It was goodbye to the UK and English speaking soil as we again took to the skies and headed to Amsterdam. Thanks to the astute bargain hunting of Julie B-W we spent the first two nights in the luxury of a 4 star hotel right in the centre of town.We spent the first day and evening just exploring the various areas including Vondelpark, Chinatown and, obviously, the red light district.With a good plan in place for the remainder of our time in the ´Dam, Barry threw...

The reviews we'd heard from others on Glasgow thus far had been mixed at best. It certainly isn't the picturesque wonder that Edinburgh is, and with 4 days to kill there we took the opportunity to simply relax and do a bit of blogging and homework on what was to come on the trip. We twice dined at local favourite Driftwood, whose 3 quid (about A$5) Mexican main meals and 1 quid vodkas/fosters stubbies went down a treat. We also finally braved a meal of Haggis at...

With the rain continuing to come down we made a brief journey onto the Culloden Battlefield, nowadays just a paddock of long grass but actually the location of the Battle of Culloden in 1746. This battle is very significant to the Scottish as it was the battle that resulted in a crushing defeat for the Jacobite forces (primarily Scottish highlanders) allowing the Hanoverian British government to maintain power. As we made our way back to Edinburgh we also made a...

Before leaving the Orkney Islands we visited the Tomb of the Eagles (see the photos for all the West Coast irony) which was a Neolithic age site discovered in the 1950s along with 16,000 human bones and many Eagle bones also. It was back on the ferry and to the mainland, this time heading down the east coast to take in the sights, which were few and far between in this part of the country. A fairly quiet day in all with a large amount of time on the bus, the h...

The next morning saw us substitute a few group members due to those on differing tour lengths, and we set off to be told we were in for another day of lots of time spent on the bus. We made one or two relatively pointless stops (yes, cracks starting to show with the tour guide!) before we made it to the north west corner of mainland Britain near Durness, where a freezing cold Scottish beach awaited, as well as the windy Durness Golf Club and amazingly good Coc...