Trieste, Italy.

For our New Year break we did a lot of research and wanted to visit Ljubljana, Slovenia and Zagreb, Croatia.  This incorporated a bus trip between the two.  Zagreb looked amazing for New Year and Ljubljana just looked really lovely so we decided we wanted to visit both.  Trieste was not somewhere we had planned to go; initially we had booked direct flights to Ljubljana with Wizz Air; unfortunately they decided to cancel their route there very last minute for us.  When we went to check on our flight status they had changed our flights to Prague! 

We had done a lot of research as to where we wanted to spend New Year and we were dead set on Zagreb so we found a work around…. We found we could fly to Trieste in Italy and get a bus to Zagreb and Ljubljana so with some rejigging we had the unexpected and delightful addition of visiting Trieste for just under 24 hours!

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Trip to Lithuania.

For a September break, we organised with friends Jane and Vitalis to visit Lithuania. Vitalis is Lithuanian and therefore what better way to spend time in the country than go with a local! We booked our flights through Wizz Air from Luton to Kaunas and planned to see Nida, Kaunas, Marijampole and fly back from Vilnius with Ryanair. Our flights out were an absolute bargain price of £17.49 each as we had purchased the Wizz Air discount card previously. The flights back were not so cheap but were £37.50 each back. The flight each way took approximately 2hrs 40.

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Trip to Chernobyl & Pripyat, Ukraine.

The first thoughts anyone may have about visiting the Chernobyl area is safety; is it really safe to visit a location that was subject of a nuclear disaster 33 years ago? On 26th April 1986 reactor core, 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant ruptured during safety testing, resulting in a highly explosive steam explosion and a subsequent open-air reactor core fire which lasted for approximately 9 days.  During this time the fire caused a release of radioactive contamination which precipitated upon parts of the USSR and Western Europe before finally being contained on 4th May 1986.  You can read more about it here. Continue reading “Trip to Chernobyl & Pripyat, Ukraine.”

Kyiv, Ukraine.

As part of our quest to conquer Europe by visiting every single country, Ukraine is somewhere we hadn’t been and were interested in going to.  As it worked out it was also a good time to go with flights being very reasonable and due to the higher media interest in the area due to the recent TV series based on the events of Chernobyl we decided now would be an excellent time to go for a 4-night break.  We flew with Ryanair from London Stansted.

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Budapest, Hungary

It was time for another ladies holiday away but this time with the purpose of celebrating Ginny’s 60th Birthday.  She was given the task of deciding where she would like to go and Budapest was a popular choice due to the fact none of us had been there but had all heard good things.  After some travel planning earlier in the year we managed to find reasonable flights from Stansted with Ryanair and a lovely looking apartment from Booking.com and away we went.

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Visiting the The Great Wall of China on a Beijing Stopover

If you want to head for somewhere in South East Asia, there’s a good chance your cheapest route will take you through Beijing, or to be more precise Beijing Capital International Airport (PEK). For some reason, our experience here is that arrival isn’t very well coordinated with your onward flight. We’ve been through this airport a number of times, with delays before the next flight of between 5 and 15 hours.  So what to do in these circumstances? Just wait it out, or make time to squeeze in another adventure in your limited travel opportunities?

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Spending 72 hours in Bangkok

We had travelled through Bangkok a few times en route to other places including Cambodia and Phuket but never actually spent any time there.  Our schedule did allow for a few days on our return leg so we thought why not! We left Ho Chi Minh City and travelled with Air Asia back to DMK Airport (Don Mueang).  This was the most uncomfortable journey thus far with a very cramped plane.  Upon arrival, we were unable to book a transfer to the accommodation with them directly and therefore used the Taxify App to book a transfer from the airport.

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Things to Do in Ho Chi Minh City – Vietnam

Our Vietjet flight was quite pleasant, ran on time and the transfer organised by the accommodation was there upon arrival (which is always a relief!).  We got to our accommodation Cozy House and checked in.  The location was down an alleyway and despite outside appearances, it was, well, cosy!

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Things to Do in Da Nang – Vietnam

Our travel to Da Nang went as planned; the flights to Bangkok ran to schedule with a decent stopover in Beijing, and our accommodation in Thailand was just the job for a night’s rest before heading to Da Nang.  We did realise that we arrived in one Bangkok airport and departed from another (arrived at Suvarnabhumi – BKK and departed from Don Mueang – DMK), but were able to get a taxi to take us to DMK for our Air Asia flight in plenty of time.  Despite a slightly delayed departure for our flight, we arrived in Da Nang just before 7 pm.  It is a small airport and was pretty painless collecting our bags and getting through passport control. We told them we intended to stay for a week, and they gave us a visa for 10 days.

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Planning a Visit to Vietnam, Thailand and China

Da Nang is somewhere we had never heard of let alone thought of visiting; however given the fact Nigel’s daughter had moved there between Christmas and New Year we wanted to take the opportunity to visit her, check out where she was living and experience some Vietnamese culture.  We hadn’t had the chance to visit Vietnam whilst in nearby Cambodia previously and with a couple of weeks off work, we took to researching the best and most affordable way to get there. Continue reading “Planning a Visit to Vietnam, Thailand and China”