Llangollen and Chirk castle

Llangollen is apparently known for it's steam railway station. Otherwise it's a small small town: bustling with people during day time but near enough dead after 5 PM

The steam train makes 2 couple hour journeys a day and I think it is quite expensive: something like 13 pounds there and back. When I say THERE and back, then in reality THERE is just another little (way smaller) town, where only locals, or people who are camping go to. So you are forced to get a roundtrip ticket. Otherwise you'll basically be stranded.

The journey starts off amazing: all the noises, the old carriages, soon enough you'll pass through a tunnel and notice smoke coming through the window so you close it hurrily. And then.. You're jus on a train... for a couple of hours... with not actually having to go anywhere. The scenery is great no doubt and if you're a train person you'll love it. But if you're like me who HAS to take the train for at least 2–3 hours to even start the main part of your 6 hour train journey then trains do not excite you as much as cause annoyance. Top that with a kid who boarded in the second stop and can't stop complaining five minutes in how boring it is (you've been on it like half an hour or so). Well she has a point...

Looks awesome and authentic right 

Doesn't it make you want to go for a ride?

The adorable looking stop where the whiney kid boarded the train.

The main part of the town is just ahead

The Dee river and on the right is the train station

Old abbey ruins that we couldn't get into because they are fenced in and you have to pay (again quite a lot actually imo) to get it + it was closed when we were there anyway. But as you can see you can get the idea of it by not paying the money just as well :)

And now the Chirk castle. No gardens to impress me but we did get a free tour of the rooms before they opened officially :) aww yeah.

The courtyard inside the walls

Dining room (obvs)

So this is how you eat scones? They're actually rather nice now... ;)

Oh wait... there was a garden behind it :D but not as impressive as Powys then.

A good half–day trip to the castle :)

Ttyl ;)

Jazzz...

Conwy

Conwy is a small town on the north coast of Wales and it is absolutely adorable. Perfect for a day out walking in the sun taking the the sites. It has a huge castle ruins bordering the town and you can actually walk on the town wall circling the town and occasionally peeking into peoples' small backyards.... :) 

The castle from the wall walkway

Three stories of the castle. You could even go up most the towers :)

PS! free for National Trust card holders ;)

Bridges for cars, pedestrians and trains. Viewing from the castle

View to the bay from the castle. And you can see the town wall there as well + the smallest house in Britain is there too. You can enter for a quid and it has two rooms on two levels. Literally the length of a bed and the width of a grown mans stretched out arms. At one point a family of four lived there :O

Near Conwy are also the Bodnant Gardens which are HUGE, it'll take you half a day atlas to walk through every corner. It is varied with beautiful exotic flower beds to one point feeling that you've lost in the woods.

A lovely bench in one of the furthest points of the grounds

The same pond on the other side (I think...)

There were a couple of lovely bridges across the ponds

The most known building of the gardens probably.

Flower beds and Palm trees :)

Ttyl ;)

Jazzz...

Playlist

Why is it that there's loads of songs in my head until I need to make that post and then it's...all gone? Although, this time there are new songs that I keep hearing from the radio but I just don't know who sings them or the titles -.-

Discovered this one when watching Home and Away, his "Surrender" is also good.

This is my "must listen" song of every evening as it's just so dancey and put me in a good mood.

Last 2 are difficult ones, but picked these and left out Rita Ora "Body On Me" as the addiction for that song has passed.

Since I haven't heard any good new songs released is Estonian I posted this one by Estonians.

Ems xx

Verona and Cinque terre

Forget Bardolino and Milan, why didn't we spend more time in Verona????? :S

So this post was meant to be the last in Italy series and all about Verona, until I started adding photos and realised we went to one of the towns of Cinque Terre too! :D

A day trip from milan to Cinque Terre takes about 4 hours on train (I think there are some faster and some slower trains - like 6 hours long... planning planning planning) and costs about 40 euros... (I might totally be making this up though as I can't remember anything - I swear I wasn't drunk out of my mind :D ). At first we had booked a viator.com tour that would include more towns and a boat trip and all the shebang but last minute for some reason the website cancelled because they had had no contact with the tour company :( Coming back we did see a tour group entering a train for a few stops (just like our promised tour would've!!!). So we were left to our own initiative and devices.

View straight after stepping out of the train in Manarola

The town or village is just around that rock.

The main street

This could've been me vol 2 :( I think I might've cried seeing these people

The walkway where everyone takes THE photo of Manarola and possibly even Cinque Terre

Guess where this trail ends up? Another freaking swimming spot!!!!!

THIS photo :) 

yeah yeah if I photoshopped it or blah blah blah it'd look more impressive but hey I'm just a simple girl with no photoshop skill or interest tbh...

Ballin' at the sight of the water :'(

This is on top the rock with the walkway :)

The other side of town

The extremely hot day and climbing the endless heights (2 different height walkways on the mountain semi-circling the town between vineyards like you can see behind the town) and not wanting to take the 6 hour train back meant that we didn't have time for other towns this time.

And now our last (half)day in Italy was spent in Verona and having seen it 5 minutes I regretted not planning even more time there!! See I appreciate small towns (like Verona, Manarola, Bardolino) more than big cities (Milan). I just think smaller places have more character and this trip proved it :) We happened to be in Verona when Carmen the musical was on and around 8 or 9 saw people in fancy dress queueing up to the old arena to go and see it :)

Our hotel was right next to the arena and 5-10 minutes from the Juliette balcony. The arena is impressive from the outside but I think a bit too expensive to visit. Although I'm glad we did. Then somehow we managed to take the longest route to find the balcony: I'm talking like 40 minutes or so. Please don't ask me how...

"How do we know which one is THE balcony???"

Oh... the hundred people shoved in one little courtyard must mean something...

Haha I didn't even think the photo of THE balcony was worthy enough to add (I put photos here like a month before writing this all up), probably because there was always some random person on it. Find another blog for your 15 minutes of fame thank you very much! You can actually visit the house and the balcony obvs. but be warned of the masses. We decided against it: Shoving ourselves into the courtyard and then back out was experience enough :D

Anyway the wall full of love letters before THE balcony

The arena I was talking about earlier

Something has gone wrong in ordering the photos from now on... but we'll go with that since it's funnier and if I put them in the correct order I will have to delete one part of the text. Can you guess which one?

Anyway these are huge props next to the arena probably used for the performances 

Oh look this is THE balcony without anyone in it :)

The inside view of the arena. The higher you got the hotter it got.

In the evening there were little stalls here selling seat cushion etc for the performance

This is a very important photo obviously. I assume on the left that's me and on the right is Mr. Special taking the photo of the ground. The finger is also his :D 

I have no idea why this is here. Honest :D

Back to Manarola and the vineyard. The walkways are somewhere there on the lines you can see.

Like this :)

I want to go back now :D

Ttyl ;)

Jazzz...

Milan and the Expo

The reason we chose Milan for our holiday destination is the Expo to be honest. There was such commotion around it and being so close to us (Shanghai last time and Dubai the next) I was just hell yeah lets go. Especially as I liked the ITB so much and thought it'd be something like that but on a much bigger scale.

Ps as you might've noticed I am wayyy behind on my posts (this trip took place in July).

Milan itself is a typical big city and partly due to the excruciating hot weather we didn't quite get to see everything or as much as we would've liked to BUT in saying that I don't really feel like we missed anything as such... So if you're planning to visit Milan a couple of days should be enough.

The high street just before reaching Duomo. Lots of "friendly" scammers there to give you bracelets :) Hello Hello Shakira Shakira

Tadaaah! The Duomo.

It is impressive. And later on in the day the square is not filled with that many people anymore.

The Expo is a huge thing in Milan. Signs like these are everywhere in town and on trains (official transportation)

A castle just a quick ten minute walk from Duomo

Through the castle and an enormous park you get to the Brandenburg gates apparently :D

Expo grounds from afar :)

Proper airport security gauntlet before being allowed to enter

Trying desserts in a Korean restaurant. They were delish

And that was about it of the Expo. It was like a huge museum site and I must say I was a little disappointed: standing in long queues to get in the houses to see pictures and video demonstrations about their traditions etc. I don't know I was hoping for something more interactive, something more like the ITB where they put on dancing shows and wine tastings. Instead there were photos with information and expensive restaurants for meals. I would've been perfectly happy paying a little bit to get to taste samples of the local cuisine... OOOOOh Russia had a mad lab style local drink tasting.

Now back to the Duomo :D we decided to visit early early after it'd just opened and it was a great decision - hardly any people were there :) You can go to the roof as well as inside + under the cathedral as well. Keep in mind the dress code though: shoulders and knees covered and they're really strict about it.

Only one more post to go about the Italy trip in JULY :D

Ttyl ;)

Jazzz...

You serious?

When in the UK you can't get Internet quick enough, but after you end your contract they won't leave you alone. I ended my contract more than a year ago and had such hassle with it, but imagine my surprise when I received an email like a week ago asking my opinion...about the recent engineer's visit. Are you serious? -.-

Ems

Buying a dress

I was sent a local designer webpage and as I really liked some dresses and they were on sale I decided to go and have a look. Owing a nice dress can't harm anyone, right? So there I was stepping into the studio and was straight away greeted by a lovely lady, who was very friendly. Then found myself saying yes to trying couple of dresses on...but wait a minute, the curtains of the changing cabin were see through, hell no, I did not prepare for this. In any way!!! There should have been a sign on the front door warning me of this!!! Was rather awkward changing with the staff helping and seeing everything. Now I know the meaning of the advice always looking your best, you never know where you have to take your clothes off :D Obviously I ended up buying the dress that was not on sale, oh well, would have bought all the dresses to be fair, if only there was a money tree in my back garden...

Ems