Jumping in Lerwick

After Spiggie Beach, we slowly got back to Lerwick, the main town of the Shetlands. We were at the Carradale Guest House by 11am. The room was just ready, so we took our keys and moved in. Simple and cosy room.

We dropped our stuff and went walking to the city center. The city center, the capital of the Shetlands, is very small; it’s basically just two parallel streets along the port. We randomly entered the “C’est la vie” café français, which was really French indeed and owned by Frenchies. We had a coffee along with a croque madame for J. and a pan con tomate for me. The croque looked very nice; mine was a bit on the salty side but good.

After that, we tried to find a place where we could have a beer and maybe read our books. We ended up at the Marlex pub, which looked good from the outside but only opened at 3pm, and it was barely 1pm. We decided to head back to the guest house for some chill time. I almost fell asleep in there, but it was nice to give my back some horizontal rest.

A bit before 4pm, we headed back to the Marlex, which ended up being a proper local dive bar—not cosy at all and not really welcoming. We drank our beer and moved on. We ended up next door at the Trench bar, which was better but still very divey, complete with the bartender lady smoking outside with friends and a very sticky floor. I didn’t really enjoy the Tennent’s beer, so for the second round I went for my first whisky. The bar lady was clueless about whiskies, and I ended up with a Laphroaig. Smokey!

J. had booked us a table at the No. 88 Kitchen and Bar restaurant. We arrived there at 7pm, and our table was not yet available (the resto was packed!). We used the additional time to walk around and found the iconic Loderrie, a small fishing boat made famous by the BBC series "Shetland" we had watched not too long before. Of course, we had to jump in front of it!

The resto was nice, they had Rioja!!