All posts filed under: Travel

Hotel Pont Royal, Paris

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I felt very lucky on my birthday last year – lucky to have a friend so lovely that she bought me a return ticket to Paris on the Eurostar. We decided to go in late January for a couple of nights, which gave us a lot to look forward to following the December Christmas celebrations. We stayed at Hotel Pont Royal for the first night and moved up north closer to the station for the second. We caught the early Eurostar train from King’s Cross and three hours later arrived at the hotel where we checked in and dropped our bags off before heading straight out to wander around the streets of Paris. While we were waiting to check in, we glanced up and saw pictures on the wall of famous American intellectuals, who back in their heyday made Hotel Pont Royal their Paris home. The cocktail bar was a thing of beauty – dark and lavish and we learned it was one of the leading cocktail bars in Paris from the 1920s and frequented …

Nikon 1 J3 Review – Venice and Melbourne

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I arrived back from Melbourne on Saturday morning at 7am. I dropped my bag off at home, had a quick shower and headed out to meet my friend for breakfast. As I was munching on my bircher muesli, she asked if I fancied going on a day trip and proceeded to say that Brighton was £10 return on the train. Woah woah woah, I thought. I felt good but not THAT good and I knew that jet lag would catch up on me soon enough. So we settled on Greenwich. We had an amazing day but as soon as the darkness set in, sure enough, I was on my way to sleepy town. I was asleep by 8pm and awake on Sunday morning at 5am. Gotta love jet lag. It’s not too annoying though as it has given me time to root through all of my pictures from Australia. Speaking of pictures, this post is the review the Nikon 1 J3. I borrowed this beauty of a camera from Nikon for my trips to Venice …

Tune Hotels – King’s Cross

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I don’t know if I’m just getting boring in my old age but going out just isn’t what it used to be. Over the last five or so years I have swapped the nightclub for the cafe and probably piled on a few pounds in the process. But even though I tend not to go ‘clubbing’ much anymore, I still enjoy a few drinks down the pub with friends. The biggest problem for me though is the journey home. I’d rather not spend two hours on London’s unpredictable and unsavoury night busses, thank you. Enter Tune Hotels. You may have read the review of our stay at the Liverpool Street branch and we liked it so much that we headed back to the King’s Cross branch. It was the night of our friends 30th and after one too many mixed beverages and definitely too many shots of tequila we stumbled back to the hotel for a few hours kip before check out at 10am. Tune Hotel King’s Cross is a short 5 minute walk from …

Konditori Valand, Stockholm

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I don’t know how Jack does it. It’s like he has some sort of in built independent world travel guide embedded in his brain. Take Stockholm as an example. We were heading to Åre for a skiing trip but we were to enjoy a day in Stockholm on either side of the trip. I had spent a couple of hours at the computer before we left, trawling through pages of content to try and find the best places to eat and drink. We arrived back in Stockholm at 7am after an overnight train journey on a sleeper train down from the mountains. Bleary eyed, we dragged our bags to the lockers and headed to McDonalds for a coffee. The problem was, there were 11 of us and true to the style of travelling with a large group, not everyone agreed with a stint in McDonalds. So it was Jack to the rescue and after a couple of minutes on my ipad, he had a suggestion – an original 1950’s cafe called Konditori Valand, which was …

Blanc – Mandarin Oriental, Barcelona

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As a child, my family holidays were mostly spent in Spanish speaking countries. I will always thank my dad for introducing me to the beautiful island of Ibiza where we enjoyed two weeks in the sunshine every summer for years. So it is no surprise that I have always had a fondness for Spain. I am not sure how Barcelona has evaded my travel path up to now but a few weeks ago I set off with Jack and thoroughly I enjoyed my first visit. We arrived on one of the busiest weekends – the Sunday evening played host to arguably one of the most important football matches of the season, Barcelona vs Madrid. The city was buzzing and as a result finding a hotel was a little difficult. The Mandarin Oriental was on my hit list but there was no room at the inn. But despite not being able to experience the rooms this time, we were still able to enjoy dinner on Friday evening at Blanc, the restaurant’s brasserie and gastrobar. The entrance …