Blogs from Didsbury, Greater Manchester, England, United Kingdom, Europe

www.flanagansfoodtravel.com Busy life? - I can help save you time away and allow you to experience the best foodstuffs and food experiences the country/countries have to offer. Let me help create your bespoke food guides to accompany you on your trip. This is an authentic site dedicated to food lovers who like to travel. There is a whole world of diverse flavours and food culture to explore. Whether you are a lone traveller, travelling as a couple or with family, I will provide carefree travel with enhanced culinary experiences. Flanagan's Food Travel is designed to provide bespoke food guides guaranteed to lead you to restaurants, direct you to street food and food markets, as well as providing tips on the best choices the menus have offer. You choose your de... read more

Limbo is the word right now. I have just spent the last few hours debating whether I have everything - then I realised I can never pack for every eventuality. Although, I only have a few items and a list of places I would like to go to, I feel ready to leave (especially when I am looking out onto my miserable garden, and my neighbours washing that has been hung out for 3 days in the rain). Then I hear about a supposed heatwave next week - typical. ... read more

After visiting relatives in Bristol and Scotland for the last couple of weeks we've spent the last few days’ frantically packing up our flat. Our lives were successfully packed away into just 21 boxes! We were quite strict with ourselves regarding what we actually needed to take and what we should leave behind. It's amazing how much stuff you collect even over just a few years! Once the boxes had been collected by the shipping company we were able to relax a bit and get on with the important task of preparing for the "everything must go party". The theme of the party being to encourage our friends to drink all our remaining alcohol and take away some of the items we weren't shipping. There was an eclectic selection of items, most of which got snapped ... read more

After much planning we've now finally decided on the route we want to take. The main thing we've always wanted to do is take the Trans Mongolian railway from St. Petersberg to Beijing, stoping off at a couple of places in Russia and Mongolia along the way. Before that we head through Germany, Denmark and Scandinavia and then afterwards we go down through Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Sumatra. To get from Singapore to Perth we're hopefully going as passengers on a container ship and then once in perth it's a 3 day train journey across to Sydney. Currently in the process of sorting out all of our visas, booking European trains & ferries and getting our travel injections done. We've also just started packing up the flat, deciding what gets shipped and what gets thrown away. ... read more

I went away in 2007 for 8 months. Saying goodbye was an odd affair; goodbye for so long but not forever. The worst goodbye was my parents. I'd already said farewll to my Big Brother when we dropped him off and it was such a mad and confusing affair that goodbye was pretty quick and pretty uneventful. Saying goodbye to my Mum and Dad, while they waved from the doorway to the Departures lounge was the hardest bit. I kept back the tears that threatened to topple over my lids often for the next 48 hours or so. The first couple of days were the worst; the flights; the new country; new smells; new sounds. I held it, refusing to give in to that place of lonliness and I held it in for several months, until ... read more