Our Travels

We found Hurtibear lost in Portugal at our Midcounties Travel Conference, this little furry polar bear stowed away in our luggage in a bid to find his way home to Norway. We’ve travelled quite a bit in the last few weeks, and have become attached to this little character! It’s going to be hard saying goodbye to him when we board the MS Finnmarken at Tromso in a couple of weeks. Hurtibear was given his very own hashtag #gethurtihome for…

It was our first visit to Portugal, and only a short one, just for the weekend and the Midcounties Travel Conference. We were at leisure from arrival during the Friday daytime, so we wasted no time in walking the 2km distance our hotel to explore the old town area of Albufeira. There’s a lovely view point overlooking the main beach and town of Albufeira, we were surprised to find two escalators built into the hillside for easy access to the…

Every guide book to every destination on the planet seems to fall back on the oldest cliche of all – “It’s a country / city / town of contrasts.” But in the case of Morocco, I have finally found a place worthy of that hackneyed phrase. On the one hand, I have never witnessed such abject poverty at close quarters, and on the other, I have seen more Maseratis during my week here, than I have in my previous 54…

The main reason for my work trip to the UK was to attend the CTO Caribbean Roadshow event in Chester, having never been to the Caribbean I was keen to learn more about the differences between the different islands, and meet the tourism board representatives face to face. The event was held at Chester Racecourse, the room had been set up with individual tables and representatives from the Caribbean Tourist Organisation, airlines, tour operators and resort hotels. I tagged along…

My decision to travel 170 miles up North from Cheshire to Newcastle was a last minute one, having applied for a place on the Selling Travel / JA Resorts event at the Malmaison Hotel in the Quayside area, my confirmation came through the day before. The event hotel was fully booked, so I stayed at the Ramada Encore hotel, it was clean, basic and fairly comfortable for an overnight. The important factor was location & overnight parking, it was only…

We wanted to stay in the V&A Waterfront area of Cape Town for our first 2 nights in South Africa and chose the Victoria & Alfred Hotel for our accommodation. This hotel has 94 bedrooms and is right on the waterfront, situated next to the food market, a shopping mall on the doorstep and within a stroll of 80 restaurants, a perfect location for us. We booked a loft room and was allocated no 305, which would have had a…

Before we arrived in South Africa, I was convinced that we would use the Wine Tram to go wine tasting, their hop on, hop off service sounded like it could be fun. When it came down to booking it, I couldn’t decide which of the four tours to do, not knowing any of the wineries made it difficult, so we left the decision until we arrived at our hotel in Franschhoek. Osmond, the concierge at our hotel confirmed that the…

We loved the look of Franschhoek on arrival, so decided to head into town from our hotel on our first evening. I wasn’t sure where to eat, we were still waiting to try South African cuisine, then I came across recommendations for Ryan’s Kitchen. Ryan’s Kitchen is easy to find, situated in the Place Vendôme Lifestyle Centre facing on to the main road through town. We decided to drive in as we had booked a wine tour for the following…