Twins that travel
Identical twins exploring the globe
Why you really need to go to Norway
Posted on November 18, 2014
One dark February afternoon, whilst sat at my desk at work, I decided I should book a trip to Norway.
I’ve wanted to go for a long time, inspired by incredible photos of beautiful Fjords, huge forests and healthy looking people climbing mountains. Most importantly, however, it was as a rainy Wednesday afternoon at work aka: ‘the danger zone’. Other trips booked on a Wednesday afternoon include Budapest, Washington and Skye, so you get the idea.
After reading about a few places in Norway, I decided to try Bergen. Bergen probably isn’t the most popular place in Norway to visit, with the cultural city Oslo and the magical northern-light filled Tromso, topping the charts. However, with BA opening up a new route there from London and my guide book describing it as ‘one of the world’s most beautiful cities’, I thought it would be worth a trip.
A few weeks later and I was free from the office and flying into Norway. The flight to Norway itself is worth a trip. As you near Bergen airport, below you are hundreds of small islands and waterways, sparkling away in the sunshine. It was one of the most beautiful landings I’ve ever had (and as a nervous flyer, landings for me tend to be fairly traumatic).
Once we arrived in the immaculate Bergen airport, we quickly found an equally immaculate bus and set off on the immaculate roads towards town. If there is one thing that Norwegians do well: it’s fantastic infrastructure!
As soon as we were dropped off in Bergen, I knew we had made the right choice. It was a beautifully sunny Saturday and Bergen marathon was in full swing. Whilst blonde, athletic types jogged past, I had my first sight of the infamous ‘Bryggen’. Set on Bergen’s wide waterfront, with mountains in the background, this Unesco World Heritage-listed waterfront district is also known as ‘the Wharf’. Made up of lopsided, colourful, wooden buildings, these now 58 restaurants and boutiques date back to 1702 (after a fire burnt down the original buildings) and originally housed the fishermen that had worked and lived here since the 12th century. The buildings are truly beautiful and you could easily pass a day here, sitting in the sunshine and enjoying a drink or bite to eat on the waterfront.
We then checked in at our hotel: Det Haseatiske Hotel. This special little hotel is near the waterfront and is the only hotel in Bergen to be housed inside the old timber buildings of the Bryggen. It’s creaky, uneven, and brilliant! If you’re visiting this area, definitely try and stay a night here.
One of the first things to do in Bergen is to take the Flobanen Furnicular to the top of a nearby mountain, for views across Bergen – once the capital of Norway. The views are breathtaking, allowing you to see Bergen’s unique location, surrounded by seven hills and seven fjords. The walks around here are also worthwhile and we found a crystal-clear lake and great forest trail, back down into Bergen. En-route you’ll pass lots of colourful, timber-clad houses and cobble-stone lanes, which just add to the whole feel of the place.
Another thing to do in Bergen is most definitely a Fjord tour. Bergen is known as a ‘gateway’ to the Fjords and tours are easy to come by. We booked onto the popular ‘Norway in a Nutshell Tour’, which included a train journey and Fjord journey. We set off bright and early on a breath-taking train ride from Bergen to Voss, past crystal clear lakes and tiny villages. We then got on a (predictably, immaculate) bus to Gudvagen, where we began our boat tour up the spectacular fjords to Flam. It’s difficult to describe just how beautiful the fjords are. It’s almost surreal. The water is icy-blue and reflects perfectly the enormous mountains and hills surrounding you. It’s so peaceful (aside from the greedy squawky seagulls!) and fresh, that I could happily have spent a few days on that boat. Anyone who goes to Norway must make sure they do a boat tour! At the other end, we got off at Flam and began a famous railway journey through snowy hilltops and past ice-cold waterfalls. The whole day was perfect.
As we were only there for a few days, we didn’t have a huge amount of time to fit much else in. But I would definitely recommend visiting the Bergen museum and Leprosy museum (why not?!), along with as many walks around the hills that surround Bergen as possible. A word or warning, Bergen, as with the whole of Norway, is expensive. I enjoyed a lovely £18 glass of wine! But it is most definitely worth it. Norway, I love you!
Seville: the land of flamenco, tapas and terrifying marriage proposals
Posted on October 12, 2014
So, I (Claire) have just got back from four amazing days in Seville; the city that has knocked Barcelona off the top spot as my favourite European city. It is, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been and I dare you to go and not fall in love.
For one, it’s filled with the most amazing buildings, like the well known Seville Cathedral and Real Alcazar, which are completely heavenly. It also offers the most delicious tapas for great prices; you can easily stuff yourself for 10-15 euros. In fact, it’s actually one of the few European city breaks where we haven’t had to eat bread and butter for the month after…
The city is lined with cobbled streets, leading to beautiful flower filled squares of restaurants and quirky shops. Flamenco is also a staple in the city, with venues offering daily flamenco shows. This is another must, but avoid the dinner and show -the food isn’t the best.
Aside from the more obvious tourist spots, which are still beautiful and worth a visit, there were three spots that topped my list:
1) Banas Arabes: These baths are set within a Moroccan riad-style building and are pure heaven. Lit only by candles, the baths consist of four different areas that offer: hot, warm and cold baths, a steam room and huge jacuzzi with sun lounger style seats you can lay back in to enjoy the bubbles! The baths are a perfect spot to come for a soak and relax. There’s also an option of a massage if you fancy it!
2) Metropol Parasol: This ‘flying waffle’ is the largest wooden building in the world and sits over one of the traditional shopping squares in Seville. You can pay a few euros to stroll along the panoramic walkway that give you amazing views of the city. It was almost like a giant waffle playground in the sky and a lot of fun!
3) Parque Maria Luisa: My favourite place, however, was Parque Maria Luisa. This is the city’s main park and a place (I imagine) heaven would kind of look like. The park is full of fountains, duck ponds, mosaic tiles, exotic birds, horse and carriages, lakes and picture perfect buildings. We spent a good two hours there exploring the little paths that almost always led to another beautiful sculpture/design of some sort and I can confidently say it was the best way I’ve spent an afternoon in a long time.There was something, however, that happened in the park that may make me a little bias towards this lovely place…
Towards the end of our visit to the park, I noticed my boyfriend’s palm was getting increasingly sweaty and his strange advances to keep hugging me were getting kind of awkward. Now, for anyone who has told you that a marriage proposal is beautiful and joyous, they’re lying (or more confident of change than I am). For me, the next five minutes of my life in that park were potentially some of the most terrifying of my entire life. Before I knew what was happening, and before the flight or fight mode kicked, my boyfriend was on the floor, asking me to move from the happy world of girlfriend to adult world of fiancé. It was bloody scary and although I managed a ‘yes’, the whole event resulted in me having to put my head between my legs to stop myself vomiting into the beautiful fountain behind me.
It was a pretty surreal experience but the beautiful park was the perfect place for a proposal (if any men are reading this!)
So, aside from my irrational reaction to a marriage proposal, Seville turned out to be a total gem of a city that you really must visit! With great food, beautiful buildings, cobbled streets, mesmerising flamenco and glorious sunshine, you can’t really go wrong, so go, go! And if you see a little bench by a fountain in Parque Maria Luisa, think of me!
Marrakech: the Tale of One Bad Egg
Posted on September 30, 2014
Marrakech is an incredible place to visit. Endless mazes of souks; bright vibrant colours; the amazing smells of spices and burning oils; magic lantern shops; flying carpet shops; snake charmers and fortune tellers, all ensure that Marrakech is a sensory overload for any visitor. I loved it.
Marrakech is split into two parts: an old town at the centre (think winding passageways, souks and donkeys) and a modern town on the outside (big hotels, business plazas and fast cars). To make sure we truly experienced the place, we chose to stay in the old town, in a traditional ‘Riad’ and stayed at the incredible Riad Dixneuf La Ksour, which I could not recommend enough. This place is an oasis!
We spent our first few days there exploring the old town and, like typical tourists, were royally ripped off. A word of warning: you will be invited into an endless amount of ‘apothecaries’, which sell oils and powders for every single ailment. Once inside, you will be given samples of lots of beautiful smelling things: amber, frankincense, rose water etc and told how they will transform your life. Excited, we naturally bought everything. However, once we got home, we realised the sample they showed us and the actual items we took home were VERY different. I actually have no idea what they were. I tried to burn the frankincense and it smelt like burning petrol. I rubbed the ‘amber’ perfume on my neck and got a really great rash. Oh.
Whilst in Marrakech, I would definitely recommend taking a few trips out. For a small amount of money, we took a car to amazing places like Aït Benhaddou – a town built into a red, sandy hillside; we saw the Kazbah were Churchill used to spend nights being seduced by exotic Moroccan dancers; and visited the Atlas mountains and froze to death. The landscape in Morocco is breathtaking – a lot like Mars, so it’s worth a visit.
On our last day, in Marrakech, however, everything went drastically wrong. We were on a trip to the mountains and stopped off by a small restaurant by the side of the road. Once there, we were shown to our table where, surprisingly, food was ready and waiting. Now, I am not sure how long that food had been there, but I noticed a lot of flies on mine. However being British and overly-polite, I decided to gently waft the flies away and went for it. It seemed to be a chicken/eggy dish and it tasted weird. Right then, I knew I was going down. A few hours later, on a dark, rainy taxi ride back down the Atlas mountains, I began to sweat. A lot. My stomach began to make some very disturbing noises and was churning. The taxi driver declared I was hungry and kindly gave me half a chocolate bar. I forced it down and held back the retches. By the next day and our flight home, I knew something was definitely wrong. To cut a long story short, I had salmonella – salmonella that lasted nearly three months and included highlights such as: 9 visits to the doctor, 3 trips to the hospital, drinking 2 litres of laxative and one procedure I am still not ready to talk about. Perhaps ever.
I loved Marrakech and would recommend it to anyone. But sometimes one experience travelling seems to taint a place and unfortunately for me, I shall ever equate beautiful Morocco with a bad egg and the time my digestive tract took me on an adventure I would never like to repeat.
Bucket list let downs
Posted on September 16, 2014
After reading a recent article by The New Yorker’s Rebecca Mead, Kicking the Bucket List, it got us thinking about our own bucket list let downs and why steering clear of some of the guide books ‘Top 10s’ is probably a good idea.
To prove a point, here’s a round up of our Top 5 bucket list let downs:
1) Vatican, Rome: Now, it may just have been the intense 40 degree heat but touring the Vatican was not exactly how we pictured it. In fact, the Sistine chapel experience wasn’t a whole lot different to trying to get on the tube in rush hour. Hoards of heavily sweating tourists, packed into one room, with guards SHUSHING you every 30 seconds is not quite the awe inspiring experience your guide books lead you to believe. After several elbow punches to the face and awkward sweaty encounters, we gave up trying to look at the ceiling and went and sat in a corner with a Japanese couple who were having a nap. The fact that we remember more about the napping Japanese couple than the chapel itself probably speaks for itself. This experience also taught us that we will never, ever again do a group audio tour.
2) Koh Samui, Thailand (aka the Tenerife of SE Asia): How half the population of the UK have found their way to a small island off Thailand, we do not know, but they have. The ‘paradise’ beaches of this island were filled with squabbling families, deflated lilos and beer bottles. If you squinted a bit, you really could have been in Tenerife (sorry for any Tenerife lovers out there). The only real memory of this trip was the constant playing of Michael Buble ‘Home’ in all bars and restaurants, which was quite ironic really.
3) Marrakesh, Morocco: This probably isn’t Marrakesh’s fault, but this entire trip was ruined by the worst salmonella poisoning (probably) in living history and several trips to the hospital. Chicken with flies on it. Yay!
4) Gondola ride, Venice: A must, right? Cruising down the canals of Venice, clutching the hand of your loved one. Umm, not so much. After being charged a small fortune just to get on the gondola and enduring the awkward silence of our gondolier who only spoke when he asked if he could have a Pringle (he actually ate half the pack), we were kind of glad to get off and enjoy Venice by foot…and alone.
5) Swimming with dolphins, Jamaica: This was already a controversial bucket list addition because let’s face it, dolphins are not on this planet to be endlessly half-mounted by humans and ‘ridden’ around a small circular pool. However, we gave it a go in Jamaica….and we really wished we hadn’t. The only memory from this event was the disappointed/disgusted faces of two dolphins as they slowly dragged two overweight individuals the length of the pool. We got out shortly after that and tried to erase the memory, immediately.
So, not the best bucket list experiences. Thinking about it, when we look back at most of our travels, a lot of our highlights really don’t come from bucket list destinations or experiences, in fact hardly any of them do. For example, we’re sure that visiting a pitch-black, slightly creepy, public toilet in Sicily where Laura weed all the way down her leg in a panic to get out, probably isn’t in the Lonely Planet guide, but it’s one of the most memorable and entertaining memories of our trip there!
Moral of this blog post? Try going bucketlist-less every now and again, you’re not missing out on much!
What makes a traveller?
Posted on August 16, 2014
We like to travel. And we like travel blogs. We love to read about the adventures and experiences of these talented bloggers; people who have well and truly seized the day and are courageously wandering our globe, with just a Go-Pro and Instagram account.
These people are who we consider to be ‘real’ travellers. They haven’t been home in months; they have friends on every continent and they make travelling, and all the uncertainty that comes with it, look easy peasy, light and breezy.
We are not this sort of ‘real’ traveller. With a mild (strong) disposition towards worrying, a burning desire to prepare elaborate itineraries for every trip and a mounting unease about flying, we potentially, and maybe are, terrible travellers.
But yet we still love to travel. In fact, we love, love LOVE to travel!
We both work 9-5 and build travel into our lives as frequently as possible. Does this make us any less of a ‘traveller’? We don’t think so. We’ve seen a fair bit of the world so far and although we haven’t had any profound “life-changing” moments (aside from Laura’s encounter with Salmonella), we wanted to share our experiences of travel and where it takes us.
So, if you want to follow our thoughts on all things travel (and possibly sometimes the more mundane), keep with us! We hope this blog will encourage people to find a way to travel that suits them. We’re pretty sure anyone can see the world if they want to, it’s just a matter of working out how you want to do it.
C&L
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Twins that travel 