Our Travels

We wanted to experience Sunday brunch in Hong Kong. Whilst many of the 5* hotels offer a Western style brunch buffet, we decided to dine at Duddell’s for their fresh and unlimited Asian cuisine with free flow Veuve Clicquot. What a fabulous gastronomy delight! Duddell’s is situated in the heart of Hong Kong’s Central district, their restaurant on level 3 has been awarded not one, but two Michelin stars. The Weekend Salon Brunch is served in the salon on level…

We booked the 4* Harbour Plaza North Point for our 6 night stay in Hong Kong, the hotel was celebrating it’s 17th anniversary on our arrival. We were invited to a breakfast meeting on our first morning by Billy Wan, the Director of Business Development for this hotel. It was fascinating to learn the history and portfolio of properties including within the hotel group, understand their clientele and seasons, as well as gaining lots of local knowledge about Hong Kong.…

We were unsure if to visit Aberdeen during our time in Hong Kong, Mike remembered going to the Jumbo floating restaurant for lunch as a child with his parents at the weekend. In the end we went on our last day, catching the number 70 bus from Central. We walked the length of the harbour along the promenade on arrival, the sampan tour guides were quite persistent in their efforts to negotiate a harbour tour. It was an interesting stroll…

We’ve enjoyed being out and about in Hong Kong, with 90% of the population not owning a car here, the public transport is frequent, low cost and easy to use. The first thing we did was buy our Octopus cards, you can pick these up at any MTR station. We used the local ones, which are loaned to you, the initial cost is a deposit of 50 HK$ plus a credit of 100 HK$. There is a tourist version available…

Hong Kong’s peak is 550 Metres above sea level, so it affords incredible views of this most spectacular city, the harbour, and Kowloon, across the water. There are basically three ways to get up there – by car, on foot, or via the world famous Peak Tram, which has been running for around 120 years. We chose, quite sensibly, to go up on the tram and to come down on foot! The tram station is in Garden road, and easily…

Our flights from Lanzarote to Madrid with Ryanair and Madrid to London with Iberia were uneventful, although the Iberia A320 felt too cramped for comfort after the Boeing 737-800 with Ryanair. I’m doubtful we’ll use this airline as a codeshare with British Airways from the Canaries in the future. The Iberia seat pitch in economy is 28 compared to the 30 in Ryanair, which left us short on legroom, although both have the same seat width of 17. Our flight…

We had arranged to meet a bunch of friends from the UK in Gibraltar, for the boys to go diving, while the ladies enjoyed some sunshine. In order to extend our own holiday, we decided to fly into and out of Madrid, and to drive down one side of Spain and up the other. I’ll cover the road trip part in another post, but this one is about Gibraltar. The rock is an oddity – clearly joined to the mainland…

We woke to a rainy day in Tromsø with low cloud cover, after breakfast at the Blu Radisson hotel we decided to scrub the cable car ride up to Storsteinen for a fabulous view over Tromsø, as it was shrouded in cloud. We caught up our work online with the free wifi in the hotel, before venturing outside. It was grey, wet and very slippy underfoot. The rain had partially melted the snow and ice which made walking somewhat difficult.…