful clear, blue water and sandy, white beaches looked amazing. Flights into Olbia were reasonably priced, although we would have to go via Gatwick, but it was definitely worth it for the postcard-perfect scenery we would eventually arrive in, many, many hours later.

Typical holiday brochure photo

Fast forward four months and we’ve just landed in Olbia. We’re not hiring a car (although I have to admit we would have seen a lot more if we did). Instead we’re going to travel by public transport.

Olbia’s airport was warm and unlike most airports, actually somewhere we didn’t mind sitting around outside at. There was an outdoor bar and pizzeria and we grabbed a drink while we waited for the bus to turn up.

Our first ‘taste of Italy’ would be in the relaxed Italian approach to life. (Actually I should say taste of Sardinia. Sardinians like the Scottish see themselves as independent and not as Italian). We boarded our bus at the correct time and waited. Then we waited some more. Then some more. The bus driver had disappeared so we were running late but he soon re-appeared. Eating a Magnum. He then processed to slowly eat and enjoy that Magnum for the next forty minutes whilst chatting to a pal before boarding the bus, looking blank when a few of the Italian-speaking passengers complained about the hold-up and then slowly proceeded down the road.

It’s good we weren’t in a hurry. It’s also good that delay happened getting to the apartment at the start of the holiday rather than at the end when we were boarding the plane.

I grew up in Portugal. Well, I spent the first few years of my life living in Portugal and then I lived in the South-West of Ireland. I don’t think I’ve ever lived the ‘fast-pace’ life but as soon as you go on holidays you really notice how tense you’ve become, how difficult it is for you to relax and how you worry and stress about things that really aren’t that important. It’s not like we were really in a hurry (although we were keen to dump our bags and get settled in) and I think it was a big sign that we were drastically in need of a ‘real holiday’.

About an hour later and we were getting off the bus in San Giovani, a little way down the coast. We had been keen to avoid the Costa Smeralda and had managed to find some reasonably priced, reasonably non-touristy accommodation at Villa Magnolia Apartments.

We hadn’t given a lot of thought as to how we would get from the nearby village of San Giovani to the apartment (apparently there was a bus stop outside the apartment but we were never told) and ended up walking along a main road until an Italian guy pulled up on a motorbike.

“You are Scottish yes?” he began. Before we could answer he said “I think you are my guests. Villa Magnolia, yes?” He’d obviouslly begun to wonder where his ‘foreign’ guests had got to and gone out for a look. He returned a few minutes later with his car and dropped us back to the apartment.

We weren’t looking for luxurious accommodation. We were looking for functional, in a good location (i.e. near the beach) and this was ideal. The only thing that was missing however was a little guidebook or notes of what’s in the area. For example in the first few days of our holidays it took us well over an hour and a half to get to the beach, walking via the nearest town of Posada. A few days later we found a ‘short cut’ which took us through a nature reserve and cut the time down to at least an hour. About a week into the two week holiday we found a road which took us to the beach in ten minutes. It’s things like this that would be helpful to put in the notes for when guests arrive.

Nevermind, at least we got some exercise.

Along the nature trail

Trying to Speak Italian

We did our best to speak Italian. I know a little Spanish and have been trying to learn for a few months. I’m not saying the two languages are the same but there definitely are similarities. Unfortunately however no matter whether I tried to speak Italian or spoke in broken Spanish, people just presumed I was German. I’m not sure whether it was the lack of English/Irish people in the area (there were quite a few Dutch and Germans in their campervans) or whether my hair had gone blonder in the sun, but for every broken sentence I spoke in either broken-Spanish or very-broken Italian, I got an answer in German.

In the end it turned into an awkward conversation with the butcher who asked:

“Kommen sie aus Deutschland?”

“Nein, Irelande”.

This stumped him.

“Oh”.

Tourist Information in Sardinia

After a few days of charging the batteries on the beach, relaxing and drinking plenty of wine, we decided – or I decided at least – we wanted to do a little exploring.

Doing the obvious thing we decided to visit the local tourist information office to see what they had to suggest. The nearest was in Posada so we ventured down one morning, hoping to get advice on walking, places to see, things to do etc.

“Have you been to the castle” asked the girl behind the desk who for some reason, despite clearly being Italian, spoke English in a Liverpudlian accent.

“Yes, we replied. Inside the old town?”

“Ok, so you’ve seen the old town too” she replied, looking sad. “Do you have a car?”

“No” I answered. We were thinking of travelling by public transport.

“Public Transport? Ha! Welcome to Italy” was her reply.

View from the castle

I think I’d expected the local tourist information to support our responsible travel-style holiday and to give us a little background on the buses in Sardinia. Instead she just looked at us like we were mad and since we had already been to the castle, we decided there wasn’t much else for us to see. There were no leaflets on local transport and none on local information other than the castle. We had a made a no-internet decision before we left as well so that meant no looking up Tripadvisor, Wikitravel or chatting to people on couchsurfing.

The perfect excuse for a no-frills, no-thrills relaxing holiday.

The rest of the holiday was spent eating, drinking (you buy your wine by the bucket from a hose), walking and relaxing by the beach. Although I still crave adventure, it was exactly what I needed.

Here are some photos to give you an idea.

Home cooked food

Wine and cheese

Wine by the bucket

Who wouldn't want this guy in their country?

I’ve been to Amsterdam before. I loved it the first time round so when a couple of friends decided to plan a long weekend away together, there was no way I was going to say no. There are plenty of reasons to visit Amsterdam and The Netherlands and not all of them involve visiting coffee shops or the Red Light District. I’m not going to pretend that these aren’t excellent reasons to visit Amsterdam, they are. But the now two times I visited the cities of the three Xs I’ve managed to only spend a couple of hours in total in the Red Light District and still have an amazing time.

Flights were booked and we’d arranged a houseboat. All we had to do now was check into our flights online and everything was sorted. That was when I discovered that I had somehow lost my passport (again). I won’t go into the story here as I’ve already written about it before. In short I managed, after much hard work, sleepless nights and thinking about how I could smuggle myself into the Netherlands in a boat or acquire a fake passport, to get an emergency passport from the Irish embassy less than 24 hours before we were due to take off. Talk about cutting it fine.

Plenty of reasons to visit Amsterdam

The early morning flight from Edinburgh to Amsterdam is always a noisy one. Amsterdam is stag central and we managed to sit ourselves in between two or three different stag parties who were already drinking and showing off their t-shirts. I’m not sure who was getting married but ‘fudwank’ was the dad and ‘clunge muncher’ might well have been the best man. On arriving my temporary passport didn’t get a second glance. Ibrahim on the other hand (yes you can tell from the name where this is going) was asked plenty of questions as to why he was visiting, what he did for a living and most importantly, when he would be leaving again.

Life On A Houseboat

Despite a minor hickup where we didn’t actually have any money to pay for the houseboat once we arrived (we hadn’t been told that cards wouldn’t be accepted) it wasn’t long before we were settling into what would be our new home on the water for the next few days. I’ve always wanted to experience a houseboat. I’m jealous that the first people to start living in them in Amsterdam (back in the day, around the 60s and 70s) just rocked up. Mooring rights and licences didn’t really exist  and there were a lot of trawlers and other similar boats left over from the second world war. These days getting a houseboat (or more importantly the mooring spot to park it) is very costly and in high demand so I’ve temporarily put to bed any dreams of doing that soon.

The Red Light District

You can’t visit Amsterdam without taking a trip through the Red Light District. We wandered about, gazing in the windows, taking it all in. It’s a very surreal experience, especially when the curtains are drawn and you start to think why.

Unfortunately I couldn’t take any real photos. If you are seen taking a photo the lovely ladies will come out and throw a cup of piss over you. Either that or you’ll get chased by their pimp. This is what I was told the first time I visited Amsterdam. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I wasn’t really interested in finding out. Besides I’ve only ever seen one person take a photo so they must have some way of enforcing it. I did manage to see a buttplug the side of my head though. Not sure if I’d count that as a pro or con.

Hiring Bikes & A Picnic in the Vongelpark

If you want the real Amsterdam (or Dutch) experience, you’ve got to do it on two wheels. I hadn’t hired a bike the last time I was in Amsterdam. It’s something that everyone has got to want to do and when there’s only two of you, and only one of you cycles, it can be difficult to come to a compromise. This time however there were five of us and three of us cycled regularly so the other two had to forfeit.

Album cover perhaps?

Cycling in Amsterdam is fun. Jemma and Ibrahim seemed a little bit nervous but for me it was a lot more fun than cycling in Edinburgh. Sure there were trams to dodge but eventually you got used to the flow of cycle traffic and were able to find your own way easily.

We ended up in the Vongelpark where we had a picnic of baguettes, cheese, meat and beer. After that we spent the rest of the day enjoying our new bike gang, dodging other amateur cyclists and stopping every now and then for a beer.

Heinekin Experience

Plenty of people have recommended the Heinekin Experience to me but being honest if it hadn’t been for everyone else’s interest in going I probably wouldn’t have been that interested.

In the end I really enjoyed the tour. I learnt a little bit about how beer is made, the history of Heinekin and most importantly how to drink beer properly – something I probably should have learnt a long time ago. We even got our own custom bottles made.

The big beer experience

Thirsty!

An April Fool and a Wonderful Annual Tradition

Colin has an April the 1st tradition that has to happen, no matter what country you’re in. In fact, it seemed to fit better in Amsterdam than at home. Every year on the 1st of April he eats his dinner backwards, starting with the dessert and finishing with the starter. The waiter, bemused, was happy to accommodate his request and in fairness has probably heard far more ridiculous things in his time.

I'm the backwards man

BlumenMarket

We had planned to cycle for miles and miles to see fields full of tulips. We didn’t make it that far but we did find this flower market.

A Windmill

This windmill was only a 20 minute cycle away from the houseboat. If you’re really keen to see some windmills, I found a ‘windmills database‘. It’s in Dutch so only for those who are really keen. Otherwise this windmill is located on the East side of Amsterdam and is part of a small brewery. The official website can be found here.

Raw Herring

Raw herring (or haring) is a traditional Dutch delicacy, one that’s mainly enjoyed by locals rather than tourists. You can get it very easily throughout the city, from one of the many foodstands.

It was nice. I probably wouldn’t order it in a restaurant but I enjoyed it and was glad I managed to try something somewhat ‘typical’.

Raw herring and onions

Twin towers

All adverts should be culturally sensitive. This one however was not. Gave us a chuckle, but perhaps not everyone has the same dry sense of humour as us.

As an international airport, I'm sure Amsterdam gets some New Yoikers

In Conclusion

There are plenty of reasons to visit Amsterdam and we experienced them all. Well with the exception of hookers and buttplugs the size of my head. If you do decide to visit you absolutely must a) hire a bike b) experience a night on a houseboat and c) do with some great people. (Note: when I travelled to Amsterdam before, I camped. If you’re on a budget, it’s a much cheaper option and almost as good.)

Scared lion at Parc de Bruxelles

This year the Royal Wedding happened. To be honest I had absolutely no interest in the whole thing until I found out that everyone in the country was getting a day off. Now this day off was probably so all of us working ‘schmucks’ could take the time to join in the celebrations as the wedding was broadcast on TV, but I decided it was just another good excuse to leave the country.

Unfortunately there weren’t a huge number of cheap flights available for that weekend and the places that did have cheap flights were far from exciting. No matter what airport I looked at flying from or which day I looked at leaving on, Brussels always seemed to come up cheap so I decided it was fate. We were going to Brussels.

I’ll be honest right from the start and say there’s not a lot to do in Brussels. And anything that there is to do is pretty expensive. A lot of this probably has to do with all of the politicians and business people who work there and can just charge everything to expenses. We couldn’t and so had to be frugal with a lot of our spending, especially when it came to food.

Arriving

We had decided, on a recommendation from a friend, to try out one of the Mystery Hotels from LastMinute.com. If you haven’t tried it out before, you’re basically not given any information about the hotel, all of the facilities it has or exactly where it’s located until you’ve paid. You are given a rough idea, something along the lines of it’s near such and such a street or it’s near this attraction, but not enough information to work out exactly where it is.

You can try googling a few pieces of information that you get from the description, but if you don’t have any luck with that, you’re probably not going to work out where it is. Especially if it’s in the city centre in a place like Brussels.

I’d say we did pretty well. A hotel room is a hotel room unless you’re staying in an ice hotel or a capsule in Japan as far as I’m concerned. Yes there are some nice boutique hotels out there but they’re usually out of my price bracket. This was a Sheraton hotel and since it was a Mystery Hotel we were paying half of what the usual price was. Ideal for our purposes.

The only problem was that we hadn’t printed off a map. Thankfully I managed to stumble across some wifi and my archaic smartphone was able to find out where we were and where we needed to be. We had ended up in an area with quite a few prostitutes so were feeling a bit nervous that we’d ventured a little too far of course. It turned out the hotel was only a five minute walk away, we were just staying in one of the seedier areas.

This would have been the most suitable prostitute hangout!

Things to Do in Brussels

Beer, one of the main things to do in Brussels

There’s not a lot to do in Brussels apart from watch a boy pissing and drink beer. Once when I lived in Leith I saw a boy defecate himself on the pavement while his mother stood by, tissues in hand, ready to scoop it up like he was a dog. I’m glad that the only other person to see it (apart from all of the people in the café he did it outside of) was Oliver Gaywood, who has very little interest in art and is unlikely to ever create a shrine to the disgusting child. Had we been in Brussels and not Leith, the setting for Trainspotting, and had I been with Jerome Duquesnoy, creator of the Manneken Pis and not Oliver Gaywood, we could have a Manneken Merde at the Foot of Leith Walk.

Moules frites, the food I had always thought Belgium was famous for, started at around 24 euros and rose sharply, depending on how close you were to the pissing boy. Waffles were also expensive and I saw quite a few for sale at around the 8 euro mark. Although I’m sure the waffles would have been lovely, and the mussels as well, we weren’t willing to spend that much on either, especially when we could get the same food at home for half the price. And Edinburgh has never been seen as a cheap city to live in.

We ended up eating baguettes and saucisson, roughly put together and enjoyed al fresko in a park which suited us fine.

One of the many parks we ended eating out in

We did go see the European Union and I was very glad to see the Irish flag flapping proudly in the wind. Maybe in a few years there will be a Scottish flag there, alongside it.

A Scottish flag alongside it one day, hopefully

There’s not a lot to do in Brussels and what there was we generally couldn’t afford, or at least I think it’s fair to say we found it quite expensive and were willing to be frugal for a few days, rather than come back from the weekend out of pocket with very little to show for it. If Ryanair flight prices dictate where you’re going to spend your holidays, you’ll inevitably end up in Brussels at some point or other. I’m glad to have seen another city, but there’s a lot more places on my ‘to visit’ list before I’ll be returning to Brussels again.

The Wikitravel article opens saying: “Newcastle is a lively and diverse city, known for its nightlife, art, music and sports.” In reality, Newcastle is known for little other than clubbing, fucking and chips.

Of course, chips can be found pretty much anywhere in the UK and fucking and clubbing tend to go hand in hand, or however they do it these days. Basically, there’s no reason to visit Newcastle other than to try and shag one of the half-dressed tarted up girls who stumble about the city after hours.

In this respect you could argue that the city is indeed very lively, particularly at the weekends, although it’s hard to notice any diversity as every girl is a peroxide shade of tack. Not that there’s anything wrong with this of course. For many this is Newcastle’s charm and attraction. The real problem is people suggesting there’s anything to do in Newcastle other than drink and fornicate.

Now some people might take offence to a statement like that, and given the city is populated entirely by chavs, you probably don’t want to go out of your way to offend anyone. But for those – including the Wikitravel contributors – who believe there are many other great reasons to visit the following should serve as a simple guide on how to get the most out of your visit to Newcastle.

Top Tip for Visiting Newcastle: Don’t.

We arrived in Newcastle at lunchtime on a Saturday, filled with excitement and anticipation at what the weekend ahead had in store for us. Many acquaintances and work colleagues have told me that Newcastle is the place to be and that I would love it, so I couldn’t wait to see what they were talking about. Of course it was quite nice seeing an old friend as soon as we stepped off the train into the foreign land of England.

Nice to see he's been for a haircut and had a shave!

As we’d planned this trip at the last minute, we hadn’t researched things to do. We decided it would be cool to go and check out some of the bridges over the Tyne before finding our hotel. At this point we were still pretty excited and walked over the big green bridge; we noticed a Samaritans sign telling people not to jump, but little did we know how tempting that would be.

The last thing many jumpers would see

A lot of praise has been heaped upon the Millenium Bridge, which is a big landmark in Newcastle/Gateshead. After seeing the bridge I now understand why Geordies are famous for saying “why aye” because WHY anyone would want to build a pointless EYE is beyond me. Apparently it winks, but we couldn’t find the tilt times anywhere and left feeling a bit disappointed. As we crossed the bridge we felt a bit of deja vu; this was all very similar to being back down The Shore in Leith.

After realising that the bridges were a bit of a let down, we wandered around in search of the hotel that James drunkenly booked at midnight the previous evening. To get back from the riverside to town we had to walk under a very creepy underpass, which handilly had a signpost for the local A&E beside it.

Holy Jesus, Batman!

The hotel provided some other amusement in the form of a vintage lift, which we jumped in when we were drunk as we wanted to experience it and were too scared to get in it sober. Because we were drunk, however, we forgot what the experience was like.

Scary

We decided to go out for dinner. Our aim was to avoid chain restaurants and try somewhere independent, as there’s no point in travelling to England if you can get the exact same on the other side of Hadrian’s Wall. We wandered aimlessly for about half an hour, seeing row upon row of Subway sandwich shops. You’d think that franchisees would say “there’s already five Subways on this street, I shouldn’t open another one” but then you’d be wrong. The people of Newcastle seem to exist solely on Subways and chips.

All of the restaurants we passed were either kebab shops or chains, and we were about to settle for Wagamama when we found a Lebanese cafe. Since there weren’t many other options and we both fancied some hummus we went in and sat down. As we perused the menu it became glaringly obvious that:
1. This was a kebab shop.
2. It was BYOB.
Since neither of us fancied kebab and since neither of us fancied facing another hour of Newcastle sober, we made our excuses and left.

In the end we went to China Town (which is really just 10 Chinese restaurants in a row and a Chinese arch but we’ll let that slide) to a place we’d passed by earlier, charmingly named The Cheeky Duck. The restaurant had roast ducks hanging in the window and sold wine; fitting our needs perfectly. Legend has it the restaurant got it’s name when the owners heard some drunken buffoon ask a group of bare legged slappers if they fancied a “Cheeky Fuck” so we decided this was as close to authentic Geordie food as we were going to get.

We ordered a selection of ‘roast meat’ which was tender, succulent…. and still had the bones in it. Which we realised after almost breaking our teeth on some duck. But still, it was fairly cheap, coming in at just under £20 for two of us (including the bottle of Merlot).

I suppose this is like a homeless shelter

After a few glasses of wine Newcastle was starting to seem a bit better. We decided to find a bar, but had learned our lesson from our earlier restaurant hunt and popped into the Co-Op first for a bottle of cheap wine, just in case our bar search was as fruitless as our dinner hunt. The one thing I like about England is that you can buy wine after 10pm. Clutching our bottle of red, we decided to head down the Quayside where we inadvertantly stumbled through a chav mating ground.

All around us were girls with big hair, big heels, and tiny dresses with no tights on. I felt slightly under-dressed (or over-dressed depending on how you look at it) so imagine my relief when we managed to find a nice quiet pub.

The Waterline

It really is just like being back down at The Shore in Edinburgh. We arrived at the Waterline after an abortive mission to the Slug and Lettuce which, despite having 2 for 1 cocktails, also had an incompetent bartender who smashed a glass at me and then didn’t even offer us a freebie. We had a lovely bottle of red wine in The Waterline, before wandering back up to the hotel at about 12 or 1. Although we were both fairly sozzled we felt completely sober as all around us we watched men and women staggering around like a zombie invasion, only instead of wanting to eat brains they were focussed on genitalia.

On Sunday we woke up feeling slightly tired and headachey, and matters did not improve when we went outside to discover it was raining quite heavily. I’d been told by at least two of my Geordie friends to visit the Baltic art gallery, and it was also listed in one of the guidebooks as a ‘must’; out of six floors, three were shut. The three that were open were:

1. An exhibit of the negatives of photos of a glacier, plus a children’s play area (not cool when hungover)
2. An observation deck looking down onto the (closed) exhibit before, which just looked like a building site
3. The restaurant.

Needless to say we were pretty peeved that the most artistic thing we saw in the museum that day was a smashed glass lift, but we figured we could find something else to do. We decided to go for lunch in a charming little cafe, but instead ended up in Bagel of the North where we were served by a girl who’s customer service skills were rivalled only by Carol Beer from Little Britain.

What would you like on your bagel? *cough*

Once we finished our bagel and realised there still wasn’t much to do, we went for a walk around about the university district and discovered the Great Northern museum. It didn’t open until 2pm and it was only 1pm, so we killed some time in Blackwells reading guides to Newcastle; I had been hoping we could find an open top tour bus as they often help you find your feet, but I did not see any City Tour busses the entire time I was there. We grabbed a quick cup of tea in Costa; although when I ordered it I actually had to ask for milk (the customer service in Newcastle leaves a LOT to be desired) and then headed back to the museum for opening time where we saw some of Hadrian’s wall, a dinosaur, and an ancient greek dildo.

We really wanted to climb on the rhino

Cucumber, or ANCIENT GREEK SEX TOY?

Why is the sheep on the roof?

James about to be eaten by a T-Rex

Nice try, Hadrian, but this Scot got past your stinkin' wall!

When we got the most fun we could out of that, we headed into a shopping centre to find a Boots so we could get a bottle of water. We also noticed a shop which confirmed our suspicions on exactly what there is to do in Newcastle:

Drinking and Fucking, combined

We decided to head back down to the Quayside and chill out in a nice bar down by the Why -the-Fuck Eye called Pitcher and Piano. We asked for a bottle of Merlot and the bartender immediately deduced that we were interested in the price, not the grape, and tipped us off that the Cabernet Sauvignon was only a tenner so we had a couple of bottles of that instead. I suppose the danger of hanging out near the water is that you might get eaten by a shark.

Jemma Eat World or Jemma gets eaten?

We hadn’t drank the bottle of wine we’d bought in the Co-Op yet, so after procuring some wine glasses and having dinner in La Tasca we headed back to the train station and into our designated seats on the quiet coach. Where we still forgot to drink our wine, but probably managed to piss a few people off.

This article focuses on replacing a lost Irish passport. If you’re lucky enough to come from a slightly more efficient country – Germany or Austria for example – you may simply need to contact your local consulate/embassy who will get a new passport to you in a few days.

Why I Need a Passport to Travel

In 1985 an agreement known as the Schengen agreement was signed, marking out the region to be known as the Schengen area. This would allow those living within a Scengen area country to travel across borders without the need for a passport – just some form of photo i.d. The law was absorbed into EU law in 1999 when the Amsterdam Treaty was signed.

Unfortunately neither the UK nor Ireland signed this agreement which means if you are Irish or British you require a passport to travel around the EU. Technically you don’t need a passport to travel between the UK and Ireland but most airlines have their own rules as to whether or not they allow you to fly.

In other countries many people fly with a valid ID card. Unfortunately both the UK and Ireland have scrapped ID cards so a passport is the only means of documentation that can be used for international flights.

I’ve read that it’s not illegal to travel without a passport, that UK citizens are simply required by law to inform the respective body that they are leaving the country. Unfortunately all of the airlines will require you to present a passport. If this is true however, it doesn’t stop you from finding your own way over to the country.

Finding Suitable Witnesses

If you don’t attend church or get sick regularly, you may struggle to find someone who can sign your photos. I know I did. I had hoped the police station would sign them but they have a policy against signing passport photos. In fact many of the professions listed do. This is perhaps because in the UK the number of professions who can sign a passport photo is much greater and so not being able to get a police officer to sign a photo doesn’t really affect your chances – just about anybody with a degree can sign them.

Working in a large office meant there were accountants on board who could witness the photos, although with some free sarcasm on the mugshots.

The Emergency Passport

If all else fails, which it did for me, and you need to travel immediately you can get an emergency passport made. Mine was made by the Irish consulate in Edinburgh. You can only apply for a passport one week before you need to fly, but can get it made on the same day, often with only a few hours to spare.

I didn’t realise this was an option for several weeks – anybody had spoken had failed to mentioned that this was a possibility or stopped to consider that I might be willing to pay for this service. It’s not cheap, at £114, but if you’ve got something booked and you need to go this will ensure you get there.

Cost wasn’t an issue for me – the issue was getting an entire passport form filled out again, signed and witnessed and getting any documentation I had sent to the embassy in London back to Edinburgh. Thankfully the last bit didn’t turn out to be too much of an issue (the consulate arranged this), but I did need to find new witnesses since the accountant who had signed my previous photos was now in London.

In the end I managed to get the photos signed by a ‘notary public‘, a profession I had never come into contact with before but am extremely grateful for. Vhari Selfridge from Connell & Connell on Dublin St in Edinburgh was kind enough to sign mine, but if you are located elsewhere a quick Google should reveal some potential candidates. The Irish passport application doesn’t require the witness to know you, but it’s worth taking along evidence of this, as witnesses for a UK passport are normally required to know the candidate for two years.

The emergency passport shouldn’t be confused with an emergency travel document – this is simply for if you get stuck abroad and need a one way pass to get you back home.

Other Options

The one problem with the emergency passport is that you can only request this from one week before you are due to travel. I had given six weeks for the passport to arrive and it still didn’t. In the meantime I managed to come up with a few other medium-term solutions which may or may not be practical.

A Second Passport

A Czech passport will give you the freedom to move throughout the EU and European Trading Area. It’s commonly offered as a second passport and is available in around a month. It costs around $10,000 but is cheaper – and presumably better – than some of the other readily available second passports such as those from places like Suriname and Guyana.

It’s likely a lot of these second passport sites are a scam, but even if you do find one that is genuine, you should first check that becoming a citizen of that country won’t require you to take part in any military service or pay additional tax.

Owning multiple passports is not unusual. I recently read Emergency by Neil Strauss which touches on the lives of Neil and some of his acquaintances, all of whom are trying to pick up another nationality apart from American. Neil’s reasons were slightly different to mine – he wasn’t just trying to go on holidays with some work friends – he was seriously concerned about the possibility of America collapsing or getting attacked by another country. In the end he managed to get a hold of residency in St. Kitts at a considerable cost of several hundred thousand dollars, although this is based on him having invested in a property on the island, which was probably a good investment, not just from a passport point of view.

Emergency, the book

St Kitts isn’t the only place to offer citizenship in return for investment. The UK, Australia and Canada also offer this, although the amount they expect is considerably more than St Kitts. Other ways to gain nationality included getting a Brazilian girl pregnant – for residency in Brazil – but I wasn’t sure if I would be able to both find a Brazilian girl to impregnate and get all the paperwork in order within that time. There are a number of guides to gaining a second passport which go into this in a little more detail, mainly aimed at those trying to escape their country’s tax laws.

It’s also apparently possible to pick up a Somalian passport for just a few hundred pounds – although I’m not sure what value this would have been to me.

Of course these are for genuine passports. Getting a fake passport is actually easier, cheaper and faster – and they apparently work as well. This may have become plan B, but I’m glad we never got to that stage. I’m also not sure what country I would have tried to get my passport from.

If there’s a lesson to be learned here, it’s probably not to lose your passport. Or, if you do, make sure that you do it leaving enough time to get another one printed and sent over to you. In the meantime you may want to make sure you keep it in a safe, secure place – far away from the passport thief.

Not even weather for ducks

If you’re planning on taking a weekend trip from Edinburgh, your options can be quite limited. Well, limited by public transport that is. While the public transport in Scotland is great (much better than the public transport I’ve experienced in other countries) actually getting away early on a Saturday morning or later Friday night and then back again on the Sunday evening, ideally late but not too late, isn’t always easy. In fact it can be quite difficult without a car. The two easiest places I’ve found to get to – cheaply – are Oban and Fort William.

I’ve been to Fort William before and since trying to climb Ben Nevis in March – without crampons or any other kind of sensible winter walking gear I might add – was out of the question, we (Jemma Porter (@JemmaEatWorld) and I settled on Oban.

I say settled but I’ve actually been dying to see more of Scotland. I feel guilty having lived here for several years but not having seen large chunks of it. I was also excited to visit as Oban was commonly known as the ‘seafood capital of Scotland‘.

Weather

Well this winter has been exceptionally bad. Every year in Scotland – and even in the rest of the UK to a lesser extent – we are told to brace ourselves for the worst winter we’ve experienced in how ever many years. This year however I think we really, really got that terrible, awful winter.

Now, I’ll be honest it was beautiful and looking through these photos I feel guilty complaining at the weather but it’s hard to explain just how bitterly cold it was.

Icy steps

We hadn’t gone very upmarket in our accommodation. In fact I think our main focus was budget so in many ways we shouldn’t have been surprised when we turned up at the Regent Hotel in Oban.

The Regent Hotel

It had all the usual charms that you would expect from such a hotel. Plenty of teabags in the room, a greasy fry-up for breakfast and a hotel bill which reflects all of the corners they took to provide you the accommodation so cheaply. One thing that we weren’t expecting however was the slightly over-sensitive fire-alarm that each room was equipped with.

Now I didn’t actually see the above sign. Well at least it was too late anyway. Arriving there cold and wet from the blizzard of snow outside I quickly hopped in the shower to try and warm up.

As soon as I opened the door the fire alarm started going off. At first it didn’t register that it was this room that the sound was coming from, at least until there was a knock on the door.

“Did you have a shower?” said Bart, his nametag revealing that he was the hotel manager.
“Well, yes” I began wondering when showering stopped being included in the usual things people do at their hotels.
He sighed.
“Well you’re going to have to evacuate the hotel” he said grumpily.

Bart had obviously had this problem a lot. It was clear this was a big problem with the fire alarms and he had done one too many hotel evacuations before. I hadn’t noticed the sign as I had been pre-occupied and despite how large it looks in the picture here, it was actually quite a small sign in the corner of the mirror.

Still in a towel, I looked out into the corridor. People were starting to come out of their rooms, down the stairs, exiting the building as the various hotel employees led them to the exits. I closed the door and quickly began dressing.

“We’re going to have to evacuate the building” I said looking sheepish.

“What, but that’s ridiculous” was Jemma’s reply. I didn’t have much to say. I was feeling quite guilty. As soon as those hotel room doors opened I saw just how old the majority of the clientèle in this hotel were. I would feel even more guilty when I saw the icy steps outside the hotel that they would have to walk down. Especially this one old lady who clearly hadn’t come for a walking holiday but was instead forced to walk down what steps that really were the definition of a health hazard to stand in a blizzard while we waited for the fire engine to come.

I had a big winter jacket with me so I put the hood up to hide my wet hair and the obvious fact that it was me who had been the one showering. Just to seal the deal and make sure that nobody suspected it was me, I joined in with the complaining, tutting and sighing as much as I could so as not to stand out.

It worked. The fire engine came and left and we went back up, grabbed our stuff and went out for dinner.

Somehow we managed to end up in a really great wee restaurant called Room 9. Although we hand’t done much research on the subject I had expected to find a lot of restaurants quite easily – especially fish restaurants. Oban is apparently the seafood capital of Scotland so I guess my expectations were quite high. With the exception of EE-USK we didn’t really see any seafood specialists, but Room 9 was perfect for us. It was warm, friendly and family run and even though they were quite busy the staff there were very happy to find us a table. “There’ll be a delay on the food” we were told. I didn’t mind though. As long as I wasn’t back in that hotel with Bart trying to hunt me down every time I went near the bathroom I was happy.

The next day, refreshed, we got up and went to explore the rest of Oban. The previous day had actually been so cold that it was impossible to stay outside for very long. Both Jemma and I are celts, have grown up in either Ireland and Scotland (although I did have a spree in Portugal when I was a baby) and so are pretty familiar with cold weather. This was too much for either of us however and we decided to stay indoors on the first day.

The second day however, the snow had stopped and settled and so we checked out and went to see what there was to see in Oban. Not a lot being honest. Well once we had gone up to visit the strange Colosseum looking building that is.

And there was crazy Jane who sounds like a lot of fun. We did go in to see her, but in the end only bought another pair of gloves.

Everything ‘touristy’, including the distillery was shut until about April so after wandering the high street a few more times we ended up getting a pub lunch and a bottle of wine.

It was great to see another bit of Scotland. I’ve lived here for a few years and I always feel guilty for not having seen it all. That said I grew up in Ireland and still have to confess that I haven’t been to Galway. Back to Oban though, it was a lovely scenic little town and we did have a lot of fun. Perhaps we didn’t pick the best time of year to visit, but it still left me wondering why Oban was such a recommended place to visit.

Any ideas?