A week relaxing in the south of france in the sun! We went to Monte Carlo for my birthday and spent the day on the beach and admiring the posh cars parked outside the casino....convertable aston marton, numerous ferarris and masseratis! [View Full Entry]

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A week staying in the pretty Les Allures just down the valley from the Meribel skiing area was just what I needed after working 6 straight 13h shifts! Food prepared by a good cook, friendly chalet owners and guests and a lovely, hot jacuzzi! Not the best of snow, but it didn't really matter, enjoyed skiing for the first time since I broke my knee in New Zealand, managed to ski over into Courcheval valley on the last day, did some nice walks, ate nice food, bought a new pair of fluffy boots and even managed not to injure ourselves! Hope [View Full Entry]

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Ok, so we haven't completely unpacked yet, and there is still furniture to put together, pictures to put on the walls and mirrors to put up! But we are settled in nicely and bracing ourselves for the cold winter. We are planning on decking over some of the garden in the spring and hopefully putting in a spa so that we can enjoy the view over the harbour in the summer. [View Full Entry]

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The smiling coast. And it was. Hot, so the tourists were smiling (well most of them!) and the locals are known for their friendlyness. A small sliver of land between north and south senegal with a river running through the middle of it, and bordered on the other side by the atlantic ocean - made a perfect destination for a week in November to escape the clutches of the winter snap that were hitting the UK. We were well looked after by Max, a guard at the hotel, who took us to see the local sights, and to the market in [View Full Entry]

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We drove to the Blue lagoon spa in the morning - its on the way out to the airport. Relaxed in the geothermal spa pools there for a while - put on the silica mud face mask that they have from the bottom of the pools - even Al put it on! Eventually had to come back to reality to get ourselves to the airport to come home! [View Full Entry]

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We headed back to Reykjavik via the geothermal area on the Reykjanes peninsular. It is one of the most volatile areas in iceland. The temperature of the water is 200 degrees at 2m below the surface. There are loads of bubbling pools and mud holes. There is also a lake in a volcanic fissure with black laval beaches surrounding it. We were supposed to be going to the Arctic in the evening - the island of Grimsey which is just to the north of Iceland is in the arctic circle. We had booked with the tour desk in the hotel in [View Full Entry]

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We started on the route back to Reykjavik, with some stops along the way for things we had missed on the way out: 1. Klauster - for the waterfall there, we hadn't gone to it on the way out as we wanted to get to the national park in time so we could do our long walk and not be ruched. 2. Vik - we walked up to the top of the mountain behind it - climbed up more steep slopes with me looking petrified (though I'm always the one who suggests we climb them in the first place, go figure!). [View Full Entry]

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Today was another amazing sight - the iceberg lagoon made by chunks of ice melting off of the Breidamerkurjokull glacier. It is called Jokulsarlon, though we went to a smaller, less tourist populated one called Breidalon first. The lagoon is famous for staring in James Bond, Die Another Day - where they bloked off the river that runs out into the sea, and froze over the lagoon. However they did lose 6 Aston Martin DB9s into the lagoon when trying to make the scenes! The lagoon itself is awesome. Loads of huge icebergs floating around, different shapes, sizes, colours. Only 10% [View Full Entry]

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Only a short drive today, which was good after a couple of fuller days. We first visited some basalt columns just off the road. The next stop was a turfed church. Iceland has quite a few turfed roofed buildings - they did it when wood supplies were low. Makes for good photos now! We then arrived into Skaftafell National Park. It houses iceland's largest icecap - Vatnajokull, which makes up 8% of iceland. There are glaciers that form off it, 2 of which come either side of one of the mountains that leads up from the camp site in the national [View Full Entry]

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We headed further along the south coast today to stay in a place called Klaustur. Along the way we stopped at a good number of sites. After driving through some little towns and a floodplain we reached Seljalandsfoss waterfall. You can walk behind it (though you get quite wet!), and there are a couple of other waterfalls if you go for a short walk along towards the campsite near it. We scrambled up a mud hill to get to see one of them (My walking boots were in storage, so I was in my trainers with Al holding my hand so [View Full Entry]

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