Our Travels

We drove through the spectacular Franschhoek pass to drop down to the Indian Ocean coast and town of Hermanus. Walker Bay is one of the top 12 places in the world to observe whales, this huge bay has been declared as a whale sanctuary and stretches from Hermanus to Gansbaai. We parked on the cliffs and wandered along the footpath, searching the surface of the sea for any sign of whale activity. June is early in the season and sadly…

The 4* picturesque thatched Le Franschhoek Hotel was perfect for our two night stay in the Cape Winelands. Situated 5km outside the village, this wasn’t a problem for us with a hire car, if you’re not driving, the hotel run a courtesy transfer to the village a few times a day, or their concierge offers a private return transfer for R120 per couple. We booked a standard room and was allocated number 16, which was nestled under the thatch. Our…

We were recommended to visit Platea Madrid by some friends. If you enjoy good food, you need to go too! Think for a moment about those food halls large shopping centres sometimes have – the ones where you sit at tables in the centre, and then order your food from different restaurants around the outside. That’s exactly how Platea is, but the difference is instead of fried chicken, burgers and the like, you’re surrounded by top calls restaurants and bars.…

We needed a hotel for an overnight stay at London Heathrow Airport on our journey from Lanzarote to Cape Town. The obvious choice was the Hilton London Heathrow as we were flying out of T4 and this hotel, is the only one with direct access to terminal 4. The Hilton London Heathrow hotel is accessed via a tunnel walkway from departures in T4. It takes around 6 minutes to walk from the airport via the covered footpath to the hotel,…

The Selling Travel Dialogue, in collaboration with Oman’s Ministry of Tourism was held at the Renaissance Manchester city centre hotel in Deansgate. We had two presenters, Kel Patel from Oman Air and Rob Wilson on behalf of the Sultanate of Oman Ministry of Tourism. The big news from Oman Air is that a new daily service will be introduced from Manchester in April 2017, to add to their two flights a day from London. The Manchester flight will will be…

The MS Finnmarken docks for 3.5 hours at Honningsvag on the winter 2016/17 schedule. There were two excursions available, but we decided just to have a wander around the town. Honningsvag is situated on the island of Mageroya, and 34 km from the North Cape. The Nordkapp community has approximately 3,300 inhabitants. I had researched things we could do during our walk about, top of my list was the Artico Icebar. We found the Icebar easily as it’s situated on…

We had 3.5 hours to explore Hammerfest, which is the world’s most Northern town and was raised to the ground by the Germans during the second world war. My first port of call was “Isbjørnklubben”, The Royal and Ancient Polar Bear Society, where I was registered as member no 258291 on behalf of Hurtibear, our furry stowaway. This is an interesting shop will reasonably priced gifts and polar bear museum, entry is free of charge. The membership costs 200 NOK,…