An unabashed tourist and her family explore the world one holiday at a time.
Before our trip to the Finnish arctic circle, Inverness was the most northerly point Gareth and I had ever been to. Since we were in the region again and had fond memories of our first visit, we decided to take a day trip from our resort in the Cairngorms National Park to this iconic highland city. Unfortunately, we didn’t plan very well...
As South Africans, we can sometimes be excused for thinking we have a monopoly on animals and game watching. After all, the Kruger National Park is world-famous and synonymous with the Big Five. In our preoccupation with lions, rhinos, elephants and other interesting denizens of the bushveld, we tend to forget that the world has so much more to offer....
Clack-clack-clack! As the funicular climbs steadily up the mountainside, I count the number of tall mountains I have visited during my travels: Mont Blanc (4,810m) in France was my favourite and the highest I’ve ever been, but there have also been the Eiger (3,970m) and the Männlichen (2,343m) in Switzerland, Sass Songher (2,625m) in Italy and the Zugspitze (2,962m) in...
As 2013 draws to a close, I’m reminded of how we started this year. Gareth and I were in Scotland at the time and, like everyone else in the region, we had made our way to the Cairngorms Hotel in Aviemore for what is locally known as Hogmanay. Our breath steamed in the frigid air, but the street was abuzz...
Clouds rolling over a moody, windswept countryside. Green and yellow grass waving in the wind, leading to red and black heather covering undulating hills topped by snow. Woolly sheep or inquisitive shaggy-coated cows watching us from behind ancient stone walls. And above all, a sky that quickened from clear blue, to ominously grey, to orange sunset. This is my lasting...
The last week of our holiday was spent at the MacDonald Lochanhully Woodland Club situated inside the Cairngorms National Park in Scotland. We chose this resort because it was the most northern place in the UK where we could find accommodation and we thought we may have another chance at glimpsing the aurora. The week was mostly dark, cloudy, rainy...
England’s Lake District is well-known for its beautiful countryside scenery. This is where the Romantic poet Wordsworth wandered lonely as a cloud and where Beatrix Potter dreamed up stories that still delight children of all ages. And it’s also where Gareth and I decided to break our journey from Cardiff in Wales to Aviemore in Scotland. We stayed in a...
We spent Christmas 2012 in Caerphilly, visiting Gareth’s family who we only get to see once every two years or so. Gareth’s brother wanted some male bonding time and, having just recovered from a nearly debilitating flu picked up in a Finnish sauna, I decided to spend the day on my own wandering the streets of Cardiff. I love Cardiff....
What do you do when you unexpectedly bump into Tom Cruise? Why, you try to out-smile him and then brag to all your friends that you’re a little bit taller than he, is of course. Even though celebrity culture baffles me I would have loved to have met the real Tom Cruise, but sadly this was only a wax replica...
221B Baker Street The quaint Victorian home is littered with interesting paraphernalia, violins, dusty books, classical portraits, oriental coffee tables, stuffed birds and pinned butterflies, thermometers, glass bottles containing weird concoctions and all manner of bric-a-brac. An intricately patterned Persian carpet clashes horribly with the yellow and pink wallpaper, while a cosy fire roars in the hearth. On a small...