Sarah goes to Comrie Croft

Let's see if I am capable of keeping this pace of posting daily and finishing off majority of my travels by the end of 2017 (I doubt it though, I'm down with a fever at the moment). During the beginning of October, the boyfriend and I decided to book a camping trip in Scotland and this is what happened.

After looking under rocks and searching over mountains of the interweb and narrowing down our options, we finally made the decision to camp in this beautiful eco-campsite named Comrie Croft in Scotland. It was £8 per night, per person for setting up tent in one of the three selections of land. The boyfriend wanted to share the most authentic camping experience with me so he chose the Birch woodlands as our location for 7 days and 6 nights.

DAY 1

This is a little memory that I want to jot down so I can remember. We arrived early to board our train, however, we made a silly mistake of getting on a train that was on the same platform to Edinburgh but it was a train before ours and we almost ended up going down south to London instead of north to Scotland. We rushed out in the nick of time, pretty much the eleventh hour. I was out of breath by the time we got off because we were chucking a lot of camping gear on our backs whilst finding a door that was unlock. I guess you could say he was the station master, this man was outside of one of the door which I pulled the window down and tried my best to catch his attention. He was one stuck- up little butthole, pardon my language but I pretty much had to plead and beg him to let us out of the train after I said my pleases. To add on to the stressful start of our trip, this boy had a nose bled. Safe assured, we did get off the wrong train and boarded the correct train.

It was so much to take in for someone who could not get a wink of sleep the night before and arriving the station at the crack of dawn but we had each other and Chris being such a "look at the bright side" type of guy, we rarely saw a situation as horrible, it's just an experience we are bound to come by. To break down our journey to the campsite, we took a train to Edinburgh (£10.30) then another train to Perth (£5.60) where we purchased some groceries on the way to the bus stop. We had to take two separate buses that brought us to a little town of Crieff and then finally ending up at Comrie Croft (£3 for a single ticket that included both bus rides). It was definitely quite a journey to get to our destination but I can say it was worth it.

Word of advice: Book train rides separately for example, instead of searching Newcastle to Perth (which transits in Edinburgh as well), break it down to purchasing a ticket from Newcastle to Edinburgh then another ticket to Perth. By doing this, our tickets were three to four times cheaper. This is not always the case but double checking won't hurt a soul and there are chances you'll burn a smaller hole in your wallet. Don't forget to use your 16-25 railway card for more discounts.

We arrived and was greeted by the pouring rain so we had to quickly get the tent up to keep most of our belongings dry. Camping for a week definitely has made me appreciate a roof over my head a whole lot more.

DAY 2

TA-DA, our little home set up for the next 6 days.

The weather was kind to us so we decided to go for a little hike to the nearest town, Comrie.

During our walk, we came across a waterfall, saw black grouses along the way, mountain hares, red squirrels, a herd of rams and a scottish bison in a little yard next to a mansion. We sort of made the mistake of going to town on a Sunday because not many shops were open and everything closed before 5pm. Tsk tsk.

DAY 3-5
We were usually tucked in our sleeping bags by 9pm, awake by 7-8am and we start building a fire at 4pm right before it gets dark and cooked our dinner around 5pm. We mostly cooked up scrambled eggs for breakfast and vegetable soup for dinner (occasionally with a packet of instant noodles or rice for carbs). For the next few days, we ventured off to visit Crieff, explored the town area, had a couple bowls of soup in a cosy cafe (mainly so we could charge our phones), explored a beautiful park, took more walks around our campsite and the boyfriend did some mountain biking sessions whilst I carved a walking stick and read a book next to a river.

Tip: Camping during autumn means beautiful dead leaves, hardly any insects and no mosquitoes.

I had my go at the practice range, even that was scary for me.

DAY 6

On our second-to-last day, we decided to take a longer and higher hike up the hills in the morning to catch the wonderful views displayed below. Before the sunset, we took a bus to Crieff for an Italian meal to celebrate surviving the woods for the pass few days and diligently cooking our meal only in a metal pot above a fire.

We built our final fire and made it a big one this time. We pretty much burnt everything in sight.

DAY 7

In the morning of Day 7, we packed up, disposed of our rubbish, recycled what we could and headed to the train station (Perth>Edinburgh £5.60 | Edinburgh>Newcastle £10.25). We arrived in the late evening, rushed over to St Sushi to have another rewarding meal of delicious food and that was the end of our little adventure.

Below are bips and bops that helped us survive a week in the woodlands. 
(Most of the camping items can be easily purchased for a cheap price in TK Maxx or Sports Direct)

1. A tent, sleeping bag, torchlights, cooking utensils and string
2. Matches, firestarters, swiss army knife and aluminium foil
3. Hiking shoes, thick socks, gloves, waterproof pants and jacket/raincoat
4. A pillow, a book and water bottle

5. A thermos flask, heat packets and an external charger (sponsored by Katryn)
6. Uncle Ben's boil in bag rice if you cannot survive a day without rice (boil in water for 10mins only)
7. Instant packets of drinks such as Teh Tarik and Milo (sponsored by Katryn) and marshmallows
8. Resealable bags (to keep things dry), hand sanitiser, toilet rolls and wet wipes
9. Hot showers and toilets were provided in Comrie Croft (super clean, 8 minutes walk downhill from tent)
10. Fresh vegetables were available for purchase at the reception and clean water to drink and wash our cooking utensils were provided as well.

That's all I have for you guys, I hope this was an enjoyable scroll, till next time, ciao.

Sarah goes to Valencia

Why hello fellow readers or just reader, "Sarah goes anywhere" is making a comeback and we'll be starting with my latest travels moving backwards in time instead of my usuals. If you haven't read about my little rants on accessing my iPhotos on my hard disk, well, short story short, I can't access my older past travels photos and been trying to resolve that but with no luck, I'm still on square one. With that, I'm compromising with blogging my latest travels to give me more time to make other attempts, oh Lord help me. Anyways, I hope you enjoy this diarrhoea of words and photos. 

Disclaimer: It may not be all that useful because my aims are pretty much to sum up my trip, jot down what I recall and it's mainly for future Sarah to come back to reminisce of my well travelled life (which I have my parents to thank for). In addition to that, you are warned as my photos are not edited in one particular set filter so those with anal ocd on having the same theme or strict aesthetic, you are going to feel all sorts of emotions scrolling through my non-aesthetic aesthetic posts and my excessive use of the word "bomb". May God bless you on your journey. Here we go.

DAY 1

Through my friend, Petra's incredible ability to dig through the interweb for the cheapest and luxurious holidays, she dug up this 4 days 3 nights in a 4-star hotel, Valencia trip that only cost us £189 each which was bomb because that price included flights (from London Stansted Airport). We stayed in Hotel Albufera, roughly under 20 minutes by car and cost us €20-22 for a one way trip from the airport. As for going to city centre, the bus stop is more or less 10 minutes walking distance from the hotel. With very little spanish vocabulary downloaded in our brains, we assume that a single ticket (one way) costs €1.45-€1.50. They may or may not have an all-day or a return ticket, we did not have the ability to translate that to ask (sigh). The hotel's staff were well spoken in English and suuuper helpful (emphasis on the three U's because they were that helpful). The inclusive breakfast every morning served the simple basics like scrambled eggs, bread, fruits, salads, cereal, juice and a platter of cheese, overall cleanliness 10/10, facilities 5/10 and you can tell the hotel was one of the OGs in the past from the ageing surroundings.

Ask and it will be given to you. Matthew 7:7

Lunch in Racó del Turia, seafood paella was bomb.

For pretty much majority of our first day in Valencia, after I was fed, I happily watched Petra undertake some overdue retail therapy. Once fed, I'm pretty much a happy girl so keep in mind if you ever want a favour from me, just feed me a good meal and your wish is my command.

We somehow ended up getting a free bus ride to Ikea (which was 15 minutes walking distance to our hotel) when we were searching for the most convenient way back. Though we didn't speak spanish, the bus driver was kind enough to help us as much as he could to indicate that it was free as long as we sign up for an Ikea Family card (also free) because we kept indicating how much should we pay. Oh bless him. Ending our day with swedish meatballs in the beautiful country of Spain. 

DAY 2

For our second day, we signed up (the day before online) for a walking tour in the City Centre. It's the type where it's called free but they do ask to pay as you like at the end of tour in a way like tipping for however much you enjoyed the tour. I was grateful for our tour guide (who used to be a school teacher), she was well spoken in English, extremely enthusiastic and entertaining. Just search "Free Tour Valencia" (linked it for you there) and you'll be able to access the website and book a time slot and day with them. We covered a bunch of places in the duration of 2 hours. I'm not fond on taking out my phone when someone is speaking (excluding uni lectures), so I did not take much photos during the tour, hope what I have is enough. Oh I just remembered that the company (via whatsapp) were so helpful in making sure we made it with the group after Petra and I got slightly lost finding our way to the meeting point, bless them.

Word of advice: The further away from the city centre, the cheaper the postcards and souvenirs are.

Got myself juice and grapes from the popular marketplace

Places we covered in the tour:

Plaza de la Virgen, Water Court, Turia Fountain, Government Palace, Central Market, Silk Exchange, Market Square, a few churches, Cathedral of Valencia and a few other pretty corners of the city.

Facts I remembered from the tour: 

Don't drink the tap water, don't eat paella for dinner, Agua de Valencia is a must try, don't pick oranges around town because they're extremely sour, the Water Court judges do not have law degrees and all must be decade-long experienced farmers and finally Valencia/Spain is one of the world's leading supplier for oranges.

DAY 3

Hemisfèric

L'Agora

Museu de Les Ciències Príncipe Filipe

L'Oceanogràfic

L'Umbracle

It cost €31.65 for entry into L'Oceanogràfic and Museu de Les Ciències Príncipe Filipe (purchased online). You can get more offers off the internet or at the airport for entry into more landmarks (some offers includes a week pass of the metro). I don't have much to say about the science museum, architecture was marvellous but the content inside was a mild meh for me. As for my experience in  the oceanarium, I now know for sure my heart is not strong enough to tolerate sea and land mammal captivity. I sobbed silently during the dolphin show and my heart was so sad watching the beluga whales and walruses stuck in such a confined space. Although the place did offer far more than I described and though they may be treated with care, I just feel sad that the mammals are still showcased and trained for entertainment and money. I don't feel as much for birds and fishes, maybe because of the fact that I'm taking into account of the size of their brains and inability to share the feelings as most sea and land mammal have in common with mankind. However, upside from my visit, I have a new found love for jellyfishes. What marvellous creatures, so full of life in a lifeless floating contraption.

DAY 4

For our final day in Valencia, I not only decided to sleep in but I also took a nap by the pool after checking out whilst waiting for Petra to come back so we could grab a cab to the airport together. She had a bunch of errands to run in the city and I could not be bothered to go through the hassle of public transportation, hence, my lazy nap. Oh incase you want to know, a return metro ticket cost €2.60. It was a fairly productive trip if you don't count going back to the hotel early evening to tuck into our comfy beds unproductive. My readers should know by now, I don't consume alcohol or go out to clubs on an average rate of someone my age so if you'd like to know about the night life, you're on the wrong blog. 

Before I forget, I was going to mention that it's crucial to exchange your currency in the UK beforehand rather than find a money exchange around town. The rates there seems to be a rip off if I were to compare the rate I changed in London with Petra's rate that she got in Valencia. Not only that, it was quite a hassle, the city centre didn't seem to have many money exchangers but one thing for sure, they had a lottery shop at every corner of every street. Also, the locals were friendly and kind when we asked for directions but there was a large language barrier nonetheless, so best case to ask the hotel receptionist everything beforehand. That's all I have, finito.

Photo credits to Petra for having a good eye in angles and candids and also being my trusty ol' travel buddy.