There’s been some gradual progressive changes on the website here over the past few months, as I’ve been trying to make the website more user friendly just for you, with easier access to:

• recipes

• blog posts on my time at raw culinary school 105 degrees (now called Matthew Kenney Academy in OKC and have just opened a new Academy in Santa Monica, LA, be still my heart!) for those of you also considering a career in the raw culinary arts,  
• as well as a section on travelling posts for those of you that are interested in that side of our lives living as Aussie expats living in the Middle East.

I’ve also been quietly working on the Parenting page where you will find from time to time, posts that are obviously more geared towards our family life for those that are interested – you can expect some more posts coming up on there, as I know people are just keen as mustard to know more about my pregnancy diet, nutriton for preparing and ideas for pre reading preparation, plus reviews, good and bad on not only food products but things that have helped us along the road as new parents.

But this post is  geared around our last vacation – you can read more about other trips in the Travel section here.

Living in Saudi Arabia as expats, does have it’s downside at times (think inconvenient prayer times multiple times throughout the day that shut down business in the middle of your grocery shop/errands, no addresses only weird directions to shops/buildings in town, having to wear an abaya when off our compound amongst other things) but there are plenty of benefits to living in this culturally enrichening place too. I’ve spoke about some of them before but not today.

Also living here enables our family to do the travel that is very important to us. Both myself and my husband, prior to meeting, chose our respective careers – he as a geophysicist, and me as a flight attendant initially, because we wanted to live in and travel the world, and this is how we hope to bring up our children too. However this is our last travel now for at least a year with baby no 2 due in a few months.

So fortunate that we are able to do this at this moment in our lives.

As some of you know, we recently returned from a last minute trip to visit relatives and show my husband my ancestoral home of Scotland. Nothing was really planned until we got there but we packed so much into the week I really wanted to share with you.

As my dad was born in Glasgow, we have plenty of extended relatives that live there that I met for the first time when I moved to Scotland in 2005, so we were lucky enough to stay with my cousins James and Kirsty and their daughter Megan.

One major highlight for us as a travelling family adjusting to travelling now with an 18 month old sidekick was staying at the Hilton Coylumbridge (Aviemore)in the Scottish Highlands, which was unlike any Hilton I had stayed in. I mean any place that advertises TODDLER MINI Breaks has my attention.

• and the city centre. 

There was so much more to do we are going back (most likely in winter) as Pat, usually a tropical weather kinda guy, would love to see if he could handle the winter there.

Who knows, Scotland has made it onto our list of possible potential places we’d like to live after we leave Saudi one day.

Food

As for my food whilst on this holiday, let’s just say that I really enjoyed myself and didn’t make too much of a deal of eating raw. If it happened it happened, and I made sure to have fresh fruit and trail mixes on me at all times not only to snack on to avoid too much processed foods, but because I am pregnant, and when a hungry mama’s got to eat, she’s got to eat. Being healthfully prepared between meals also  gave me a little more chance to enjoy my mail meals whether raw or not.

Plenty of people thought it must have been hard to be raw in Scotland, but let me tell you, the fruit and vegetable department of ASDA was a sight to behold compared to what we usually have available here in Saudi Arabia where most of our produce is imported. I mean who can go wrong with a double sized punnet of local and pesticide free blueberries/strawberries for £1.

Flights

We flew Emirates, Bahrain to Glasgow, transitting in Dubai as per usual.

Emirates have just added an extra daily flight to Glasgow and the reason we travel with them as they offer a great value frequent flyers program for us, have a larger than other airline seat pitch, are amazing with children, and if it’s not a full flight they are always kind enough to offer us a spare seat next to us, because until Manus is 2, we don’t purchase a seat for him.

 

This trip we were fortunate to be upgraded to business class, but only for the 50 minute flight from Bahrain to Dubai – wouldn’t it have been nice to have a business class flight 6 hours to Glasgow Emirates are usually great with upgrading frequent flyers when economy is overbooked.