Naples

Next stop, Naples.

Travelling from Rome to Naples – easy.  Trying to find the accommodation once we were in Naples, however – not so easy.

Naples is a beautiful and unique city and Holly and I had booked a cute little airbnb in the ‘typical‘ Napoleon streets which of course all look the same and just keep going deeper and deeper.  Google maps didn’t help and we ended up walking around in circles once we came out of the subway and off the main road, into the narrow cobbled streets.  It also didn’t help that it was 30-something degrees and I was carrying a massive rucksack on my back.

On our way to the airbnb, which should have only been a 7 minute walk, we had a dead pigeon fall from the sky and land right next to us and  little kids zoom passed us on their mopeds, but this is all apart of the adventure when travelling with me.

If you want to escape to an old traditional Italian city where it is exactly what it is like in the films that we watch, then Naples is definitely the place for you.  Narrow cobbled streets, mopeds and cars trying to squeeze down them and washing hanging out of the buildings.  It is something I never thought I would actually get to experience, something so simple yet so different to anywhere I have been.

Naples is a beautiful old-school city where the residents don’t speak too much English and unknown to Holly and I, Spanish is actually quite predominately spoken as they have a Spanish quarter and it just so happens we were staying in this area.

The food and drink was amazing there, and extremely cheap compared to Rome; you can eat in a restaurant and have a margarita pizza for only €4 and have a Limoncello or Aperol spritz for €2 at a standing bar.

At a particular cocktail bar myself and Holly went to, several times during our visit to Naples, the staff were extremely friendly and made us feel welcome, even remembering us on our return visit on a busy Saturday night.

The transport is relatively simple to use and get around in city, as Naples is surprisingly large.  The subway is the best way forward to get from A to B and you can even get it to Pompeii for a day visit.

The heart of the city is thriving with people, giving it such a beautiful atmosphere.  The sea and coast being right by it along with the mountainous range gives an amazing backdrop.  Of course there are many sights to be seen such as Mount Vesuvius, Piazza del Plebiscito, the Royal Palace of Naples to name a few.

The nightlife is plentiful, with many bars as you walk down the back streets, a couple of clubs and kebab shops open till the early hours of the morning.

Naples is an idyllic location to visit and explore a completely different side of Italy, to experience the energetic atmosphere and indulge in the stunning culture and art it has to offer.

Georgie

xx

Rome

Rome.  Roma, Italy.  Somewhat different to Birmingham, UK.

I have never been to Rome before so whatever I saw first was going to make the biggest impact onto my perception of what is to come for the next couple of days.

We got into Rome late, about 10/11pm, it was dark and I had no idea where we were other than, obviously in Rome, and somewhere by the train station so communicating with the Uber driver on the phone who had very limited English speaking skills and myself with equally as limiting Italian speaking skills was definitely interesting to say the least.  Getting to a place called Via Marcella to meet our Uber driver was our first hurdle we had to jump over in Rome (and in Italy).

Finally stumbling across Via Marcella, which turned out to be right outside a different exit of the station, and finding our adorably sweet Uber driver who was actually really helpful and kind to us, we just had a half hour drive till we finally got to our accommodation.  Thankfully our host for our Airbnb didn’t mind us arriving so late.

So far we had only came across friendly and sweet Italians which made our welcome to Italy feel so special.

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I was excited to finally see Rome; the beautiful Rome, the typical tourists spots and sites, along with the not-so-typical tourists spots and sites, that you see online and in brochures.

Our first day consisted of the obligatory tourist destinations; the Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain and the Pantheon.  These three monuments are, of course, a must see when you visit Rome and they did not disappoint.  Amongst sightseeing, Holly and I got delicious Italian salads for lunch, classic Italian coffees and gelato in the afternoon and finished our day with fresh pasta dishes and Prosecco, so I definitely feel like we got into the Italian culture fairly quickly!

By the second day we found a cute little cafe/bakery which was on the way to our bus stop as we were heading into town.  Of course we had to try the cappuccinos and chocolate twists for breakfast and it was unanimous that, from our whole entire three weeks we spent in Italy, this was not only one of the cheapest coffees we had, but the BEST coffee we had!  In fact I still have dreams about siting outside in the square at 8am whilst drinking it.

The second day we took the whole day to go around the Coliseum and the Forum, which I would definitely recommend to be able to take in the history and beauty of the sites.  Just be aware of the unofficial tour guides trying to selling you tickets for the Coliseum to skip the queue and have a tour guide whilst inside, as they charge high prices and the queue was, obviously, not even half as long as they said.  This seemed to be the trend in most tourist sites in Italy.  Later on in the day when we were looking for dinner, we went back outside the city centre past the University to a small area with some cafes and restaurants, meaning the food would be cheaper and there would be less people, if you have the means to do the same I would highly recommend it as you get to experience a more authentic Italian restaurant of where the locals would more likely eat at.

Last but no means least, we visited the Vatican City on the third day.  We went around the Vatican Museum and in the afternoon we found the famous St. Peter’s Square and Basilica, both are absolutely stunning and breathtaking.  Be prepared to queue for a decent amount of time to get into the museum but I can assure you it is more than worth it.

Within in the three full days we were in Rome we visited the main tourist attractions but we did find some cute little restaurants and cafes that may be slightly tucked away from the general path of the tourists which allowed us to budget a little and get away from the hustle and bustle of the city.

Rome treated us very well, with many memories I will carry with me for the rest of my life.  Italy is such a beautiful country and Rome is a true classic to explore, for the young and the old, for couples and friends, for anyone and everyone.

Georgie

x

 

 

Italy 2018

20 days.

The land of all things indulging.  Pizza.  Pasta.  Wine.  Gelato.

Italy is a stunning and historical country which takes pride in its long culture and beauty which everyone is drawn to.

Looking back at this summer’s travels around Italy I realised it taught me quite a bit, not necessarily as much as my Eastern European travels of last year, but it definitely taught me new experiences and life lessons.

Myself and one of my best friends planned to travel along the West side of Italy starting in Rome, ending in in Florence and visiting Naples, Pompei, Pisa and Livorno in between.

20 days.

4 days (really more like 3) in Rome

4 days in Naples – 2 of which exploring Pompei

2 days in Pisa

4 days in Livorno

5 days in Florence

And 1 day of horrific travelling home via Brussels.

Travel days to each destination (within Italy) were very short, especially compared to the train journeys I took last year; we could actually explore the city that we traveled to on the day we got there which kept the excitement going.

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Yes, I am back and this time I will be back for more than just one month!  There will be a post for each destination I went to, and I will actually publish all of them this time as well!  I think 6 is an achievable amount.

Georgie

x

Bucharest, Romania

Bucharest is a dynamic and fun capital city to explore.  I had never been to Romania so Bucharest was the first experience of Romania I was going to get and it was absolutely amazing.   I didn’t know what to expect really other than what Izzy could remember from when she went about 6 years ago.

Bucharest has a lot of history and culture to give.  There are loads of art galleries and museums to look around, some smaller and less well known are free.   Izzy and I did actually try (several times in the space of half an hour) to get into the National Museum of Contemporary Art, but the day we went it just so happened to be closed and a conference of emergency surgery was actually taking place there.  You will need to note that the museum is not open on Mondays and Tuesdays, even if the guard at the car parking entrance just lets you walk in anyway.

As Izzy has relatives in Bucharest, we had the opportunity of looking around the city from a tourist/travellers view as well as a local.  So of course they took us to places we probably wouldn’t have gone to or known they were there.  On our first night in Bucharest we went to this beautiful outside bar lit up by fairy lights in the trees called Eden Gardens (Gradina Eden).  The bar was actually behind Stirbei Palace which seemed to be abandoned in the dark so it was a surprise what was actually behind it since we didn’t know where we were going.  The place was beautiful and the atmosphere was amazing, definitely would go back when I’m back in Bucharest and have another bottle of Zaganu Bruna.

Can I also say the homemade lemonade in the restaurants Izzy and I went to were my favourite things to have, sweet and refreshing.  Totally recommend!

It was just nice to be able to be shown places we wouldn’t have known about.  We were even taken to this shopping centre with a rooftop park and bar with cool views!

The Old Town of Bucharest is a must see, the architecture is amazing and there is so much to explore and see.  It is a lot less busy there since there aren’t any cars driving through.

Bucharest is a city that is affordable to visit and explore in with lots of trendy cafes and many museums.  The people are friendly and the buildings are beautiful.

Georgie

xx

 

Plovdiv, Bulgaria

Izzy and I only had one day in Plovdiv.  We arrived from Sofia to Plovdiv early afternoon and got into our accommodation.

 

Plovdiv is a fantastic place to visit in Bulgaria; it is full of culture and life and the people were incredibly friendly.  Unfortunately Izzy and I were only there for the rest of the day, so the afternoon and evening, so typically it had to be the day when there was thunderstorm after thunderstorm.  Our accommodation host even told us that ‘it never normally rains here!’

Even though it was grey, thundering and raining, Plovdiv was still absolutely beautiful and a place I will definitely be coming back to, to do a bit more exploring.

The Old Town is a must see in Plovdiv with so much character and culture still there and treasured.

Plovdiv has much to offer with aesthetically pleasing architecture, the buildings and monuments are absolutely beautiful, being grand and different colours.

Of course there is a lot to do here, mainly being museums and exploring and visiting the ruins and the ancient history Plovdiv holds as it is the oldest continuously inhabited city in Europe.

Georgie

xx

Sofia, Bulgaria

Sofia, the capital city of Bulgaria, is the ideal place to visit and explore if you are on a budget.  Bulgaria is becoming more popular for students to go to as it is such an affordable and cheap country to fly to and travel in.  For this reason it was the perfect place to start our month’s adventures around Europe.

We ended up only spending about 250 Bulgarian Lev (£112) between us in 4 days, so that 125 Bulgarian Lev (£56) each!  That is only £14 a day each and I am pretty sure you could do it even cheaper as we ate out in restaurants and cafes for our food!

Sofia has a lot to offer in terms of beauty and sight seeing.  It is a capital city surrounded by mountains and even in the heat of May the tops of the mountains are still covered in snow, such a beautiful sight.

Just outside of Sofia is the must see Rila Monastery.  Of course Izzy and I had all intentions of going there, we even tried to get to the the bus station the day before we wanted to go and book our bus tickets.  The only thing that stopped us was the fact that we could not find the bus station anywhere!  We googled how to get there and it seemed like the trams were our best option and a blogger had a post explaining how to use Sofia’s trams and how to get to the bus station.  However, being Izzy and myself, we just could not find the bus station stop anywhere!  We were actually on the trams, getting on and off at the stops we thought were the stops, for an hour and a half but we just couldn’t find it.  I’m sure it is actually really simple, but it was the first public transport we used outside of the UK and neither of us could read or speak the language.  What made it even harder for us was the fact that the Bulgarian language does not use the English alphabet, but Cyrillic.

The part of Sofia that Izzy and I loved probably the most, because we spent so much time there, was the Vitosha Boulevard.  This boulevard is so pretty; as you are walking down this boulevard of cafes, bars, restaurants and shops you can actually see the Vitosha mountain in the background with the snow on it.  It was something I didn’t expect to see in a capital city but it was the best part of Sofia.

I definitely want to go back to Sofia to explore the rest of the city as we didn’t have too much time there, and it being the first city we went to, we weren’t as confident to just go exploring as we were in the later places.  I really want to see Rila Monastery in the flesh and possibly go up to Vitosha mountain.

Georgie

xx

South Eastern Europe 2017

As I am on my gap year and I love to travel, what best to suit my time off education than get a job and then go travelling for a month?

So that is what I decided to do.  Travel eastern Europe with my best friend for a month.

This is going to be the series of my south eastern European adventures, top tips and how to’s.

Our travels took us to Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Croatia and Slovenia which we then headed back to our home land of England passing through Austria, Germany, Belgium and France.

My best friend, Izzy, and I had our flight from Birmingham to Sofia in Bulgaria on the 2nd May and got back to our home city in the early hours of the 1st June.

Being on our gap year it is stereo-typically talked about inter-railing through Europe, so of course that is what we did.  It is more economically viable than flying to each country and a lot easier than trying to buy tickets for the trains whilst you were in the country.

So as we went to 13 places within the month we went around Europe, there will be 13 posts, one for each place.  The first being Sofia, Bulgaria which should be up on 9th June.

Georgie

xx

Dublin, Ireland

I have been waiting to go to Ireland and of course its capital city, Dublin, for years now.  My friend, Izzy, and I always talked about going over to Ireland in maths class of year 10 but I didn’t think I would be able to go to Dublin with her and some other friends at the age of 18!

Once we landed late morning and had got to our hotel, we decided to grab some sandwiches and find a nice spot to eat our lunch.  We just walked and explored around Dublin before coming across the beautiful grounds of Parliament Square in Trinity College Dublin.

Dublin is such a beautiful capital city.  Our hotel was called Temple Bar Inn and it couldn’t have been a more convenient place to be staying at.  It was right next to a Tesco Metro store as well as a Hard Rock cafe and TGIFriday’s directly across the quiet street.  Further down the cute cobbled street was the all important Temple Bar itself, along with some other traditional Irish pubs and bars.  Just a few roads from our hotel was the main shopping street and mall.  Bus stops were conveniently placed throughout the city, for the local buses, sight-seeing buses, hop-on-hop-off buses as well as the airport buses.

I recommend getting yourself a hop-on-hop-off sight-seeing bus ticket if you are thinking of visiting Dublin.  It will allow you to get on and off the bus as many times as you want, to get from A to B without getting lost, and you also get to see the sights Dublin has to offer.  We got ourselves a 3 day hop-on-hop-off ticket in advance which meant we had more time to explore the parts of Dublin than if we were walking.

Of course when in Dublin you have to visit the all important Guinness Storehouse.  It gave you a detailed insight of what goes into a pint of Guinness and its history.  The tour is in 5 different parts across 5 different floors of the building including a smaller cafe half way and then a further 2 floors of cafe’s and bars.  You can have a tasting experience of Guinness as well has having the chance to pour the perfect pint!

Dublin’s night life is amazing.  Down Temple Bar you are spoilt for choice of where to go, of course you should make the trip to Temple Bar itself, but I would also suggest visiting pubs and bars with live music and Irish dancing.

Phoenix Park is also a must when in Dublin; it is one of the biggest parks in a European city.   It is absolutely beautiful, full of wildlife and nature, deer are allowed to roam the park freely and Dublin Zoo is even within the park grounds!  I would recommend to hire bikes to cycle round the park to get the best experience of the area, but unfortunately we didn’t have time to hire bikes but I definitely will next time when I visit.

Another visit which is a must when you visit Dublin is the famous Kilmainham Prison.  You can book yourself on a tour online, which I recommend as they tend to be sold out if you plan on buying the tickets on the day.  It is affordable as entrance is from only €3 for a student/child up to €7 for an adult if you book online but if you pay there it goes up by €1.  It is a very insightful and interesting tour about the conditions and people of the prison over the years it was running, even allowing you to peer into what a cell looks like.

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Dublin was definitely an amazing experience and I would recommend anyone to go.  It is such a stunning and vibrant city full of amazing and kind people.

Georgie xx

 

Delft, Netherlands

So yesterday marked one year of my blog!  Therefore I decided I had to get my Delft blog post up today in honour of one year.

Delft was another place myself and my family visited in the Netherlands in early August and it was by far my favourite.  The town was so sweet with old buildings, a Church and old town hall.  It was full of life, history and beauty.

Delft is also a quick 50 minutes away from Amsterdam and you can get there via the motorway or train.

I also recommend an amazing coffee shop/cafe in Delft.  My Dad had read that this cafe called Kek sold the best coffee in the town so we had to hunt it down.  It was such a brilliant cafe with an amazing atmosphere.  It was very tumblr-esk inside, if you know what I mean!  It had healthy food and food for those that don’t want to be so healthy.   The first time we went to Kek I ordered their blended ice coffee which was a blend of coffee, milk and ice and oh lord was this ice coffee the best thing I have ever tasted!!  It was so good, we went the next day for lunch on my Dad’s birthday.

The town square of Delft is full of life, there was a market on the Friday we arrived where you could buy an array of things from tourist souvenirs to the traditional Dutch stroopwafels.   The town square was my favourite part of Delft as the architecture of the Church and Town Hall was just so beautiful and picturesque.

 

There are also a lot of alleyways and lanes which you could walk down to get away from any of the hustle and bustle of the town square which allows you to see more of the area and get a sense of what the locals see.

The bridges over the canal reminded me of Amsterdam, so if you want to visit somewhere like Amsterdam but you aren’t the biggest fan of crowded busy capital cities, definitely visit Delft.

Just out of the town, there is a nature reserve where we had a ride around.  The reserve was massive with lakes and woods to explore, the area was amazing and we had to get off our bikes every 10 minutes so I could take photos!

Delft was my favourite area of the Netherlands I visited and I recommend going if you ever head over to the area.  The beautiful town and its surrounding area gives great chances to take photos, go on bike rides, shop, relax in a coffee shop and much more.

Georgie x

Amsterdam

This year, for the annual summer holiday, my parents, brother and I visited the Netherlands, where we had never actually been before.   I had always wanted to visit, especially, and typically, Amsterdam.  Amsterdam is definitely on a lot of people’s radar for a city to visit, well it was definitely on mine and now I can tick it off.  I mean I definitely need/want to go back there, there were so many things we did not do and the weather was not the best for exploring a new city in, especially exploring a new capital city.

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After a bike ride and two trains later we finally got to Amsterdam, the weather was looking somewhat promising, just a little cloudy, oh how naive we were!  We made our way straight down the main street adjacent to the canal heading towards Dam Square where the neoclassical Royal Palace, Gothic Nieuwe Kurk, Madame Tussuad Wax Museum, the National Monument and much more are located.

National Monument

Neoclassical Royal Palace

Madame Tussaud

We could have easily have gone down one of the many smaller, more pedestrianised lanes/streets off Dam Square but we decided to follow the main road, still adjacent with the canal on our left.  We came across the first of many the famous Amsterdam bridges which are located all over the city, crossing the canals.

Soon after these photos were taken, after looking in a Christmas shop next to the water flower market, a massive rain shower occurred.  We decided this would be the time to explore the city for one of the health food shops/cafes I wanted to go to for lunch…  Unfortunately after the whole family getting hangary and wet as we were sharing one umbrella between the four of us we just went into a cafe restaurant called La Place which was actually pretty good, deffo recommend (I had freshly squeezed orange juice and a panini).

As the rain repeatedly stopped and started it wasn’t the best conditions to go walking around a new city you haven’t been before so instead we went on a canal boat tour of Amsterdam which was a brilliant idea; I got to take photos, we were covered from the rain and we learnt and saw a lot of Amsterdam.

St Nicholas Church // The Biggest Church in Amsterdam

Montelbaastoren Tower

We did, of course, go for a little more of an explore of the beautiful city after the boat trip, however we soon took cover from the rain once again in a cafe for some coffee.

Even though the weather didn’t play in our favour the day was not lost, and I loved it.  I love exploring and seeing a completely new city in a completely new country no matter the weather.

Of course I didn’t get to go to Anne Frank’s House which I wanted to but at the height of the season the online pre-book tickets sold out fast and the queue was incredibly long, so it is a must to go back to Amsterdam and maybe soon, who knows!

Georgie x