Some of my ''I can't believe I am actually seeing this'' travel moments!

As I traveller, someone who lives to travel and who's whole world is about travelling, I have a few memories whilst travelling of stopping and thinking ''I am so lucky to be seeing this right now'' and ''I can't believe I am experiencing this''.  So I thought I would share some of them with you.

1.  Sydney Opera House, Australia


After a long morning taking a train from my friends house in Mount Evelyn to Melbourne City Centre, from there the SkyBus to Melbourne Airport, waiting 4 hours for my delayed flight to Sydney and then the flight from Melbourne to Sydney, I was pretty tired by the time I got onto the train from Sydney Airport to the city centre. So I found a chair in a quiet area of the train and lay my head against the window, half dozing.  About 10 minutes into the journey something made me look up.  And there, right in front of me, was the Sydney Opera House!  It is a landmark I have wanted to see pretty much my whole life and was just so excited to be standing in front of it, I actually got all teary-eyed.  What a beautiful sight!

2. My First Kangaroo and Koala!!

There are 2 things which I really wanted to see whilst in Australia, a Kangaroo and a koala.  I was fortunate enough to see kangaroos at Melbourne Zoo, Australia Zoo as well as roaming the streets randomly in Queensland!  I even got to eat some kangaroo meet at my Aussie BBQ birthday bash and it is delicious!!  I got to hold a koala at Australia Zoo, Queensland which was a very special experience.

3.  Manchester United Stadium, Manchester England

Although I'm not a big sports fan at all, I figured a visit to Manchester would not be complete without a visit to Old Trafford to see the Manchester United Stadium.  It is huge!!!

4. Loch Ness, Scotland


This has to be one of the most breathtaking views in the world!  The whole drive from Glasgow to Loch Ness I had my face right up against the bus window just trying to take it all in.

5. Loch Lomond, Scotland

Not far behind Loch Ness in the beauty department, Loch Lomond also took my breath away!  So much so that I returned the following year to see it all again.  

6. FatBoySlim

International artists coming to visit South Africa as a rare occurance, so when I was invited to see FatBoySlim by my good friend Lisa, I was pretty stoked.  It was at one of London's most popular annual festivals, SW4.  Also playing was Carl Cox, who was also awesome as well as Armand van Helden.  It poured with rain, but we still pushed our way right to the front till we were bare metres away from FatBoy himself.  This day definately goes down as one of the best days of my life!!

Perry Sand Hills, Australia

During my time visiting my friend in Australia, we did a 3 day road trip from Melbourne up to the border of Victoria and New South Wales, to a small town called Mildura.  So small town in fact, that it had not even registered on our GPS.  Because of this, we really struggled to find our motel, we were not even sure which state it was in!  Turns out it was in New South Wales, right next to the Murray River!  Once we got to the motel, we were greeted in our room by a delightful lizzard and a frog!  Being the girls that we are, we got the manager to come and remove them :)

The next morning we were not too sure what to do with our day and so headed down to the tourist information centre who gave us a brochure about a small town nearby called Wentworth.  Whilst paging through the brochure, I spotted a picture of some beautiful sand hills so I asked about them and the assistant said they were only about 10 minutes drive out of the town, literally in the middle of no where.  We decided to head down there and well, WOW!!!

Literally in the middle of a wide open field are these huge high sand dunes, made of amazing orange sand.  We quickly parked and headed off to climb them.  I had to try and climb the sand dunes with summer shoes on (a bit of a challenge) because of the snake risk in Australia.  There were random (very random!!) watermelons growing in the sand at some parts.  The views from the top of the sand dunes were just breathtaking and climbing these dunes and looking out from the top was definately one of those ''Aaaah, I cannot believe I'm actually experiencing this'' travel moments.

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow....

With my entire life's experience of snow having been everyone freaking out ''its snowing in Cape Town'' and the whole city jumping in their cars and driving 2 hours away to Ceres, where it had in fact only snowed on the very tips of the mountains and you couldn't get to with a car, I was rather excited to be in a country where it does in fact SNOW.

My first experience of snow was in 2009, about two weeks before I was meant to go to South Africa on a holiday.  It had started snowing very heavily up north, to the point that they had closed some of the airports, and they were expecting it to hit London at any moment.  The first bit of 'snow' we got, I did in fact freak out and think it was amazing, but it was actually only sleet!! Check out these pics

About a week later though, I came out of my tube station at work to find Leytonstone (the part of London where I lived) completely submerged in snow!  Whilst all my housemates were huddled around the radiators, I put on my gloves and jacket to go build a snow man!  I was sooooo excited!!  Check these pics out :)

I was pretty lucky, as the week I was actually meant to fly to SA for holidays, most flights out of Heathrow were cancelled because of the snow.  Mine was one of the first to take off on time, so that was really lucky!

In 2010, the snow started very early in the year and this time posed some issues in getting to work as I took an overground train to get to my job, not the tube.  I was still very excited though and we even took all the children to the park to play in the snow, which was amazing!!  Another day we took them snow sledging, and since they were little, we had to go in the sledge with them, no complaints here!!  What a fantastic experience, snow sledging for the first time ever!!

I got quite emotional at the possibility of having an actual white Christmas, how lucky would I be!!

Here are some great shots of the 2010 snow.

Here is an interesting comparison of the exact same park....

Soooooo, all I can say from sunny South Africa this year is....I'm dreaming of a white Christmas!!

Hyde Park Winter Wonderland

Every year around Christmas time, Hyde Park hosts a month long family fair called the Hyde Park Winter Wonderland.  I went to it at the end of 2009 with a friend from work, Rico, and had a great time, so I made plans to go again in 2010 with my friend Lisa.  We decided to make it an all day thing so we met up at 2pm.  It was freezing cold (at least minus 6 degrees) but we arrived with our layers on and braved the cold. 

The first thing we did was buy some gluwyn, a warm red wine with spiced, which did the trick in warming us up!!  We then looked at what all there was to go and we decided to go on a ride called The Black Hole, which was pretty much a cart that you sit in which goes into a huge dome which is pitch dark inside.  As the cart went up the ramp, you could see an amazing view of London which was pretty special.  The ride was fun and different from any other I had done before.  After that we went to look at some of the shops and another friend joined us for some more drinks.  We then went on another ride which was a seat which hung from a rollercoaster, also quite fun.

I can remember sitting on the bench by the stalls in the freezing cold and just feeling so unbelievably grateful to be there.  The atmosphere of a winter Christmas with all the carols playing and everyone walking around so happy cannot possibly be described, but there was nowhere else in the world that I would rather have been at that time.  I said to Lisa, ‘’if it starts to snow now, my life will be complete.‘’  (I had to wait until the next day for the snow)

Lisa completed her shopping by buying a big Banksy panda with the pistols, or as she called it the ‘’£35 pandaaaaa’’.  Afterwards we went for a drink at The Bell and Compass in Trafalgar Square before heading home.  The journey home took about 2 hours, as I had completely forgotten that a tube strike had started at 6pm and so I ended up taking a bus home (well several buses) and getting home just before 1am.  But it was so worth it!!!

My First English Footy Match

So I am not into sports at all, and definitely not football.  But I figured since I am in England and am passionate about the country, as may as well give them some support on their matches.  So my friend from work Giulia and I decided to go watch the England vs USA game.  We met up in Leicester Square and walked around to a few pubs to see who was showing it and eventually ended up at Leicester Square O’Neills.  There was a great crowd and they had set up a big screen for us to watch on.  Giulia and I managed to get a spot to sit right at the front and once we had our ciders and my England flag which I had brought along, we were all set for the game.

The team spirit in the place was amazing and everyone was singing war cries which I had to learn pretty quickly!!  Quite early into the game, England scored their first goal and the crowd went nuts!!  Was such a great feeling to be a part of that.  Not quite as much as when USA scored!!

Afterwards, Giulia and I were pretty hungry so we headed off to KFC and for some reason we still haven’t figured out, we decided to order a Family Bucket, thinking that we could finish it all!!  Needless to see we didn’t even get through half of the food! 

It was a great night out and really amazing to be part of the English team spirit!!