The travel blog that never was

When I first came to the UK in March 2000, as a completely naive 20-year old, I had big travel plans for my 2 years in Europe.  That didn't pan out so well and I only managed to get to Paris (yuck!), New York, Cyprus and Egypt before going home again nearly 3 years later. 

I never really thought about what held me back from doing all the travelling that I wanted to do during that time.  I know for sure that I felt slightly held back by people in my life who, though no fault of their own, didn't necessarily want to see the world as much as I did, but further than that, I'm not sure what happened to my usual, steadfast 'stay if you want to, but I'm going' nature.  The difference for me was that I was on a visa and my time was limited - which is what, in later years, made me so resentful of the fact that I hadn't felt able to do what I wanted to do at the time.  And so I returned back to SA, fully prepared for my new life in Cape Town, but also a little annoyed that I had never got to Switzerland!  It was one place I had always wanted to go.

When I arrived back in the UK in March 2005, I had learnt to do things for me and didn't intend to waste any time at all.  I had no travel buddy, but that didn't stop me.  And so I found myself in Krakow, Poland - completely on my own, not knowing a word of Polish and not having a clue how to even ask the cabbie to take me into town!  Nor, indeed, how to ask anyone once I was in town how to get a cab back to my B&B!  I remember wandering around at about 10pm in a busy Krakow town square, desperately trying to find a taxi rank.  I eventually went into a bookshop and stood helplessly, watching everybody in the queue happily buying their books and shouted out 'does anyone speak any English?'  I still can't believe I did that and I laugh at myself every time I think about it, but it was the only thing I knew to do in that moment.  Getting the cabbie to understand where my B&B was is another story completely!  The following day, I was off to Auschwitz, but having learnt my lesson, I asked the receptionist at the B&B to order my cab for me and let the driver know that I wanted to go to the bus station.  I remember getting into the bus station and then thinking 'here we go again!  How on earth am I going to find the bus that goes to Oświęcim?'  I wandered around like a lost soul for a while, not understanding a word on any of the information boards and suddenly - like in one of those cartoons where you hear harps playing and angels singing - I heard someone speaking English!!  And not only that, they were asking which bus to catch to get to the same place I was headed!  I could have kissed them right there and then.  (I didn't though).  As it happened, they were a group of backpackers who had come to Krakow separately, but met at the hostel they were staying at and all decided to take this day trip together and they were only too happy to allow one more into their fold.  I've never done anything like that in my life before or since, but I wouldn't change it for the world. I had spent my first 2 1/2 year stint in the UK not travelling anywhere and I was absolutely determined not to let the fact that I didn't have anyone to travel with get me down or stop me going to where I wanted to go.  After Poland, I went to Italy, where I stayed with a family friend in Venice.  A friendly face!  I was so ill with flu at the time, I could barely function properly, but I soldiered on and took in my first taste of Italy - an experience which I recently had the priviledge of doing all over again with Dave on our 2nd wedding anniversary.  After Venice, it was off to Aberdeen in Scotland and then, eventually, off to Dublin where I was to settle for the next 6 months to live and work.

After my stint in Ireland - one of the best experiences of my life and the place where I met one of my closest friends - I came back to the UK in September 2005 and I have been here ever since.  Being a single mid-20-something, gave me the opportunity to do what I wanted and go where I wanted.  I went to see the Running of the Bulls in Spain and to Ostend, Antwerp & Bruges in Belgium.  I went to New York and California, which is still to this day, one of the best holidays I have ever been on.  My friend and I walking, cruising, bussing, training, tramming, cabbing and flying it around Hollywood, Las Vegas, San Francisco, San Diego and Orange County - I was in my element! Especially since the TV show 'The OC' was, like, the coolest show on TV at the time and we were there!  2006 also saw a very memorable (some might say epic) girls weekend in Amsterdam.  I loved every second of it!  I was finally seeing the places I had wanted to see since first venturing out of South Africa in 2000.

During all of this, I used to send through update e-mails to my family to keep them informed of what I'd been up to.  Most of them will tell you that they groaned every time one landed in their inbox, because it would inevitably take about an hour to read!  They are infamous in our family - but I loved sending them!  I loved writing them, I loved re-living the experiences I was describing and I loved knowing that my family (if they read them!) would get a little taste of what I had been doing.  And so, as technology advanced, so did I and I started a travel blog.  But as I said in my opening blog entry, I wasn't very good at keeping up with them!  I have started about 3 travel blogs in the past few years, from very basic ones to fancy ones which plot your travels on a map of the globe... you name it, I've tried it, but I just never kept up with them and always resorted to the good old 'update e-mail'.

When I met Dave, we spent most of our first date talking about where we'd travelled and it was a complete revelation to be sitting across from someone who had been bitten as badly by the travel bug as I had.  He was far better travelled than I was at that point though, not to mention the fact that he could speak - some fluently, others not - about 13 different languages! (He's now up to about 17 at last count).  Now we may not support the same rugby or cricket teams, my dad may never be able to get him into a Springbok jersey (nor him me into an England one!), we may argue about the correct pronunciation of 'yoghurt' (it's YOW-gurt) and we may have differing opinions on my footwear BUT, we both love seeing the world and everything that's in it.  A little while ago I started creating photobooks of all of our trips and although I'm a little behind - okay, a LOT behind! - we have started amassing a lovely collection of memories which are out on our bookcase for our friends and family to see, rather than being stored away on a hard drive somewhere.  Creating the photobooks has the same effect on me as writing the update e-mails did.  I love doing them, because it reminds me that I'm finally doing what I've wanted since I first came to the UK - I'm travelling to gorgeous places with the person I most want to be seeing them with.

So in the interests of keeping up the legacy of all of those lost travel blogs, here is an archive of the trips that Dave and I have done since we met in February 2007.  Any trips from now on will have the honour of having their own blog entry!

Brace yourselves... it's a long list!

Family holiday in the UK, August 2012
Winchester, Stratford-upon-Avon, Isle of Wight

South Africa, May 2012
Part 1, Part 2

Italy, December 2011
Venice

South Africa, November 2011
Part 1, Part 2

Lichtenstein & Switzerland, September 2011
Lichtenstein, Switzerland

Morocco, May 2011
Atlas Mountains, Aït Ben Haddou & Ouarzazate, Marrakech

Turkey, April 2011
Part 1, Part 2

Norway, April 2011
Stavanger

Isle of Wight, March 2011
Photos

Dorset, March 2011
Photos

Bath, February 2011
Photos

Italy, February 2011
Rome, Vatican

South Africa, December 2010
Photos, Cape Town & Winelands

Estonia, December 2010
Tallinn

USA, October 2010
New Jersey, New York, Philedelphia 

Italy, September 2010
Naples, Herculaneum, Pompeii, Capri, Sorrento

Hungary, August 2010
Budapest, Danube

Ireland roadtrip, March 2010
Ring of Kerry & Dingle, Kilkenny, Cork & Blarney, Galway & Connemara, Donegal, Sligo & Mayo, Belfast & Co. Antrim, Giant's Causeway

Holland, February 2010
Amsterdam & The Hague

Honeymoon in Zanzibar, December 2009
Part 1, Part 2

Belgium, November 2009 
Bruges, Ghent

USA, July 2009
New Jersey

Denmark & Sweden, May 2009
Copenhagen, Malmo

South Africa, March 2009
Photos

Germany & Switzerland, November 2008
Baden Baden, Basel, Zurich

Ireland, October 2008
Photos

South Africa, August 2008
Photos, Drakensberg, Lesotho

France & Belgium, February 2008
Brussels & Lille

South Africa December 2007/January 2008
Ushaka, Addo, Garden Route 1, Garden Route 2, Cape Town, Durban

Poland, May 2007
Krakow