An unabashed tourist and her family explore the world one holiday at a time.
I have never seen water quite as blue as those at Comino Island in Malta. The Blue Lagoon might not be very creatively named, but it definitely is accurate. This is the kind of water to which all of the clichés apply: azure, crystal-clear, mind-blowingly beautiful, worthy of a wish-you-were-here postcard. Gareth and I arrived very early in the morning, so we...
The Afrikaans Language Monument just outside of Paarl in the Western Cape is impressive. It was designed with the intention of showing how fast Afrikaans, one of the world’s youngest languages, grew through the shape of a rapidly ascending curve. That’s the intention. The reality is, it’s an embarrassingly large phallic symbol erected by a patriarchal society to boast about...
When I was much younger I toyed with the idea of becoming an astronaut (I think this was right after my phase where I wanted to be a detective like Nancy Drew or the girl who rides the elephant in the circus). Unfortunately, growing up at the bottom end of Africa doesn’t really allow for much opportunity to head into...
I finally know why all my friends with children had become boring. As it turns out, having a baby and a full-time job does not leave much room for anything else. Most evenings, after the evening meal, bath time, play time and, finally, rocking baby to sleep time, I’m left with just about enough energy to either sit down and...
Many years ago, on our first visit to Scotland, Gareth and I, along with my parents, visited Hadrian’s Wall. For those of you who don’t know, this ancient structure was built in 122 AD by the Romans to protect the northern frontier of their Britannia province from the fierce barbarians of Scotland. It stretches 116 km and I’ve heard that it makes a popular hiking...
Whenever he gets the chance, Gareth drags me off to see cars on display. We visited the Ferrari museum while in Italy, which I found extremely boring (but who am I to come between a man and his lifelong obsession?). So with good grace I relented yet again and let him take me to the Franschhoek Motor Museum. After all,...
My forefathers, the brothers Jean and Gabriel le Roux, arrived in the Cape of Good Hope in 1688. As Huguenots, a protestant denomination inspired by Calvinism, they were persecuted by their Catholic countrymen and finally fled France for the promise of religious freedom in the colonies. The brothers settled on a farm in the Paarl area of what is today...
It rarely snows in South Africa, and never in Pretoria where we live. If we’re having a particularly cold winter, the Drakensberg mountains might get a light coating of the muddy-white stuff, but not enough to ski in. I was 21 years old, on holiday in Europe, when I first stood in ankle-deep snow, marvelling at the tiny white flakes falling from the...
I remember the day we went to visit Stonehenge. Gareth and I were still living in Penarth in Wales at the time. We jumped onto the train one morning and arrived before the shops had opened in Salisbury. With hot take-away coffee and tea in hand, we caught the shuttle bus to that most famous of prehistoric monuments. Many people...
A bee zooms past us, eagerly on its way to pollinate the rows of bushes in the field of green and purple that stretches out before us. The aroma of lavender permeates the air. A small pond glimmers in the late afternoon sun and tall trees lead our eyes upwards towards the mountains. Somewhere out of sight a horse neighs,...