Our Travels

We flew into Crete from London, arriving quite late at the quirky little Heraklion airport. We’d arranged a transfer as part of the booking, and we were pleased to find it was a very comfortable, well air conditioned, leather seated Mercedes Minibus – these things are important to me! First Impressions The transfer was only 25km and we arrived at what we knew to be a private peninsular – indeed the gates were firmly shut! The peninsular is adjacent to…

I remember my parents talking fondly about their boating trips to the Norfolk Broads in the 50’s and 60’s, so trying it for myself has been on my agenda for many years. Interestingly, once we’d booked it, everyone I spoke to who has been described it as one of their best ever holidays, and those who hadn’t almost universally said it is something they want to do one day.  Little wonder then that over 3 million people holiday in the…

We’ve not had a boating holiday before, so when good friends of ours were thinking of booking their next trip on the Norfolk Broads, we decided to join them. The lovely thing about the Norfolk Broads is that it’s an easy introduction to boating, there’s 120 miles of waterways and no locks to deal with. We had booked a 35ft Brinks Concerto for our week, with two double cabins and two bathrooms. As we had choice of cabins, we went…

We were looking forward to eating out at a few pubs during our tour of the Southern Broads. We managed 6 during our week, and had some fabulous meals as well as tasting local ales. The pubs are listed in the order that we visited them. The Maltsers, Ranworth Ranworth is a picture postcard setting, there’s a village green with a local shop, and the tower of St. Helen’s church peaks out from the trees. The Maltsers is visible from…

Our first night in Barcelona was spent in the Best Western Hotel Alfa Aeropuerto which is the closest hotel to the airport, they offer a free shuttle bus from the airport to the hotel door but for ease we jumped in to one of the many taxis that queue at the front of the airport doors for a flat 20 EUR fee. We took a quick dip in the indoor pool and whilst we had it to ourselves it was…

The Mercat de la Boqueria, also known as the Mercat de Sant Josep is a magnet for tourists. This superb food market is situated between La Rambla and the plaza of Sant Josep, it’s a busy, bustling and vibrant place. We tried twice during the afternoon and again in the evening to find vacant stools at one of the tapas bars in La Boqueria, without success. So that mission remains top of our list for our next visit to Barcelona.…

We chose to stay at the 4* H10 Mediterranean Village hotel in Cap Salou for 2 nights as part of our short break in Barcelona. There are a few H10 hotels in the area, but this one had good family reviews and an interesting pirate boat themed pool for our granddaughter to play in. We only needed bed & breakfast accommodation, but we upgraded to half board, as the extra cost was just £30 for the 5 of us. We…

The boys were excited about visiting the brand new Ferrari Land during our trip to Barcelona, which opened on the 7th April 2017. Ferrari Land is the newest of the three theme parks at PortAventura in Salou and a €100 million euro investment, the water park Caribe Aquatic was the second development which opened in 2000. At the moment you can’t pay a single entry to visit Ferrari Land, it is combined with PortAventura on 1-3 day tickets, plus the…