Kelly with the itchy feet

2018 has been my best travel year to date. 9 trips around 13 countries, most of them I haven't gotten round to sharing here, so I'll do a round up now. January brought my first trip to the Caribbean, with a week-long cruise round the Eastern Caribbean. It started and ended in the Dominican Republic, visiting the British Virgin Islands, St Kitts, Martinique, Barbados, and St Vincent and the Grenadines. I've already written a lot about this trip in previous posts, but some highlights for me were definitely exploring the amazing caves and beaches at The Baths at Virgin Gorda, the British Virgin Islands, Fort de France in Martinique, and the island of Bequia in the Grenadines, where I visited a turtle sanctuary and found paradise. En route home, I popped into London to see Aladdin, ... read more

It was on a Sunday that our cruise ship chose to visit Barbados, along with 4 larger cruise liners. I have no idea why they brought so many passengers into Bridgetown on a Sunday, when everything was closed and the place was dead. I also wasn't prepared for just how poor the island's infrastructure was, I really expected more from such a major tourist destination. It soon became clear that our plans to bus it around the island weren't going to happen, the driver who picked us up showed us the empty bus station to prove it. I negotiated a price to be taken to the St Joseph's Flower Forest, Barbados Wildlife Reserve, then back to the port, which took about 4.5 hours all in. I really enjoyed the drive around the island, seeing lots of ... read more

First thing in the morning we were picked up at the port of Basseterre and taken to our booked excursion on the St Kitts Scenic Railway. It is touristy and expensive to do, but I thought it was a worthwhile experience. It follows the old sugar train route round much of the north of the island and is the only one of its kind in the Caribbean. We travelled 18 miles at 10mph through forests and sugar plantations, over bridges and along rugged coastline. We saw many little villages and locals going about their business, nearly all of whom stopped to wave at us. Not only was the journey scenic, it was entertaining as well. The train driver Kathlydia was hilarious, she talked the whole time and I don't know how she kept her energy up. ... read more

Our first port of call on our week-long Caribbean cruise was Road Town, Tortola, the British Virgin Islands. We didn't see any of the island at all though, as our plan of action was always going to be to visit The Baths National Park on Virgin Gorda. We hoped to make our own way there via public ferry, but due to a reduced time in port we missed this and had to join the tour organised by our cruise company. **Sidenote : I need to rant about this first change to our itinerary and the reason given for it. Our time in port was changed from 12:00-18:00 to 14:00-18:00 because 'due to hurricane damage we'd been advised to only visit during daylight hours'. Funnily enough though, when I was on the sun deck at midday it ... read more

Poor Brussels. I'd never had much interest in it as a destination in its own right, just in using it to get to Bruges. But I ended up being pleasantly surprised by this city. Brussels was much bigger and more metropolitan than I had realised. Arriving at Charleroi Airport I travelled through the south of the city to get to the centre. The bus drove through many deprived areas and areas heavily influenced by immigration. The South train station was insanely huge and illogically laid out and I got hopelessly lost. It wasn't quite the shiny veneer I'd envisaged for the home of the EU, or the easy-peasy destination for my first solo trip that I'd thought it would be. Once I eventually found my hotel near Grand Place, I set out to see this most ... read more

During our recent visit to Dubrovnik we opted to take a day trip to Montenegro. I wanted to scope the country out as a potential future holiday destination, and was impressed at how much of a feel for a place we could get in a day. And my feelings towards Montenegro were - what a funny little country! For starters, there's the currency issue. When Montenegro decided they didn't want to have anything to do with the rest of Former Yugoslavia they asked Germany if they could use their Deutsch marks. Then when Germany was changing to the euro, they asked for all their marks back. According to our tour guide Elena, they had to offer everyone in Montenegro a free 10 day holiday in Germany on the condition that they brought all their marks back ... read more