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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Well … my 9 months of travelling came to an end 4 weeks ago. I spent a lovely 5 days in NYC, kicking back, visiting a few restaurants and bars, plus preparing to rejoin the work force. Scott took me out for a fabulous night on the town for another, and not final, 30th celebration; a few cocktails at the Flatiron Lounge and then The Public for dinner. My return to London and work got slightly delayed due to a huge storm that rolled in across the East Coast of the US; all flights out of New York were cancelled, crazy [View Full Entry]

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No rest for the wicked, I arrived in to San Jose around 7.30am and by 10.30am I was on my way to the pick up point for the Café Britt Coffee Tour. An all dancing, theatrical performance, American styles, seriously they did a little dress up skit at the end of the tour, they knew there key audience. That aside it was very interesting to learn about types of coffee, how they extract the coffee bean from the fruit, roast it, etc. We got to taste lots of coffee and sample the chocolate covered coffee beans and other tasty treats; I [View Full Entry]

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Blooming heck … what a fantastic, crazy, happy, wonderful time I had on this woorlwind trip back to New Zealand, it was 12 full on days. And as the lady at customs said as I was leaving, ´what a short stay´, little did she know how much I jammed in. The trip back from Costa Rica took a turn for the best when I discovered I had one free entry into the Air NZ lounge in LAX, thank goodness because that airport is the worst and I had a sweet 8hrs to kill. Arriving into Auckland Thursday morning I headed straight [View Full Entry]

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This has been an interesting leg of my travels through a couple of the poorest countries in Central America. The journey started very chaotically, and has kind of continued that way … the nature of the countries I traveled through I suppose. A van showed up at 5am to make our way to Honduras however it was a 14 seater and we were a group of 16. Thus we kicked off at 6am once the an extra van arrived and hit the Guatemala City traffic; it took around 2hr to navigate through this craziness. After a relatively easy boarder crossing and [View Full Entry]

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