See It Do It Live It

We arrived in Onomichi very early in the morning and left our bags in train station lockers. After buying a breakfast of curry doughnuts from the French bakery at the station (curry doughnuts are incredible, and pretty much every station has a French bakery) we headed over the road to hire bicycles. The Shimanami Kaido is a cycle path that spans six islands over 70 km and we were keen to give it a go. We hired bikes from a guy who gave us the option of either returning them…read more

The party to celebrate the Japanese victory carried on until 4am, ending in an Irish bar, narrowly avoiding the karaoke bar. I was suffering from a nasty chest infection, and only getting two hours sleep before catching the train to Hiroshima certainly didn’t help matters. I could write an entire blog post on the marvels of the Japanese railway system, but I’ll briefly summarise the best bits here. The trains are ALWAYS on time, they have seats that are like reclining armchairs, they are super clean and the seats rotate…read more

Japan has been at the top of my travel wish list for quite some time, and when we managed to get tickets for the 2019 Rugby World Cup, we decided it would make an excellent honeymoon destination. Our first stop was Hamamatsu for Australia v Georgia. After 30+ hours of travel we arrived at our hostel and set off around the town to explore. Hamamatsu isn’t your typical tourist destination, so it gave us an interesting glimpse of Japanese life. It was fascinating to see school children walking themselves home…read more

Riga in December is festive, sparkly, beautiful and very, very cold. The first thing I noticed when we landed is just how Latvian George looks – those genes run strong! On our first day we did a two-hour walking tour around the city. In addition to Georges heritage, there was an Australian lady in our tour group who also had Latvian grandparents. With our guide we weaved around the streets, stopping to learn about the history of Latvia along the way. Latvia has a long history of by various countries…read more

I absolutely loved Marrakech, but by far the best experience was a day spent on a cooking course with Souk Cuisine. The course is run by the wonderful Gemma, who met us in the central square Jemaa el-Fnaa. After a brief introduction, she took us to the markets to buy the food we would need to prepare our meals. As we criss-crossed along narrow lanes, we learnt a lot about the city, the country and the culture. In pairs, we were then given a purse of money and a shopping…read more

Six days of annual leave left to take, a desire to take a short haul flight to somewhere sunny and a couple of weeks to plan it in. The only challenge….it’s February. After a lot of playing around on Skyscanner, the short list was whittled down to either Lanzarote or Marrakech. We absolutely made the right choice. The first few nights were spent in the heart of the Souks, in Riad Romance. The Riad is an oasis of calm, hidden away down a maze of chaotic alleyways and lanes. As…read more

My Cambridge friend and skiing buddy Rob relocated to Flagstaff, Arizona, after we completed our PhDs. After seeing endless incredible photos of his state-side adventures online, I decided it was time to hop on a flight to Phoenix. As I still haven’t entirely moved on from my 8 years of student budgeting, I ended up on a flight with a short stop in LA. I am a big fan of people watching, and LA airport does not disappoint. I was especially bemused to find myself mere inches away from some…read more

My gallivanting has come to an end for now, and I am back to the 9-5 life, working at a pharmaceutical company in Kent. I was very lucky to arrive down here for the final weekend of the Whitstable Oyster Festival. On the final Saturday it is ‘tradition’ to drink Sangria and eat seafood in the sun all afternoon and then head down to the beach with some more drinks in the evening to watch an amazing fireworks display. I’ve been very luck to have lots of visitors since I…read more

You might be thinking that 54 weeks of travelling around the world would be enough for me, but 6 weeks after I got back home I was incredibly lucky to go on a 17 night cruise around the Mediterranean with my family. We stopped at Cadiz, Messina, Corfu, Venice, Dubrovnik, Hvar and Gibraltar. Highlights included: Ridiculous amount of table tennis, with both Dad and Cameron claiming they won the most matches…. Granny joining in our prosecco toast with a bowl of asparagus soup Cameron getting stuck in the cinema curtain…read more