FLYING THE NEST: MONTH 9
Hello month 9, you were a crazy one! Visiting 6 countries in one month has been an absolute whirlwind - bringing our total countries visited to 27!
So where did we go, what did we do, who did we visit? All will be answered during this month's Monthly Roundup...
Where We Went
1 day in Glasgow / Scotland
2 days in Edinburgh / Scotland
10 days in Birmingham / England
1 day in London / England
8 days in Paris / France
4 days in Prague / Czech Republic
2 days in Berlin / Germany
2 days in Amsterdam / Netherlands
1 day in Brussels / Belgium
Highlights
The best view in Edinburgh. Checking into the Balmoral in Edinburgh was an absolute treat. Seeing the room JK Rowling finished the Harry Potter series & watching the sunset from the hotel's roof top made our stay all that more memorable.
Exploring the Scottish Highlands. If you ever find yourself in Scotland you NEED to visit the Scottish Highlands! We spent a day driving through the most mountainous, least inhabited, and most scenic part of Scotland.
Testing out the drone. Over the month we tested out the drone in a few locations. We have noticed that a lot of major cities are no fly zones, meaning we can not fly the drone anywhere in the city. But during our time in Prague, England and Amsterdam we found areas where could test this bad boy out. The drone is adding such a unique perspective to the vlogs, we are loving it (thanks again Chleo, Mum, Dad & Tim).
Seeing more family. After months of only seeing family members via Skype it was lovely to visit Stephens auntie, uncle and cousin in Birmingham. They were nice enough to put us up for 10 days and we spent our time together going on day trips around England, celebrating Guy Fawkes and having family dinners (something we haven't had in a long time!).
One day in London. After having accommodation mishaps we only had 1 day to experience London. It is an incredible city and we NEED to go back for a longer period of time! During our day we of course had to see Big Ben, The London Eye, Trafalgar Square, and go on a cheeky Muggle Tour.
Hello Paris! Being at the top of our bucket list for as long as we can remember, finally stepping foot in to Paris was a dream come true. We climbed the Notre Dame, visited the Palace of Versailles and marvelled at the views from the top of the Eiffel Tower - it was even better than what we had imagined.
Our first night train experience. During our time here in Europe, you may have seen on the vlogs that we are doing most of our travel via train with Eurail. While in Paris we found out our next stop was going to be Prague, which is a 10 hour train ride away. As it was such a long journey we decided to try out a night train, as we wouldn't need to find accommodation for the night. The experience was unreal, we slept for 9 of the 10 hours - falling asleep in Paris and waking up in Prague, so cool!!
The fairytale city of Prague. Arriving in Prague was just like stepping into a fairy tale. With terracotta roof tops, colourful buildings, and rich in history - Prague has become one of our new favourite cities - we plead everyone to add Prague to their bucket list now!
9 day road trip with Bus2Alps! This month we teamed up with Bus2Alps for a 9 day trip around Northern Europe. We started in Prague and made our way through Berlin, Amsterdam, Brussels and ended back in Paris. Blog posts will be coming out very soon about our adventures through these Northern countries.
8 year anniversary! On the 1st of November it was out 8 year anniversary. We never thought we would be celebrating it on Halloween in Paris Disneyland!! It was a magical day and we of course vlogged our day to share with you all.
WE GOT ALL OUR FOOTAGE & PHOTOS BACK!!! We have saved the best highlight for last. A few months ago you may have seen that our hard drive with a years worth of photos and footage from our time abroad broke! We thought we had lost everything, and were devastated. The amazing people at Secure Data were kind enough to look at the hard drive for us to see what they could do. A few months later here we are with all our photos and footage back! We can not believe it and SO excited to share with you footage from Alaska that we thought we had lost forever!
Lowlights
Missing out on London. We had a mishap with our accommodation in London the day we were meant to arrive. Luckily Stephens family members only live a few hours out of London and offered us a few nights to stay with them until we sorted things out. We found a place to stay, but ended up only having 1 night in London instead of 3. We know this is a petty lowlight, however London has been on our bucket list for so long and it is an extremely expensive city to visit - a place you do not want to have a hotel issue in.
Pickpockets in Paris. We were aware when coming to Europe that pick pocketing was a big issue, and therefore we have been very aware when travelling with things in our pockets! During our time in Paris we were visiting Sacre Coeur in Paris and Stephen almost got pick pocketed! Luckily, as so many of you warned us about this issue, we noticed it straight away and scared him off before he took anything!
The Funds
Like last month, we are using our travel voucher we won from the travel video competition to pay for most of our Eurotrip. As the months go on we are also starting to team up with more companies, helping us share with you all amazing things to see in do around the world while also helping us stay on the road.For our first month here in Europe we spent $1286, one of our best months to date.
On food and public transport we spent $10 in Glasgow, $250 in Birmingham, $40 in London, $240 in Paris, $60 in Prague, $40 in Berlin & $6 for waffles in Brussels. On entertainment/tours we spent $10 to go up the lookout tower in Prague, $30 to visit the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam & $200 for a day at Paris Disneyland. Our Megabus to Paris & back cost us $200 and to book our over night train from Paris to Germany was $200.
This was our first month not paying for any accommodation, as we were generously hosted by family and had a few nights stay on work assignments.
Quick Numbers So Far…
Flights taken: 23
Kilometres travelled: 68,459
Photographs taken: 18,809 (yay for getting our hard drive fixed!)
Days uploaded to YouTube: 271
Coffee’s Had: 216
Where To Next:
We will be spending the rest of November in Europe! We have plans to head back into Germany and then slowly make our way down south to find some (hopefully) warmer weather. Then in December we are flying off to a new continent - have a guess in the comment section below where you think Flying The Nest is heading to next.
Thank you so much for coming along on our journey of leaving home and travelling the world!
