Back in March, Scott and I took at long weekend to Malta (I was between jobs at BP and Capgemini). We flew out on easyjet, not that pleasant, to Malta which is just off Italy in the med. We got some good weather for our 4 night stay in St Julian, a few bays around from the walled capital of Valletta. One of the days we did a hop-on-hop-off bus around the south eastern parts of the island of Malta. Valletta was really pretty especially the three cities across from the bay; beautiful old house and super yachts. After that we [View Full Entry]

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Scott and I headed out of London after a busy 2008. We were heading for Jordan on an 8 day whirl-wind tour; a few days of culture, a few hiking, a few by the sea and of course a visit to Petra. We arrived late Christmas Eve into Amman, we were lucky enough to finish the bottle of red wine on the plane, not sure anyone else was really drinking! Our ‘hotel’ was in down town Amman, right in the thick of things. We awoke to a raining grey Christmas Eve and set off on a walking tour around the city. [View Full Entry]

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Barcelona has always been one of my favourite cities, and I never felt like I spent enough time there back in 2005 site seeing solo. So Scott and I went to spend a weekend in the city and suck up the atmosphere (i.e. food and a wine). On the Saturday we did the Fat Tire Bike tour which was good fun cruising around the city taking in the main sites including, city park, Barri Gotic, cathedral and the wonderful Sagrada Familia. We ended up down on the beach drinking sangria and wobbling back to base. That afternoon we took a stroll [View Full Entry]

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For Scott’s birthday I took him away for the weekend to a lovely B&B on the boarder of Devon and Somerset - Hagley Bridge Farm. The purpose was the learn how to make cheese! It was lovely to wake up to the noise of cows mooing in the paddock. Scott had a full English breakfast; meat galore. Then we had to don white coats and our newly bought gumboots. We then learnt how to make cheese; gouda, halloumi, soft cheese and a cream fresh type thing. We stirred, shook, poured, pattered and the cheese and made stacks of it. At lunch [View Full Entry]

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Scott and I attended Paige and Victor’s (Scott’s friends from NYC) wedding in Tuscany, and decided to spend a few days looking around Florence before arriving at the venue. We arrived tired and weary into Pisa to find the next bus to Florence was in 90mins time, i.e. midnight! So we reached into our pockets and forked out 150euro for a taxi to Florence, ouch. Our hotel was lovely, high ceilings and frescos on the walls. We spend the first day wandering around the city, it is beautiful; the Duomo, cobbled streets, bustling markets, fashion shops, Ponte Vecchio and of course [View Full Entry]

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Scott and I head to Turkey for 2 weeks in the heat of summer. The first week we spent way out east, the second week was western Turkey; both areas had a very distinct feel. Be warned … this blog is rather long, eastern Turkey was just so interesting I have gone into a little bit of detail. After a very pleasant experience flying out of T5, we started with a hiss and roar in Istanbul; heading straight for the Grand Bazaar and Spice Market. There was a lot to buy; gold, pumas, lamps, books, pants, Turkish delight (which Scott managed [View Full Entry]

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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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