Twins that travel
Identical twins exploring the globe
The Isle of Skye
Posted on November 11, 2014
When you think of Scotland, you automatically think of rugged mountains; red and purple moss; lonely lochs; cobble beaches and possibly unpredictable rainy weather. Now imagine all of that, packaged up, and put onto one Island: and you’ll have the Isle of Skye.
The Isle of Skye is Scotland’s biggest island, roughly 50 miles long. Apparently its name comes from the old Norse word – ‘sky-a’, meaning ‘cloud island’, which I think summarises the place quite nicely. Clouds, mist and fog hang over this pretty island, covering its most famous mountains, the Cuillen range, throughout most of the day. It has a dreamy feel to it and is nothing short of magical.
After the longest drive of my life (I know that anyone from America or Australia will think this isn’t a long journey) but 10 hours in a car, with a very excited dog, was endless. Once we got to Skye, we had no phone signal, the weather was rainy and blowing a gale, and there were some fairly tense conversations going on regarding directions. But once we made it to where we were staying, all was forgotten as this place was beautiful! A converted chapel, we had panoramic views over Loch Harport, complete with a bath tub overlooking the mountains and a sauna!
The next day we set about organising what we were going to do and decided to firstly visit the Quiraing. Our guide book described this as Skye’s ‘most remarkable scenery’ and it definitely didn’t disappoint. After a few thousand years of slipping cliffs and an ice age, the Quiraing is made up of huge jagged pinnacles, sunken lakes and rocky mountains. We spent three hours exploring the area and it was breathtakingly beautiful. A definite must see for anyone visiting Skye.
The afternoon we spent in a pub in Portree (don’t judge) in front of a big old fire, before heading back home for a sauna. Portree has a very pretty little harbour – one that commonly comes up on Instagram, but aside from that is quite quiet (aside from the local gaggle of elderly boozers!)
We were up bright and early the next morning for more adventures. The weather was amazing so I (Laura) thought I would nip out quickly to do some early morning photography. I saw a mossy hill and decided, for reasons unknown to me, that I should definitely climb it. However, what I thought was a mossy hill was some sort of bog – a really boggy bog. I sunk quite quickly to my shins and I won’t lie – thought I was about to meet my death on the hills of Skye. I went into panic mode within about 5 seconds and grabbed madly at the bush next to me. I might even have cried. After 10 minutes hours, I freed myself and trudged back home, soaking wet but trying to style it out as locals drove past. So a word of warning – don’t trust any soft looking hills in Skye.
After my near death experience, we then explored two places I was desperate to visit: Fairy Glen and the Fairy Pools. Just south of Uig, the Fairy Glen is a surreal place. It’s almost like a miniature Machu Picchu. Full of miniature hills, pinnacles, tumble down cottages, little trees, and small streams, it’s a little bit like someone took Skye’s landscape and shrunk it. It’s amazing! It reminded me of a film set from The Hobbit and we spent a good three hours there.
In full fairy swing, we then headed to the fairy pools, close to Carbost. Backing onto Skye’s enormous Cuillen mountain range, the fairy pools are the product of an enormous waterfall, which you can follow for an hour or so. Each pool is made up of crystal clear water and surrounded by purple moss and flowers. At the top, there are some bigger plunge pools, which you can swim in during the summer. Like all of Skye, it was beautiful!
This blog post will never do Skye justice. It’s an insanely beautiful place: quiet; peaceful; serene and other-wordly. Scattered with bizarre but beautiful landscape, pubs (we ate a LOT) and with the smell of wood smoke always in the air, Skye is now firmly in my top three destinations. It was well worth the never-ending drive there and even worth the dog throwing up on me after one bendy road too many.
So my advice? Get to Skye!
Autumn in England
Posted on November 1, 2014
Well, true to our word, we went out today and enjoyed England in all its bloody autumn loveliness! We’ll be putting together an Oxford travel tips blog next week, but for now enjoy this beautiful scene from Lincoln College!
What’s wrong with home?
Posted on October 28, 2014
This is a question we’ve been pondering for a while and one we haven’t really gotten to the bottom of… Last weekend, I (Laura) went on a little trip to the Peak District (UK). Was I bursting with excitement? No. Would I have been bursting with excitement if I was getting on a plane somewhere else? Yes (aside from the flying terror we’ve blogged about before).
Peak District
It was, however, something of a revelatory weekend for me. No passports, security checks, smelly planes, or terrifying few hours floating in the skies – just a short drive and voila: I was somewhere completely new. We stayed in the cosiest cottage and spent the weekend enjoying long dog walks and pub dinners. By the end, I felt totally relaxed and no different to if I had spent the weekend far away. What was also surprising (to me) was that my weekend pics on Instagram were hugely popular. Whilst I thought they were OK, verging on boring, people genuinely love them. To me, they were pictures of some fields, cottages and cows – British stuff we see most days. But to others they were a world away from where they are and so exciting. Maybe even beautiful?! We both lived and studied in Oxford for a few years, another place that although beautiful, isn’t somewhere we would choose to visit regularly. Yet, ironically, people travel thousands and thousands of miles to see the dreaming spires every summer. It’s frustrating not to be able to see what they can see.
Peak District
So, the moral of this slightly rambling blog? Although travel is amazing – it also takes the magic away from home. We get so fixated with other places, we forget that where we live is pretty special in itself. And what better way to beat the post-travel blues then by genuinely enjoying the sites and sounds of your own home? We’ve therefore decided to persevere with trying to see a little more of the country we live in, through the eyes of a tourist. In fact, we’ve decided to make a new years resolution to explore more of the UK next year, and try to appreciate what we have on our doorstep*. In the meantime, if anyone has any tips on enjoying your own country and satisfying the “itchy feet” problem without leaving home, let us know (you’ll save us a fortune). *Although, let’s add a disclaimer here that we will still be travelling to other lands. There’s not enough sunshine in the UK to cope with the entire year.
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!
Fiskardo Fabulousness
Posted on September 17, 2014
As summer draws to an end *cry* we thought we’d share with you another little piece of paradise we stumbled across on our travels.
Fiskardo is a tiny village located in the north of Kefalonia island (Greece). This colourful, happy little place consists of a handful of restaurants and hotels nestled round a cove of clear-sea. We stayed in a lovely villa just up the road from the main town and had probably the most relaxing week of our lives there. Although there isn’t a huge amount to do there other than float around in a pool and enjoy the town’s loveliness, here’s a little list of suggestions of what to do:
Myrtos beach
1) Located a mile or so down the road from Fiskardo is the famous Myrtos beach, which is as dreamy as it looks! We should probably put a disclaimer here that the road leading up to this beach and onwards to Fiskardo is bloody terrifying. We spent most of the time with our bums clenched, sweating profusely as we made our way here. It is, however, completely worth it!
2) The highlight of our stay here was renting a little boat for the day and setting off on a mini-adventure, with a picnic, round the coves that can only be accessed by sea. Chugging along these coves was probably one of the best travel memories we’ve squirreled away so far and is definitely a must if you do visit here!
Cove hunting!
3) Assos village: this secluded village sits at the bottom of a windy road (more bum clenching) and sits in a horse-shoe shape round a clear sea. We came here for an evening and fell in love with this sleepy little place. The fresh seafood is delicious and the sunset over the little bay is beautiful.
The only downside to Fiskardo is the cost, we’re not going to lie, it’s a bit of a killer price wise. This was explained in the evenings, when we would watch little dinghies of glamorous people arrive ashore from their private yachts…we don’t have a private yacht. To confirm this, when aboard our tiny boat for the day, we chugged past a yacht called Pelorus once owned by Roman Abramovich. It was hideously large and confirmed that we were probably the poorest people in Fiskardo. Don’t let this put you off though, it’s worth it, even if you live off bread and water for a few months.
Scopello, Sicily: a hidden gem
Posted on September 14, 2014
After a lot of research into Sicily and realising there’s some pretty expensive hot spots, including Taormina, we stumbled across a beautiful villa located in the north-west corner of the island in a tiny hamlet called Scopello.
If avoiding tourist traps, like us, is high on your prority list when travelling (we know, snobs), Scopello is the perfect place to visit in Sicily. Sitting just above the sea, there’s not a huge amount to it other than a small square with a delicious bakery and a few restaurants. What makes Scopello, however, is its picturesque swimming spot that looks like something out of a postcard.
We ambled on down to this spot one weekend, when it was rammed with beautifully bronzed Sicilians, elegantly diving off the cove’s rugged rocks….it was like we had entered a scene out of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. Although feeling a little inadequate with our pale skin and inability to dive, we spent a lovely afternoon here, thanking our lucky stars we hadn’t shelled out a load of money to hang out with half of Europe in Taormina!
So, if you’re looking for “real” Sicily at half the price of the east of the island, take a look at sleepy yet perfect Scopello!
The South of France in a Nutshell
Posted on September 9, 2014
So, it’s now been just over a week since I (Laura) got back from the beautiful Cote d’Azur.
I have wanted to visit the French Riviera for a long time and seeing as it is only a short and fairly cheap journey from the UK, it was an easy place to tick off my bucket list.
That plane journey there was the cheapest part of my trip.
The South of France is expensive. A relatively small piece of coastline sitting pretty on the Mediterranean, it starts past Marseille and ends at the Italian border. According to my guide book, this strip of sparkly sea and palm trees was a popular playground in the 19th Century for rich British and Russian people looking for some Vitamin D. Not a lot has changed.
We landed in Nice and immediately found the Promenade des Anglais (‘the Walkway of the English’), which stretches up and down the beach. Predictably, there was just a lot of English people walking up and down it. We decided to try a bit harder and finally reached the old town in Nice, which is beautiful. Pastel coloured buildings, big tall palm trees and lots of cafes, there are lots of small squares to visit. I’d definitely recommend visiting the Place Rosesetti, which is in the centre of the old town, and Place Garibaldi.
After an afternoon there we headed out to our first hotel in Mougins, a village set back off the coastline. I’ve already reviewed this hotel so I’ll just quickly mention the area.
I would definitely recommend visiting these smaller villages that are scattered across the pine forests of the Cote d’Azur. There are so many in this region that we couldn’t visit them all, but they definitely have some pros over places such as Cannes (lots of burnt tourists and men wearing T-shirts that say: ‘I Love Cannes’, snort). One village definitely worth visiting is Saint-Paul-de-Vence, a medieval town set on a rocky cliff top. Apparently it was a popular place for French actors to waft around during the 60’s and today there are still a lot of artist’s galleries. There are paintings and sculptures everywhere, which gave the place quite a cool feel.
Later on in the week we moved to the other side of the coastline, near Monaco. Monaco didn’t seem to be much to write home about – fast cars, big yachts, all crammed into a little horseshoe bay. My day began by changing into my ‘smart’ clothes behind our car in a hot multi-storey car park and ended with my boyfriend having to ‘go native’ and pee behind a bush in the park, as apparently rich people don’t need public toilets. Needless to say, I’m not sure we were quite at home there. 
Instead, I would recommend heading past Monaco and crossing into Italy. There are so many towns across that coastline and we stopped at San Remo. I imagine in its heyday, San Remo was a little more glitzy. However, if you scamper up the hilly roads to the very top, it has some beautiful views. Plus loads of pizza – what more do you want?!
Our week in the French Riviera cost nearly the same as our trip to Jamaica last year. Is it worth it? Probably. The coastline is beautiful, the weather is amazing and the big grand yellow and pink buildings that grace nearly every town make the Cote d’A
zur everything you think it’ll be -elegant, sophisticated and pretty lovely.
Chocolate and Budapest
Posted on August 19, 2014
One freezing evening in Budapest, we decided to look for somewhere to warm our fingers, toes and noses. So, after a bit of general wandering (Laura had hurt her foot running a few days before, so the wandering was slow, very slow) we found ourselves in a very tiny chocolate shop called Aztek Choxolat.
This cosy little chocolate shop is tucked away up a side street and offers the most delicious range of chocolates, coffees and hot chocolates. This isn’t your normal sort of chocolate, but essentially some sort of magic mixture of melted chocolate, creme and the odd unusual addition, like chilli powder or lavender.
The shop itself is tiny but perfectly formed, with just two or three tables, covered in comfy pillows. The place feels more like your sitting room than a cafe, which we loved.
The selection of chocolates is pretty impressive for such a small shop and the hot chocolates are to die for. We tried a mint hot chocolate and a chilli hot chocolate, accompanied with violet and peppermint chocolates. It was potentially one of the greatest evenings of our lives. We loved it so much, we actually went back again and tried the white hot chocolate and orange hot chocolate. Fatties.
So if you’re knocking about Budapest and need somewhere to warm up over a steaming mug of molten chilli chocolate, make sure you pay this place a visit.
Like Rome? Like tea? Like cats? Say no more….
Posted on August 18, 2014
One afternoon in Rome, we were wandering around the Spanish Steps in the Piazza di Spagna, inhaling gelato on an hourly basis and generally enjoying the sunshine. Life was pretty good. But, as I think is quite normal for Rome in the summer, the sun lost his hat and the storm clouds rolled in. It started to rain, big time.
We made a run for the nearest place we could find and somehow, gloriously, we stumbled across the beautiful Babington’s Tea Room.
Being British, finding a warm, cosy English tea room, in the middle of Rome, was a bit like winning the lottery. This was made all the more better by just how bloody lovely Babington’s is.
It’s a well-known fact that British people cannot survive without a cup of tea. It’s literally our lifeblood. Without it we crumple up and die. So when the English were travelling through Rome in the 19th Century, it was a considerable problem that tea wasn’t readily available. Thankfully (hallelujah) two English women realised the danger of this and so opened Babington’s Tea Room. Et voila, the British were saved.
With over one hundred types of tea to choose from, alongside a selection of amazing cakes, Babington’s is well worth a visit. We tried two pieces of cake: chocolate fudge and passion fruit. Both were amazing. The tea is also served from real silver teapots, each decorated with tiny silver cats – Babington’s trademark icon. Even our spoons had the cute little face of a cat on them. A little bizarrely, the place is decorated like a tropical jungle, complete with fake parrots. Although not quite nothing like England, these decorations still add to the general atmosphere and we happily spent two hours in here, until the rain stopped and our underwear had dried off.
So, the moral of the story? Always carry an umbrella on a hot, humid day in Rome and if you’re in urgent need of a scone and a cup of tea (understandable) then head to Babington’s.
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Twins that travel 