Category Archives: Travel Diary

40 before 40 challenge?

Yesterday I came across the ’30 before 30 challenge’ by London based travel blogger ‘WonderHereWanderThere’

Her aim was to visit 30 countries before turning 30 and with mission completed her post concluded with the thought of now doing a 40 before 40 challenge.

With my 40th birthday imminent in just a few weeks (whoops, did I just say this loud and admit to the WHOLE internet that I am turning 40?), it got me thinking…

How many countries did I actually visit so far?

Read more 40 before 40 challenge?

February Travels

How can it be March already? After a sheer endless January, February seems to have passed really quickly. Yes I know February is a shorter month. But by three days, not three weeks.

Anyways… I somehow hardly posted anything in February. Not that I was running out of blog ideas or didn’t want to post more. Somehow I just didn’t get round to actually finishing any of those half written post.

So to keep you all in the loop (and for purposes of me documenting my travel adventures in a diary kinda way), here a rundown of February’s travels.

Read more February Travels

Diary of a One Day Trip

Oh doesn’t it sound glamorous? ‘Are you in the office tomorrow?’ ‘No, I will be flying to Germany for the day’… But is it really?

Yes, every so often my trips are day return trips rather than overnight stays. And whilst it obviously has the benefit of me sleeping in my own bed and not dragging a suitcase around with me all day (just a very very heavy work bag), it usually means a rather long day ahead of me.

To give you a glimpse of my reality, I kept a diary yesterday, documenting that day from start to finish.

Read more Diary of a One Day Trip

January Travels

I can’t believe January is (finally) over. It equally feels like this month has gone on forever and gone by so quick.

In recent years January was a fairly quiet and slow month at work. It usually meant physically being in the actual office for most of the month with hardly any travel, but at last with some spare time to clear your desk, work your way through that endless to do list and finally get that filing done.

Somehow this year this all went a little different. I have probably mentioned it before, this year January did not have just one or two travels, I actually did five trips this past month… to five different countries.

Read more January Travels

Visiting Brooklyn – Dekalb Market Hall

When heading to New York, chances are you’ll spend most of your time in Manhattan. But New York has so much more to offer. Venture out to the other boroughs and see for yourself. And whilst you are out there, try the food on offer. Brooklyn has become a bit of a trendy area over the last decade or so. Plenty of individual coffee shops, local craft beers and organic food places. 

So, if you find yourself in the area of Flatbush Avenue / Dekalb Avenue, I would recommend you visit the Dekalb Market Hall.

We stumbled across it by chance during our recent trip to New York.

Read more Visiting Brooklyn – Dekalb Market Hall

Exploring Times Square by Night

Battling jet lag the first night, we decided to make the most of being wide awake at 4am. So we wrapped up warm and headed out into the night. To experience the city that never sleeps first hand and explore Times Square by night. More so as it was just a few blocks away from our hotel.

Any time of day or night Times Square is a weird world of its own. The lights, the hustling and bustling, cars, noises and millions of people. For sure a place you have to see for yourself once in your life.

To see? Yes. To actually enjoy? Maybe not so much… unless you are the kind of person that loves being shoved around… not this girl though.

So obviously we’ve been there before both during the day and in the evening. But going there in the middle of the night? Totally different thing. You can actually walk around and, believe it or not, you can see the ground.

Read more Exploring Times Square by Night

Diary of an eight-hour flight

What to expect on an eight hour flight in economy - Travel for a Living

I fly on a regular basis – now there’s a revelation; who would have thought – but pretty much all of my flights are short haul. Just an hour, two hours tops if I have to get to Central Europe or Nordics. But to actually do a long haul flight? Nah, not on a regular basis. But as I told before, hubby and I are New York bound again this month and as much as we were looking forward to it, it does come with a long flight at the start and end. So what to expect on an eight hour flight?

I am fairly relaxed about it all, I spend so much time sitting around airports for hours at a time that this flight couldn’t be any worse. Just make sure I have a fully charged laptop in front of me and I potter away forever (if I run out of things to write for the blog, I could always catch up on work, if and when I get very desperate). Hubby on the other side? Well that’s a different story.

You all remember that scene in Shrek when they travel to the Kingdom Far Far Away and donkey sits in the back, asking ‘are we there yet?’ every other second? Yep, that’s my other half (nah, he’s not a donkey obviously). He’s fine for the first hour, two tops, after that he gets a little restless.

So, I decided to share the pleasure with you all with my ‘diary of an eight-hour flight’.  To give you a better idea what to expect on an eight hour flight, if you’ve never flown long-haul.

Read more Diary of an eight-hour flight

My little travel companion

Spoiler alert – not much travel advice to be found here, this is just a fun little anecdote around my travel.

Last day in the office before my trip to Oslo my colleague left a little plastic pony on my desk.

Why you wonder? Well so did I.

Turned out her daughter put it in her bag a while back and little pony travelled to Italy with her (unnoticed). When it was eventually discovered, her daughter was so happy about little pony having been to Italy, that my colleague decided to send it travelling some more.

So in my bag it went to accompany me to Norway.

Read more My little travel companion

Visiting Oslo for the first time

Somehow I’ve always neglected Nordics as a travel destination (despite actually really wanting to see them). Therefore covering maternity leave for a colleague and occasionally going there came as a nice perk of the job. As one of my last trips in 2017 I had my first ever trip to Norway… for work only, but nevertheless. And thanks to things going anything but planned, I ended up with an extra night there, although without actually seeing a thing (if you don’t count hotels and airports). So I was delighted when Norway showed up on my travel itinerary again for January. The prospect of actually visiting Oslo for the first time and staying the night and not just changing flights there got me rather excited.

Read more Visiting Oslo for the first time