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Edinburgh

Best Edinburgh Viewpoints and (Instagram) Photo Spots

May 18, 2024
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Edinburgh, Scotland

Edinburgh has a special charm that makes it one of our favorite European cities to visit. There’s so much history and beautiful architecture around every corner. As you can imagine this fascinating city is very photogenic and has boatloads of fantastic and Instagrammable photo spots. From Old Town classics like Victoria Street, Edinburgh Castle, and Greyfriars Kirkyard, to cute neighbourhoods like Dean Village and Stockbridge (Circus Lane), there’s definitely something for everyone. To help you get a quick idea of...

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By R & S

How to Spend a Day in Edinburgh (1-day itinerary)

May 1, 2024
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Edinburgh, Scotland

Edinburgh is a lovely city and one of our favorites to visit in Europe. With so much to see and do, it can be difficult to prioritize certain attractions and activities, especially if you don’t have much time to explore this fascinating city. For those who can only spend a day, fortunately, the historic part of the city is very compact, meaning that you can easily pack a lot of sightseeing into a day if you want to. To help...

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By R & S

Best Things to See and Do in Edinburgh

April 20, 2024
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Edinburgh, Scotland

Without a doubt, Edinburgh is one of our favorite cities to visit in Europe. Here you will find an eclectic mix of architecture, winding cobbled streets, atmospheric alleyways and, of course, its iconic hilltop castle. It’s also a very vibrant city, with lots of green spaces and enchanting neighbourhoods. It’s full of myths, legends, and steeped in a rich and diverse history., and quite frankly a truly enchanting city to discover. It’s not surprising that JK Rowling was deeply inspired...

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By R & S

Best Day Trips from Edinburgh

April 10, 2024
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Edinburgh, Scotland

If you are spending a few days in Edinburgh, you might want to use one (or several) of them to visit some nearby towns and attractions. You definitely won’t lack options, as there are several cute towns, castles, unique locations and, if you are willing to drive a bit further, some beautiful lochs and great hiking options. Below we present our Best Day Trips from Edinburgh Guide to help you get the most out of your time when visiting this...

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By R & S

Stirling Castle Visiting Guide (Scotland)

April 6, 2024
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Edinburgh, Scotland

The large and imposing Stirling Castle is one of the most historically and architecturally important castles in Scotland. Located in the town of Stirling, the castle was our favorite Castle to visit in Scotland. The architecture is stunning, the history fascinating, the surrounding scenery enchanting, the guided tour captivating, and the castle receives nowhere near the crowds seen at Edinburgh Castle. Before the union with England, Stirling Castle was also one of the most used of the many Scottish royal residences, very much...

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By R & S

The Kelpies Visiting Guide (Falkirk, Scotland)

April 3, 2024
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Edinburgh, Scotland

The Kelpies make for a great roadside pitstop when heading to (or from) the Scottish Highlands or as part of a day trip from Edinburgh or Glasgow. Unveiled in 2014, standing just under 100 feet tall and located within a community park known as The Helix, these giant horse sculptures quickly became a symbol of the town of Falkirk and the surrounding region. You can easily turn a quick pitstop into a longer adventure with a guided visit of the...

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By R & S

Best Things to See and Do in St Andrews (Scotland)

April 3, 2024
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Edinburgh, Scotland

Though for many St Andrews is synonymous with golf, the charming seaside town ofSt Andrews, northeast of Edinburgh, has much more to offer visitors, including a rich and diverse history, an enchanting historic center with impressive architecture and an idyllic coastline with beautiful sandy beaches. The cathedral and castle ruins are fascinating to visit, both because of the actual sites themselves and also because of their stunning locations along the coastline. The University of St Andrews University is the third...

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By R & S

Blackness Castle Visiting Guide (Scotland)

March 30, 2024
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Edinburgh, Scotland

Blackness Castle is an impressive 15th-century castle beautifully positioned along the shores of the Firth of Forth, in Scotland. Often referred to as ‘the ship that never sailed’ due to its great stone ship appearance, these days the castle is known by many for its use as the setting for Fort William in the TV series Outlander. Although originally intended as a royal fortress, the castle spent most of its existence as a state prison and later became a munitions...

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By R & S

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‘Tis the Season - part deux
★彡𝗪𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗪𝗼𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗦𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀彡★ 📍Québec City, Québec (pics 1-5)
📍Montréal, Québec (6-9) The Story of December 25th *******************
❓Do you why Is Christmas is celebrated on December 25? Although Christmas was originally intended to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, the actual date of that big event is lost to history. In fact, for the first three centuries of Christianity’s existence, Jesus Christ’s birth wasn’t celebrated at all. The first official mention of December 25 as a holiday honouring Jesus’ birthday appears in an early Roman calendar from AD 336. But was Jesus born on December 25 in the first place? Probably not. The Bible doesn’t mention his exact birthday, nor the time of year for that matter, and the Nativity store contains conflicting clues with a December birth. For instance, the presence of shepherds and their sheep suggests a spring birth. One theory is that when church officials settled on December 25 at the end of the third century, they likely wanted the date to coincide with existing pagan festivals honouring Saturn (the Roman god of agriculture) and Mithra (the Persian god of light). That way, it became easier to convince Rome’s pagan subjects to accept Christianity as the empire’s official religion. Despite its popularity today, this theory of Christmas’s origins has its problems. It is not found in any ancient Christian writings, for one thing. It’s not until the 12th century that we find the first suggestion that Jesus’ birth celebration was deliberately set at the time of pagan feasts. We might never know with any certainty why December 25th was chosen for Christmas. *******************
#christmas #december #holidayspirit #wintermagic #montreal #mtl #holidaydecorations #traveldestinations #christmastime #xmas #holidayseason #explorequebec #BonjourQuebec #xmasdecorations #xmasiscoming #quebeccity #quebec

‘Tis the Season
★彡𝗪𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗪𝗼𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗦𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀彡★ 📍Québec City, Québec The Story of Christmas Trees (and Charlie Brown) *******************
❓Did you know that the first artificial Christmas trees were made with Goose feathers? These trees were then later refined by a company specializing in …. toilet brushes!!! Artificial trees came about during the 1880s in Germany, after Christmas trees became so popular that Germany’s number of trees noticeably declined. Deforestation became a real problem so to combat this, the Goose Feather artificial tree was created. Goose Feather trees were created using actual goose feathers, which were dyed green and and split, secured by wire to form branches. Those wires were attached to dowels which made up the roots. These became quite popular in Germany and soon spread throughout Europe, and even to North America. However, contrary to real trees, these versions couldn’t hold many ornaments because they weren’t particularly sturdy. In the early 1930s, the Addis Brush Company in Britain realized that there must be a better way to build an Artificial Christmas Tree. The brush company was best known for making the first toilet brush and used those same bristles (dyed green) to create leaves on artificial trees. These could hold significantly more weight than goose feather trees. In the late 1950s and early 1960s silver aluminum pine trees were in vogue, most of which included a color wheel, a rotating plastic disc that projected colored lights onto the tree’s reflective surface. **
Then Charlie Brown arrived and killed the aluminum tree. That’s right, in 1965, “A Charlie Brown Christmas” aired for the first time, and its negative portrayal of aluminum Christmas trees is credited for the aluminum tree market collapse. Most aluminum tree production companies ceased production by 1970. ******************* #holidayspirit #wintermagic #montreal #mtl #holidaydecorations #traveldestinations #christmastime #xmasvibes #xmas #xmas2023 #holidayseason #explorequebec #BonjourQuebec #xmasdecorations #xmasiscoming #winter #winterwonderland

First Snow ★彡𝗪𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗪𝗼

Cloudy Peaks 𝑴𝒐𝒐𝒅𝒚 𝑵𝒐𝒗𝒆

Into the Badlands
𝑴𝒐𝒐𝒅𝒚 𝑵𝒐𝒗𝒆𝒎𝒃𝒆𝒓 𝑺𝒆𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒔 📍Canadian Badlands, Alberta Though the name may seem self-explanatory, early French explorers actually gave the Canadian Badlands region its current name, referring to them as “bad lands to cross” due to this region’s steep-sloped, flat-top mountains and deep, winding gullies. The Canadian Badlands were formed more than 13,000 years ago as a result of glacial meltwater from the Laurentide ice sheet. *******************
❓Did you know that the Canadian Badlands are home to the largest deposits of dinosaur bones in the world? Within the badland region, you will find both Dinosaur Provincial Park and The Royal Tyrrell Museum, just west of Drumheller, a town often referred to as the “Dinosaur Capital of the World” and is also where you’ll find the world’s tallest dinosaur statue, standing at roughly 4.5 times the height of an actual T-rex. The Royal Tyrrell Museum houses one of the best fossil collections in the world (pics 9-10), including five specimens that are Guinness World Record holders. You can see three of them on display at the museum year-round, including the largest marine reptile, the most complete tyrannosaurid skeleton and the best-preserved armoured dinosaur in the world. *******************
#Drumheller #badlands #intothebadlands #canadianbadlands #landscapelovers #landscapephotos #moodyscenes #moodynature #moodyedits #landscapephotograpy #landscape_photography #landscapelovers #moody #naturescenes #moodylandscapes

Dramatic Lakes
𝑴𝒐𝒐𝒅𝒚 𝑵𝒐𝒗𝒆𝒎𝒃𝒆𝒓 𝑺𝒆𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒔 📍Gosau Lakes & Gosau Valley, Austria *******************
❓Did you know that, although we are nearly a month away from the shortest day of the year (in the northern hemisphere), several towns and inhabited settlements in the northern hemisphere have already said goodbye to the sun for 2024? Such places experience what is known as a polar night, when the sun is at least six degrees below the horizon for several weeks at a time. Utqiaġvik (Alaska) is home to around 4,500 people, and they haven’t seen the sun since November 18th, and won’t see it again until January 23rd. Longyearbyen, the world's northernmost settlement with a population greater than 1,000 and the largest inhabited area of Svalbard, Norway, hasn’t seen the sun since November 11th, and won’t see it again until January 30th. Though the polar night isn’t as long in Murmansk, Russia, lasting from December 1st to January 10th, the town has a large population of nearly 300,000 people (the largest city in the world that is north of the Arctic Circle). That’s a lot of folks that soon won’t see the sun for a while. *******************
#alpinelakes #austria #gosaulakes #traveltheworld #landscapelovers #landscapephotos #mountainscenery #mountainscape #moodyscenes #moodynature #moodyedits #landscapephotograpy #landscape_photography #landscapelovers #moody

Medieval Castles 𝑴𝒐𝒐𝒅𝒚 𝑵𝒐𝒗

Jagged Peaks 𝑴𝒐𝒐𝒅𝒚 𝑵𝒐𝒗𝒆

Where Grey Skies Meet Blue Waters 𝑴𝒐𝒐𝒅

$Where Grey Skies Meet Blue Waters 𝑴𝒐𝒐𝒅𝒚 𝑵𝒐𝒗𝒆𝒎𝒃𝒆𝒓 𝑺𝒆𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒔 📍Yoho National Park Yoho is one of my favourite National Parks in the Canadian Rockies. Banff and Jasper get most of the spotlight, but Yoho is no less beautiful with its stunning Emerald Lake - with a fraction of the crowds. ******************* ❓Did you know that the first non-indigenous person to set sight on Emerald Lake didn’t do so until 1882? Canadian guide Tom Wilson stumbled upon it by accident when a string of his horses had gotten away, and it was while tracking them that he found himself in the valley leading to the lake. What a beautiful surprise! ******************* . . . . . #emeraldlake #yoho #yohonationalpark #canadianrockies #landscapelovers #landscapephotos #hiking #hikingshots #mountainscenery #mountainscape #mountainphotography #turquoiselakes #moodyscenes #moodynature #moodyedits$

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