We ducked into Scotland for a week before heading into Europe, to catch up with a few of our old Weegie (& around) friends. Too short of course, so we are heading back for August for a more thorough stay ❤️ We stayed with friends near Gleneagles and ate very well, including our first Baked… Read More A wee visit to Scotland
We flew into Paris for six days of cheese, bread and sightseeing. It is a wonderful city, even with loads of other tourists about. We even managed to catch up with a Canadian friend who happened to be passing through – great timing! We had met her in South America in 2008 and N met… Read More Paris exploration
It all started when I was sound asleep in N’s bag, since I had a long day and was tired. I woke up when I fell out, and my eyes shot open. I was so close to the mud on the road! I was really scared since they were walking away already. I tried to… Read More When Esti went missing (by Esti)
I was sooooo excited about staying at a fancy hotel with a huge pool on our way to Paris. We stopped in Doha, Qatar for a night. It was very hot and windy, so, even though I can’t actually swim, I did get blown into the pool by accident 😱 Luckily, I was rescued and… Read More Esti in Doha (by Esti)
Java’s rival to Paris is the city of Bandung, filled with fashionable uni students, and as it is only 150kms from the capital, it makes for a perfect weekend escape for Jakarta locals. We coincided our visit with a weekend, which wasn’t well planned on our part, and our initial Airbnb accommodation was not very… Read More Paris of Java
A ‘hidden gem’ of Java, Purworkerto was a town we stumbled across from this blog. It seemed like it had a few things to do and we had time, so why not? The tricky thing about hidden gems is that the tourist infrastructure isn’t there, so often you need your own transport and a decent… Read More Purwokerto falls
Who doesn’t want to visit an island paradise with white sands and clear, turquoise water? That’s the promise of Karimunjawa, an undiscovered gem just off the north coast of Java. It’s not easy to get to, there’s no public transport on the island and not much tourist infrastructure. Pre-COVID there were limited flights to the… Read More Get your motor running… (AKA Karimunjawa)
It’s a bucket list item: joining in a lantern release ceremony with hundreds of others. When I realised that we’d timed our Java trip to coincide with this celebration I was pretty chuffed! Java is home to the world’s biggest Buddhist temple at Borobudur and it is where about 90,000 people came to celebrate this… Read More Happy Birthday Buddha!🕯️
This was my first time away from Japan (that I know of at least – I was born in China when I was very young so I don’t remember) and Java has some crazy traffic. Usually I sit in the back and get to play Spotto – but when motorbikes don’t count in the game… Read More Esti in Java (by Esti)
We should preface this post with the fact that theme parks aren’t really our thing. M isn’t really into rides and, personally, I vary between feeling ill/scared, overwhelmed by crowds and being in awe of the magic. But, for the kids, we felt we needed to do one of the three big ones in Japan.… Read More DisneySea
Country Hoppers 