First Half of Aberdeen: The Grey City

Welcome to Aberdeen – the famous ‘Granite City’ or the so-called ‘Grey City’! After some delay in our bus from Aviemore (about 15 minutes then we were further delayed by like half an hour in the second bus when it stopped in Dundee 🚌 🚌 ), we finally began our 4-night stay in the city!

On our first night, we settled for a rather relaxed evening with a steak dinner in The Brig O’Don. The restaurant was bit away from our hotel and we were already late for our booking due to the delayed bus (though the restaurant was very kind in keeping our seats for us.) We decided to walk over as the weather was actually quite nice at first, but it started to rain heavily as we were about 10 minutes away from it! ☔️☔️ (Classic turbulent Scottish weather urgh 😓) And just as typical as it could get, that was the only time we left our umbrellas in the hotel, so we arrived at the place all drenched and soaked! 😂 💦 💦

The prices were fairly cheap and the food were of good to decent qualities. I really liked the sweet potato fries and the breaded mushrooms, and the seasonings were on point overall – just a bit of a shame that my steak was over cooked (I asked for medium-rare but I think I got medium-well 😅) and the fried squids were a bit soft.

After a night’s rest, we started to explore the city the next day. Looking at all marvellous architecture, it is very apparent how Aberdeen got its nickname of the ‘Grey City’! 😂

We then paid a visit to the Aberdeen Art Gallery. Not going to lie I was not a huge fan of a lot of the arts in the gallery. 😅 Whilst there are some good art pieces I think a lot of the stuff on display are rather too ‘out there’ for me… 😓 (There was a room showing a video showing a pool of eels which was quite gross… 🤢🤢)

After our visit to the gallery, we wandered down the busy Union Street in the Aberdeen city centre looking for a place for lunch. We stumbled upon a rather grand-looking Thai restaurant called Chaophraya, which was doing a rather sweet deal of a 3-course lunch menu costing £16 (or 2-course for £13.) And I am so glad we found this place! 😋👍

Both of the desserts were absolutely amazing (especially that tangy clementine tart! 🤤🤤) I was also very impressed by the green papaya salad with the dried shrimps and the spicy sauce. (Actually tasted perfect when eaten with my mum’s Pad Thai haha! Yeah we like mixing things together… 😂) Loved the Tamarind pork skewers, but was also pleasantly surprised by the red curry chicken tacos. The taco resembled more to a very soft pancake, and worked perfectly with the toppings! ❤️

We then retreated back to the hotel after exploring the city centre a bit more and ordered an Indian takeaway to enjoy in the room to wrap up the day. 😌