Reykjavik was the base for our 3 day trip to Iceland over the last bank holiday in May. We arrived in late, but of course it was still very light; we only had 4hrs of darkness, very strange experience. On our first day we got up early and headed to the modern huge concert church, but unfortunately it was covered with scaffolding. I suppose like most churches in capital cities all round Europe. We did manage to get up the top of the sprier and get a great view across the city. Interestingly there are only 300,000 people in Iceland, so [View Full Entry]

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Scott and I spent a lovely spring Bank Holiday weekend in Berlin; it was my second visit to this vibrant city. We had an early morning start from T5 which is a fantastic airport, mind you we didn’t check in any luggage. On arrival our first stop was the Pergamonmuseum, there were queues down to the river so we flagged that idea and headed to a river side café for a long lunch. It was a themed place based on the East German stop/go light men, they are rather famous as they are fun little cubby characters that the pubic demanded [View Full Entry]

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I recently took 2 trips back to New Zealand for Ida & Mark’s, Robyn & Greg’s and Nicky & Quentin’s weddings. The first trip was to attend Ida & Mark’s wedding in February, I arrived on Dad’s birthday so we went out for a lovely lunch in the sunshine at Auckland’s viaduct. Little did I know I would be back there later that evening. The girls had done a fantastic job decorating Ida and Mark’s place for her Hen do; the theme was ‘my first ball’. Everyone looked fabulously glam in their old ball gowns. There was a topless waiter to [View Full Entry]

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This Easter Jane, Adam, Myles and I headed to Austria for some snow action. And the snow did not let us down, I have never seen so much snow fall the Austrian country side was covered like icing on a wedding cake. Our first stop was Innsbruck, however we didn’t have much time there due to a small timing calculation that I managed to get wrong (however, I am still blaming the website!). We left our bags at the train station and at a brisk pace headed towards the old town. We were walking at a brisk pace due to the [View Full Entry]

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Cuba is one of the most interesting countries I have been to from a social and political perspective, and what really makes it is its people and beautiful landscape. The trip didn’t get off to a cracking start, I arrived in New York a little worse for wear having picked up some food poisoning at the team Christmas lunch pre departure. So it was a quiet Thurs/Fri evening in NYC. We kicked off at 4am to get out to JFK, the most frightening part of the journey to Habana was the Cuabana Air flight on the YAK-42. On take off and [View Full Entry]

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Nat had come out to Europe for 4 weeks of tripping around and after 5 days in London, we both headed out on Paris on the eve of the rugby world cup kick-off, not that we realised until we heard it on the news at the airport. This does explain why we found it hard to book accommodation for our 2 nights in Paris. The flight was quick, zip, up and down. What a fast 2 days in Paris. On Friday we burned around catching all the major sites … Montmartre, Sacre Coeur, Louvre, then walked along the Jardin de Tuileries, [View Full Entry]

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Kara took me on a fabulous weekend away for my 30th birthday to Budapest, flying BA from Heathrow, which was a delight after my recent Ryan Air experience. We arrived in to our hotel which was on the river Danube and had a lovely outlook of the Buda Castle. We made the climb to the top, it gave a lovely panoramic view of the city. As luck would have it there was a modernised Opera performance; the setting was lovely surround by ruins (and actually the Hilton, which must have been a hotel, built in the communist area). We started our [View Full Entry]

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Kara took me on a fabulous weekend away for my 30th birthday to Budapest, flying BA from Heathrow, which was a delight after my recent Ryan Air experience. We arrived in to our hotel which was on the river Danube and had a lovely outlook of the Buda Castle. We made the climb to the top, it gave a lovely panoramic view of the city. As luck would have it there was a modernised Opera performance; the setting was lovely surround by ruins (and actually the Hilton, which must have been a hotel, built in the communist area). We started our [View Full Entry]

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I spend a lovely 5 days on the Aeolian Islands, just of the northern cost of Sicily. It was a very early start to get there 3.30am pick up from Balham; I travelled with my friend Jane, her sis and her sis’s friend Jane. After landing in Palermo we caught a 5hr ferry to Lipari our base for the holiday, passing some of the outer islands on the way through. We arrived a little jaded - to say the least. But the sight of our hotel perked us all up - stunning pool with views down onto the old town, including [View Full Entry]

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An excited school child - that is how I left travelling through Switzerland the past 4 days. Every turn you took you saw a breathtaking mountain, village, waterfall or lake. Switzerland is one beautiful country, not sure what is was really expecting, but it beat my expectations because I was ‘wowed’. My short trip to Switzerland and it can be short yet encompass so much, since Switzerland is such a tiny country, started out in Zurich. Elke and I arrived in rather late and encountered a ‘slow’ person who took a fancy to Elke and her skirt, very random and a [View Full Entry]

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