Despite grappling with the heavy muggy heat of visiting Italy in mid-summer, my first impression of Venice was a huge surprise to me. Like most, I could appreciate the bucket-list allure of this romantic city of waterways, but I was wary about subjecting myself to the hellish ‘high-season’ crowds I’d be warned about. Previous holidays […]
Read More
“Lads, lads, lads, we’re off to Zant-ayyy!” is what I’m sure you’re thinking. Zante? Really, Michaela? I didn’t have you pinned as Ouzo-guzzling, out-until-dawn, hard-core raver? Well, no, I suppose you’d be right. I’m approaching thirty, and I’m very partial to a comfortable bed and a good cup of tea. So what am I doing […]
Read More
It’s all too easy to get caught up dreaming about far flung destinations around the globe; planning long weekend city breaks in Italy, a beach holiday in the Bahamas or saving up for a trip to New York. I sometimes forget about the amazing locations on my own doorstep, and Northern Ireland, just short journey […]
Read More
Portugal, it’s been too long. Years ago I stayed in Lisbon for a single night, en-route to spend a few days in the Algarve. The Algarve, as impressive as the coastline was, didn’t do enough for me to tempt me back, yet Lisbon left me longing for more. Sure, if I’m honest with myself, I […]
Read More
Okay, so Helsinki is one of the lesser-visited European capital cities, which baffled me; the city seemed to tick a lot of boxes! Fins are known for their sauna culture, moomins, of course, for having more heavy rock bands per capita than anywhere else in the world, and a word in their language ‘kalsarikanni‘ that […]
Read More
If you’d believe it, this trip was simultaneously slightly spontaneous and totally planned out. To explain… mentally, I’d dreamt out this type of trip for a long, long while; tracing an imaginary line on Google maps and thinking up mini-itineraries, but I never thought I’d have the time or the guts to complete a complex […]
Read More
Arriving into Stockholm in biblical style downpours was amongst the worst of welcomes we’ve had at the beginning of any trip. We’d also just flown into Stockholm Skavsta, where the use of ‘Stockholm’ in it’s name shouldn’t be relied upon too heavily; the coach transfer on the ‘Flygbussarna’ took nearly as long as our flight […]
Read More
We already know everything we need to know about Luxembourg, right? A tiny tax haven crammed on the cross roads of Germany, Belgium and France. Surely not the first place you’d think about visiting for a bank holiday weekend? Well, sure, probably not. In all truthfulness, I wanted to visit Luxembourg because my unintentional avoidance […]
Read More
There were four things that I knew about Bremen before I visited. One, I’d eat far too much. Two, It’s February and I will freeze. Three, I’d love it. And four, even if I didn’t, I was going for some Schweinshaxe and hey, everything will be okay. A week prior to my trip I’d convinced myself […]
Read More
I shouldn’t imagine that this city needs all that much of an introduction. Dubrovnik; the Pearl of the Adriatic or rather, ‘Kings Landing’ should you fancy yourself as a citizen of Westeros… whatever Dubrovnik is to you, and even if you’re never been to Croatia, you’ll be familiar with Dubrovnik’s old town; every corner of […]
Read More
How can I call myself a travel blogger? I’m having two weeks off work to uh, travel, and I’m getting in a right state over it. Regular followers may have figured that city trips are my forte; long weekend jaunts, strictly hand-luggage only. It’s certainly my thing; I swear, just give me a destination, three […]
Read More
Habitually, I enjoy imitating a small hibernating bear throughout the festive season. I’ll book those few days linking Christmas with New Years off on annual leave, create a nest for myself on the sofa, unashamedly veg-out in the same set of PJ’s, chow down triple the recommended dose of camembert and steadily sup away through […]
Read More
Let’s swiftly skip over lamenting just how quickly this last year has passed. It was April just last week, I swear. Perhaps 2017 can go as evidence that there’s still truth in the old saying; time passes at a ridiculous rate if you’re having fun. This was the year you might argue my desire to wander tipped over into an obsession; and somehow I […]
Read More
Sat in the eye of a storm; the clothe-splosion engulfing my living room floor, progressively getting more chaotic as I came to the realisation that the twenty-four hours I had back in the UK was actually a stressfully short amount of time from landing at Stansted, fresh from Croatia to getting back on the road […]
Read More
Germany’s second largest city Hamburg is like Berlin’s older sister; understatedly cool, modest and confidently sure of herself, but there’s that shared underlying streak of edginess and rebellion that Berlin brazenly flaunts. When I was trying to find a word that describes my trip, ‘unexpected’ seems to best capture my experience. Hamburg was totally unexpected. If you’ve […]
Read More