726. Edinburgh in November | Arrival, Victoria Street and Harry Potter

I can finally start on my vacation posts! So in this trip we were only visiting two different cities within two weeks: Edinburgh & La Coruna. It was my first time visiting Edinburgh and third time visiting La Coruna. If Scotland is to be counted as a separate country, I've now visited my 30th! (I've been to the UK in the past but just England) I really like the style of buildings and streets in the UK. Edinburgh is similar to London is some ways but it felt a lot smaller. The weather was pretty bad the entire time we were there (lots of rain and cold), but I still enjoyed it.

We flew from Toronto to London, where we were supposed to have a 4 hour layover for our flight to Edinburgh. However that didn't go as planned. We booked with WestJet and first they delayed our flight by 2 hours. Then another hour, then another hour..it was so frustrating. In total we were delayed 4 hours I believe, which meant we would not be catching our next flight. We ended up having to book a new one to leave a few hours later. I will file a claim with WestJet and hopefully we can get some compensation.




In-flight reading. We brought 3 books on the way there and 6 on the way back lol.

Thanks to the flight delay, we arrived in the evening so we decided to just stay at our hotel as there was no point exploring the city. We stayed at The Dunstane Houses which is a very nice and intimate boutique hotel housed in a 19th century house. This was my favourite feature of our suite - the beautiful vintage bathtub!


The dining room was so relaxing and cozy.


Dinner!


The bed was so cozy I had trouble getting up the next morning.



Morning drone flight. I will do a full review of our stay there in an upcoming post!


Walking into the Old Town




The street featured in most Instagram posts of Edinburgh - the famous Victoria Street.

The author of Harry Potter, JK Rowling, is from Edinburgh and wrote the books here. So this is considered the "birthplace of Harry Potter". There are Harry Potter tours that bring you around the cafes she sat at while writing the books, lots of Harry Potter fan shops, building that inspired Hogwarts, and this cemetery - Greyfriars Kirkyard. It's a very small place and located within the city. It was where JK Rowling walked around to get inspiration for many of the names used in the stories. By coincidence I just re-read the entire series a few months ago (I saw the movie playing one day at a bar and got inspired to read the books again lol) so it was a good time to visit, while it was all still fresh in my mind.




We got a box of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans to try. I've never had them before and I was surprised/impressed at just how realistic the flavours were. The worst ones I had were earthworm and rotten egg. It was sooo bad I almost spit it out but I was forced to finish it lol. At least I didn't get the vomit flavour one which I expect would be the worst (that went to my boyfriend heheh). I kind of liked the grass one.



There is a pub on every corner at least. We decided to have a traditional pub meal that night.




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725. Last Weeks in Toronto

Hello from Spain! We are currently in La Coruna as I make this post. In fact it's already the final day of our 2-week trip. We have a flight to London in a few hours then we will stay the night there. Tomorrow we go back to Toronto.
This trip was booked kind of last minute and it wasn't really planned. We spent a few days in Edinburgh first then came to La Coruna (my boyfriend's hometown) to visit his family and some other things he had to do here.

I'm pretty behind on my blog now. I will do the vacation posts once we get back to Toronto..but at least I managed to complete the main Peru posts before we left lol.

Here are the photos from the last couple weeks in Toronto before the trip.


Reading Sapiens, which I now finished! I really enjoyed the book.


A new Akira Back restaurant called DASHA. The cocktails were really good and nicely presented. The food was also delicious and tasted really authentic. However it is pricey for what it is, since Chinese food is generally really cheap at other places. For example the "har gow"/shrimp dumplings order was $14. At dim sum restaurants they are maybe ~$5.




We went to Ripley's Aquarium for their Halloween event called Dark Waters.







When we left Toronto, this was what it looked like. Now I guess it is way colder and snowier..


It was my first time visiting the Evergreen Brick Works park and walking along the Belt Line..I really loved it!






Now I must go and finish packing..

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724. Peru Trip | Belen Market, Iquitos

Belen is considered the poorest neighbourhood in Iquitos, and perhaps all of Peru. The residents there do not have clean water, proper sanitation or electricity. A lot of the residents previously lived in the Amazon rainforests, coming to Belen/Iquitos in search of employment or formal education. Visiting these types of places are always eye-opening experiences for me (I've previously visited similar in China and Russia) and they always make me appreciate the life I have so much more.

It's difficult to explain the type of atmosphere there. It felt very raw and exotic. Exactly what you'd expect a place in the Amazon to be like.

One of the "attractions" of Iquitos is Belen Market. I put it in quotations because I don't think a lot of tourists visit it. It was one of the places I was most excited to visit in our whole trip though. During our time there we only saw one other foreign tourist. Everyone else were locals, just going about their day shopping or selling things from fruits and vegetables to household items, Amazon medicinal ingredients and live animals. They sell anything and everything there.

It was one of the places I was most excited to visit in our whole trip. During our time there we only saw one other foreign tourist though. Everyone else were locals, just going about their day shopping or selling things from fruits and vegetables to Amazon medicinal ingredients, animal parts and live animals.

We hired a guide to bring us around here since it is considered a bit dangerous in terms of theft. We were told to take off all jewellery and put away our cameras. We were only allowed to take photos using our phones in certain parts and while the guide was watching closely. If I had a choice I would have taken photos of everything..the parts I was not allowed to photograph at were the most interesting lol. ****WARNING**** There are a couple slightly graphic images in this post of a cut up turtle.

We started off briefly visiting the residential area and taking a quick boat ride down to the market.







On the boat ride, we sailed along these homes built on stilts to adapt to high and low water seasons. When it's the wet season (roughly February to July), the water levels go all the way up to the second floor of the home. At that time, the family would be living on the second level only. The residents here were doing their laundry.



This is what an entrance to the homes look like. During wet season there would be a several feet of water underneath you.


This is a barber shop


A school


A church



I could be totally remembering wrong but I think each bunch (?) bushel (?) of bananas were something like 70 cents.






Turtle eggs







I was so fascinated by everything and I wish we could have seen all parts of the market. Our guide didn't want to bring us to the darker and more sketchy areas for safety. I don't know if I would recommend a visit though because it's not a type of place everyone would enjoy seeing. I personally really enjoyed it though.

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