My Travel Diary: Germany 2019

This year, James and I were lucky enough to be able to spend 16 days in Germany visiting my family and shopping and exploring different parts of the country. If you want to see a vlog about it, part 1 is live on my YouTube already. You can see that via this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7OrD31LfJE&t=15s.

To listen to the playlist I was listening to while I was away, click here:


Day 1: We arrived in Hamburg on our first day, and went to see the lovely church 'Der Michel' before heading into the city centre to do some shopping. I have seen a lot of the famous sights of Hamburg before, and James and I both did a tour last time we visited so it wasn't so crucial to us to do something 'cultural' while we were there this time. We also only had half a day there as our flight only landed at lunch time.

Day 2: We weren't in a rush to do anything as we had 16 days of holiday, so on the second day we spent some time getting settled in and unpacking before heading into the local town (Bad Bevensen) for coffee and cake in this cute little riverside cafe.

Day 3: My Oma had a doctor's appointment in Luneburg, so we went with her and went into the town after. I love Luneburg, it's one of my favourite places in Germany. We walked around the old part of the town and had lunch in a restaurant which had been built in a converted cinema. Then we went to Uelzen where my aunt works as she had a meeting and we went to get an ice cream.

Day 4: My aunt showed us this amazing cafe that had been built in an old water mill. It was a short walk through the woods to get there, which was really pleasant in the hot weather we had while we were there! We also went to my great-aunt's for a barbecue in the evening which was delicious (poor James had to cook it, but did an excellent job).

Day 5: Sundays in Germany are always a very relaxed affair, shops and restaurants aren't usually open like they are in the UK. We spent this Sunday at a pottery market in Bevensen, and then we went river walking which is supposed to be excellent for your circulation.

Day 6: Berlin!!! We got an early train into the city and after dropping our stuff off in my aunt's flat, we headed to the zoo. I love the zoo, and as the summer holidays in Germany were already over it wasn't too busy. When we were done there, we met my uncle for a drink and a walk through the Tiergarten park. He knows so much about Berlin so it was really fascinating hearing what he had to say about everything around us. After he went home, we did a little shopping and then went to dinner at a Chinese where my uncle apparently once met Barbara Streisand.

Day 7: In the morning, we took the train out to Potsdam to visit the palace. We walked through the gardens which were beautiful, but when we reached the palace itself we discovered it was closed so we had lunch and then headed back to Berlin. We met up with my uncle again, who showed us Clarchen's Ballhaus and the Hackesche Hofe (both of which I highly recommend visiting). When he had to go back to work, James and I visited the museum island and the 'Neues Museum' before going back to the flat for tea.

Day 8: We went shopping on the Kurfurstendamm before catching our train back to my Oma's other house.

Day 9: We went to Arendsee, which is a sweet little historic town in what used to be East Germany. It has a ruined monastery which we loved exploring before going for a walk along the lakeside. When we were younger, my brothers and I often swam in the lake there but James and I decided we'd rather go another time and swim in an actual pool (much less cold).

Day 10: James and I went to play mini golf. We were both completely useless but it was so much fun!  We of course had an ice cream after (the ice cream in Germany is just phenomenal) and went for a walk in the park.

Day 11: We went to an event that my Oma's friend had got tickets for. It was at a riding stable, and it was a picnic followed by horse shows followed by a classical concert. The weather was lush and the horses were beautiful. Classical music isn't my favourite, but the musicians were extremely talented and the atmosphere was good so I can't complain.

Day 12: We had a family brunch and then spent the day reading, painting and playing scrabble.

Day 13: James and I returned to Luneburg to do some shopping and visit some of the sights in town that we didn't have time for last week. The highlight was having coffee and cake in a cafe that overlooked the town square with a gorgeous view.

Day 14: We went for lunch at Mr T's burger shop in Uelzen (I had a chilli cheese burger which was excellent), and then did some shopping. I also had a bright blue ice cream which tasted disappointingly of vanilla.

Day 15: We spent the day helping my aunt with some gardening jobs she had to do. After all that hard work, we decided to go for an evening swim at the local spa pool which is lovely and warm due to the thermal spring that earned Bevensen its title of a 'Bad' (Spa).

Day 16: We spent a lot of our last day at my Oma's, cooking lasagne and watching films but we also went to Deerberg which is a unique independent store which is in the middle of one of the tiny villages near my Oma's house. I got some snazzy purple jeans, and James enjoyed his free drink and free wifi from there.

We had a great time, and it was nice for me to be able to see all of my family who I normally don't get to see very often or for very long. Looking forward to my next trip already!

Short Paris Vlog

Holiday in Germany

I recently got back from visiting my grandmother and my aunt in Germany. It was lovely and the weather was absolutely gorgeous! Up to thirty six degrees Celsius (ninety seven Fahrenheit). We spent a lot of time at the house just relaxing, playing scrabble and painting which was such a nice way to wind down after two hectic weeks of summer school. I also loved cuddling my Oma's dog, Rudi!

We even managed to squeeze in a festival! The Uelzen Open R was so much fun, we saw Tom Gregory, Michael Patrick Kelly and a-ha performing. They were all wonderful and we spent the whole night dancing and eating bratwurst and drinking (I was driving so in my case it was ice tea). The finale of 'Take On Me' was spectacular and I loved the rainbow lights.

On the final day we went into Lüneburg (a small historic town) to do some shopping! We discovered this beautiful cafe and bought some really cool stuff. To see what I got, check out the YouTube haul I did of it here.

We all had such a lovely week and are excited to go back at Christmas!

My Trip to Greece

My boyfriend and I just got home from a (very lovely) holiday in Greece. We stayed in a small town called Hanioti, which is in the North East of the mainland about an hour away from Thessaloniki. The weather was obviously beautiful, sunshine all week and no rain or clouds! It was also really quiet, probably because the school holidays won't start for another month yet.


The hotel was a set of beautiful villas with huge, minimalist rooms and a gorgeous pool. There was even a spa in the basement of our building which offered cheap but amazing massages, a gym, a jacuzzi, a sauna and a steam room. We were very impressed with the high standard of the rooms and the quality of the bar and breakfast options available. We were surprised quite how good it was since we booked the holiday really cheap (thank you EasyJet!). Even the restaurants we ate our evening meals at were excellent quality for a very small cost. One of our favourites was an outdoor place called 'The Garden' (pictured below) which offered delicious food and was just gorgeous. Such simple and comforting decorations.

The beach was again, stunning but me and my whiter than white skin couldn't take the direct sun during the day so we visited in the evenings instead. This meant that we got to witness spectacular sunsets like this one so it was a win win really. During the hotter hours we stuck to the shaded sun loungers surrounding the hotel pool. It was so relaxing and allowed me to catch up on some reading.

(Side note: I really recommend 'Then She Was Gone' by Lisa Jewell if you like psychological thrillers!)

Overall I had a really lovely time getting some R&R and would definitely go again! Although next holiday will be another cultural visit I think.

A Short Road Trip Playlist

I love road trips. Whether I am the driver, or the passenger I just love the anticipation of the journey. And part of a good road trip is a good playlist. Next week I have a two hour drive ahead of me, so I have created a playlist of cheerful throwbacks that I love to sing along to, and I thought I would share them with you! Enjoy :)

My Bucket List

Everyone has goals in life. Many of mine are pretty common, I'd like to get a job where I'm financially stable, be happily married and eventually have children. But those aren't on my bucket list, because they're the sort of things that I think will happen if they're meant to and if not I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. The things on my bucket list are more things that I'm saving up for, or currently working for. If you have a bucket list, I'd love to hear about some of your aims so leave a comment for me! Who knows, maybe I'll add them onto my list too. I have also done a YouTube video about this, which you can watch here.

1. Visit New York. I have never been to America but I'd love to, and of all of the places in the USA I would want to see, New York is top of the list. I'm not even sure why, I've just always wanted to go. My boyfriend went before we got together and he likes to rub it in my face every time I mention visiting. Hopefully I'll be able to go in the next couple of years!
2. Go up the Eiffel Tower. I would love to visit Paris, and if I do I will of course go up the Eiffel Tower. I'm terrified of heights, so it will be a challenge but hopefully it'll be worth it! My boyfriend and I have discussed possibly going next year so we'll see soon enough.
3. Graduate university. This may seem obvious since I'm a student, but it's what I spend most of my time working on at the moment so I had to include it. Preferably I'd like to get at least a 2:1 but only time will tell whether I can do that.
4. Learn how to bake macaroons. Mostly just because I love them, but also because they look so so cute and I'm all about food that will get me those instagram likes! Haha.
5. Learn how to parallel park. This may seem like something I should know since I have had my driving licence for nearly 2 years now, but oh my god why is it so hard!? I just can't seem to get the hang of it. Anyone who has ever seen me attempt it will know how truly terrible I am at it. But I feel like it's something I need to learn so that is why it is on this list.
6. Visit Japan. My grandparents always speak highly of their visits there, and my aunt lived there for a few years because she loved it so much. The culture fascinates me, and photos of it look so beautiful so one day I hope to visit.
7. Learn to speak another language. Possibly Italian? I grew up bilingual and it's honestly so useful, especially when I go on holiday so I'd love to learn a third language. Italian is my first choice because I just think it sounds beautiful.
8. Visit Australia or New Zealand. My boyfriend's brother is thinking of doing a year of farming out there after he finishes college this year so we may be able to go over and visit him at Christmas. I'm selfishly hoping that we can!
9. Get my own cat. As soon as this is realistically an option I am going to do it.
10. Keep up my blog. This is so fun for me, but it also takes up a lot of time. I hope I can continue to post regularly as I get more and more responsibilities in years to come!

My Top 10 Places in Bath

As I am a student at Bath Spa University, I have had the privilege of living in Bath for almost a year now, and it is a beautiful city. I have enjoyed many locations in the city, but these are some of my favourites.

• The Roman Baths. Of course. This is an obvious one, but they are just so beautiful. Also, as a Bath student I get free entry! The museum is really great and you get a free audioguide as well which as a history student I love. Definitely my favourite place in the city, especially in the sun.

• Mr B's Book Emporium. This independent bookshop is so so cute. They have many services to help you find new things to read, and there's a wide range of genres to look at too. Also, how cute is this display!?

• Southgate. Not only are there lots of great shops, but often there are gorgeous hanging displays, such as umbrellas, flowers or Christmas lights. This is the latest one!

• Pulteney Bridge. I'm told this was one of the locations where Les Mis was filmed, but regardless I think it's beautiful here. So peaceful and close to town too!

• The Christmas Market. I know this isn't technically a place in Bath, but it's definitely worth visiting. Such a range of stalls selling delicious food, handmade crafts and other beautiful items. Definitely a hit.

• The Fudge Kitchen. Delicious handmade fudge which you can sample for free, a display of the fudge making process and a loyalty card which earns you more free fudge! What's not to like?

• The Real Italian Pizza Co. An adorable secluded restaurant in central Bath, with amazing pizzas (handmade of course), a range of flavours and a hidden area of outdoor seating. My family's favourite. *Please note: This is not my image! All of the other photos on this post are though*.

• Guildhall Market. An adorable covered market with a mixture of different stalls, definitely worth visiting if you're ever in Bath!

• Green Park Station. Another covered market, with a mixture of permanent shops such as a cafe which does the best vegan hot chocolate ever, and a pizza bar which offers pizza and a pint for £10, and temporary market stalls on weekends. I don't have a photo of it, so here's another photo from Mr's B's (a collage wall of TinTin) instead.

• Newton St. Loe Farmshop and Café. Fresh produce from the attached farm, and huge hot chocolates and cakes that are to die for. All in a picturesque village just outside of Bath. Perfection.

Why I Didn't Go on a Gap Year

I often get asked if I took a year out before I started university, and when I say no I get a lot of questions about why not. It seems to be getting more and more common for people to leave school and take some time to work or travel before continuing on to higher education. I love to travel, and have plenty of savings so that was an attractive option, and extra cash is always an attractive option for a poor student but nonetheless I decided against it for several reasons.

I would love to travel, and I am still considering it as an option for after graduation. However, I am a fan of luxuries. By that I don't mean that I need a 5 star hotel or anything, but I want a room not shared with strangers and a working bathroom. This means that taking a few holidays (as I have done this year) suits me far better than doing all of my travelling in one go. I love cultural trips, my most recent ones being Venice, Berlin and Barcelona which is great for a gap year but I also love beach holidays. A few weeks tanning in Greece is lovely, but they won't tick the 'growing and experiencing' box that would be important to me on a gap year. These short trips allow me to do a mixture of both.

Another reason why I decided to go straight to uni was money. While my savings would have covered travel, I wanted to save them for emergencies. This was also why I didn't do a year of work first, as I could dip into that account if I needed to. Fortunately, I have had a generous donation from my grandparents, and I have managed to get a small part time job to alongside studying so I haven't needed to do that yet. If all goes well hopefully I'll be able to keep up these savings and eventually use this money to put down a deposit on a house. Either way I wanted to keep my money for a later date so a gap year wasn't the best way to do that.

One more reason why I didn't go on a gap year was my boyfriend. I love travelling with him and I didn't want to go without him. Being able to go on trips with him (and my friends) instead of going alone is the biggest reason why short holidays are more appealing than a year out to me. I also did not want to spend a year apart. Finally and most importantly, I was worried that if I took a year out from education that I'd never go back. I love history and studying it is great but I need the momentum to keep going.

I am in no way saying that my way is the right way. There are plenty of advantages to gap years, and if you want to take one I would encourage that 100%! But it's not for me and now you know why :)

My (latest) trip to Berlin

I am half German, and my mum's family still lives over there so as you can imagine I have been to Berlin several times. Over Easter my boyfriend's family very kindly invited me to go with them on their first visit and we had a lovely time! We obviously saw the important sights, like the Brandenburg Gate and the Museum Island, but we also did lots of fun things I'd never done before. I particularly enjoyed the almost brand new Mall of Berlin which is in Potsdamer Platz where the no man's land between wall boarders of east and west once stood. Great shops and a lovely cheerful replacement for a previously pretty morbid site. KaDeWe and Bikini were also highlights for me as far as shopping was concerned! 

But the shopping was really a minor part of the holiday. As I mentioned, we did some sightseeing, and one of the things we saw that was new to me was Checkpoint Charlie. I'm not really sure why I've never been before but it was fascinating to see and there was a pop up museum next to it which was free to go to and really good at giving context for the importance of the site. My mum lived in Berlin while it was still divided so it's a big part of my family history as well as the history of the city so it was fascinating to see from that point of view as well. It's so different seeing it in real life than just hearing about it from my grandparents.

Since we were there over Easter weekend, we were a bit limited for things to do on the last day and we ended up going to both the sea life centre and the aquarium but I didn't mind as I love fish. Although overall I preferred the aquarium because it had lizards, frogs, alligators, turtles and insects as well as just fish the main highlight was at the sea life centre. They have a lift that goes all the way up the middle of a fish tank (as you can see in this picture). There was an array of beautiful fish including Royal Blue Tang (otherwise known as Paracanthurus or Dory fish) which have been my favourite since I saw Finding Nemo! We were lucky enough that we got to see them being fed on our way up because we timed it just before lunch time. At the bottom of the lift there was a fantastic American diner too so after we saw the fish have lunch we got to have ours too. It's something that I've always wanted to do as a kid so finally being able to was like 5 year old me's absolute heaven!

Another new thing to me was the TV Tower. I've seen it from a distance many times, and my uncle used to work there so my family would always point it out when we visited but I never went up. The viewing platform which we visited is 203 metres up, and it's pretty cool to get a 360 degree view of the city. Above that, there is a rotating restaurant which I would love to eat in some day. I'm sure my family would be happy to go, and if not I'll just have to drag my boyfriend along with me! He definitely wouldn't complain. It's a really cool thing to experience, I'd recommend it to anyone planning on going to Berlin.

Just down the road from my family's flat is this beautiful palace called the Charlottenburg Schloss. It's beautiful, and I love to walk around the gardens there if I visit in summer or go to the museum inside if it's cold or rainy (as we did this time). It's beautiful and has a great display inside, complete with free audioguide which tells you all about the palace as you walk around. I especially love this palace at Christmas, as the Christmas market outside is one of the best I have ever been to. It's huge and has both indoor and outdoor market stalls or food, jewellery, trinkets etc. for a variety of prices!


Overall, a really lovely holiday! I love this city so much and I'm already looking forward to my next visit.

My Trip to Venice

Recently, my best friend Midge and I decided to go on holiday to Venice. It was beautiful, and we had a really great time! We chose Venice because as history students we wanted to visit somewhere with a rich culture, rather than a typical girl's holiday of drinking and beaches (though there's nothing wrong with that either). It was really good fun and not too expensive as we could just walk around admiring it's beauty without feeling the need to go into museums or attractions, and the shops and restaurants were all very reasonably priced too. This was very good for our small budgets!

My favourite part of Venice was the little bridges over tiny canals like this one. I have 100,000 photos like this but I picked my favourite for this post so it wouldn't just be millions of identical photos. The houses were so colourful and contrasted beautifully against the dark water. The tourist attraction areas like St. Mark's Square were pretty busy but most of the side streets like this one were empty which was lovely. Occasionally a gondola would go by but other than that it was completely quiet and peaceful! We would stop as we walked across to admire the view or sometimes just sit there for a while (often with a gelato in hand). I think it's the only city I have ever been to that hasn't got a single ugly area in it. The tiny streets and millions of steps make it impossible for traffic to get through too, so there's no vehicles other than boats to get in the way or be noisy or smelly either which was very unusual but so nice to experience.

Obviously, we had to go to St. Mark's Square while we were in Venice. The queues for the Basilica and Doge's Palace were horrifically long so we chose to admire from the outside rather than going in but they were still works of art. The paintings on the outside of the Basilica in particular were truly stunning, I honestly don't know how anyone could produce such works of beauty. My grandad said he once attended a concert here and it was just as beautiful inside as it is out, so perhaps if I go again I will brave the huge queues!

This tower was part of the Doge's Palace, and this also had hour long queues. As I am not a fan of heights, I feel this would probably not have been for me anyway but I still admired it from the bottom. Although, I did enjoy the TV Tower in Berlin so maybe I should have given this a chance to hahaha. We didn't realise what this was at first, and Midge spent all day frantically searching for the Doge Palace until she realised we'd already been there, which just about sums us up to be honest. I have no idea how much these attractions cost, so if you're planning a visit I'm afraid I am a bit useless. My grandad tells me that when he visited 40 odd years ago it was free but I highly doubt that's still the case. Upkeep on beautiful old buildings like these, staff to look after the place and control visitor numbers etc. don't come cheap so I am sure there must be an entrance fee these days.

On our final day, we went to Ca' d'Oro which was just fantastic. It's this beautiful old Venetian house with elaborately tiled floors, gorgeous stone pillars, and a gorgeous art gallery housed inside. There were statues and paintings and a couple of drawings too. Entrance was very reasonably priced (€7.50 if I remember correctly, plus a student discount was offered). To top that all off, there were balconies with these beautiful stone arches as you can see in this picture, and the view from the third floor especially was breath taking!

Overall, if you are planning a trip to Venice, my advice would be to just wander in random directions. Ninety percent of the time, Midge and I had no idea where we were or what we were doing and we loved it. Every single corner of Venice is so beautiful that wherever you end up, you can't go wrong. Visit the Ca' d'Oro if you have time, as it was one of my favourite places I've ever been. Take your time, admire the views, and go at Easter as it is the best weather for it! Don't forget your suncream. Elastic waistbands are best, as the pizza, pasta and gelato options are delicious and many. If you come across white chocolate and passionfruit gelato, try it! It was my absolute favourite. And most of all, take plenty of photos! Although I'm sure you won't be able to resist.