Where to stay in NYC?

The Ludlow Hotel

Trust me when i say this, I did my research when it came to booking a hotel in New York. In fact, i'm pretty sure i did about 15 peoples worth of research. New York is a big place. There is, dare i say it, too much choice, so many different neighbourhoods to choose from and quite frankly there are hundreds of amazing options so picking the perfect place to rest your head can be a challenge. However, this wasn't my first rodeo. Let me show you around The Ludlow. 

Dublin: Howth by the sea

Our last morning started with cupcakes in bed (this was pre Lent, don't judge). 

Dublin: The luck of the Irish?

I have to say, usually when we travel away anywhere. Joel and I are incredibly jammy when it comes to the weather. I personally think he's the lucky one and i'm just lucky enough that he likes to hangout with me so it sometimes rubs off! Turns out Dublin was a bit of an exception to my self-made rule and it was largely cold, windy and wet, or a mixture of all three all weekend. Fortunately (or luckily...) most of our planned activities were inside. First stop was the Trinity college library. 

Dublin: My Valentines surprise

Who says you have to travel far to discover some place new? Believe it or not despite my recent travel addiction there are a few places relatively near to home that have been on my list for years, and one of them was Ireland. 

48 hours in Edinburgh

My first trip of the year was to Scotland to visit a long lost bonnie lass who now lives in the whisky loving capital. 

A Weekend In Iceland

For our last full day in Iceland we decided to get up close and personal with some bergs. 

Ice Caves and Hot Springs

We woke up early to see our first glacier which was close to our hotel on the south east coast. It's called the Svinafellsjokull Gacier, good luck pronouncing that one! it's perfect to go and see if you want to get really close to the ice without actually having to cross it. 

After getting sucked into photo capturing for a bit too long we realised we were running late again for our ice cave excursion. Fortunately traffic isn't a problem in Iceland so we made it with time to spare. Turns out that photographing an ice cave is above our skill set so we didn't get too many photos but it was pretty surreal nonetheless.

Note to anyone reading this that goes to iceland. Don't take your gloves off, it's not worth it.

After the tour we went off on our own again to explore the rest of the national park. I was pretty frozen at this point but stupidly still decided it was worth the photo to sit on a giant ice cube.
 

Deciding it was time to warm up we headed back west to the Sillica hotel. I cannot recommend this place enough. After 3 days of solid driving and lots of snow and ice this place was like the warm hug we needed to thaw off and relax before heading back to GB.

We had naturally been on the look out for the famous northern lights all holiday with not much success, we even went on a Northern lights tour and didn't see much to write home about. Fortunately we needn't had worried so much, it turns out they come out when you're least expecting them, so long as you're out of the city lights and it's not too cloudy.

On the way to the hotel (about a 5 hour drive) i started to see a slightly green haze in the sky and after lots of squeaks and "omg i think that's it" Joel pulled over. On the side of the road we set up our tripod, took a photo and there they were!

Something i'd not realised before seeing the Northern lights is that all of the photos you see of it are VERY deceiving. In real life it really is just a green haze that moves across the sky. It's not this bright emerald green that you see in the pictures. Joel and I both have cameras that allow you to achieve those sorts of photos so we managed to get a few beauties. Once we'd worked out the right settings that is. This one was taken outside our hotel room that night.

We spent ages just watching the northern lights pass across the sky before deciding to go for a dip in the hotel's private natural hot spring. The water was so so warm and we stayed in there paddling about for hours completely alone. It was bliss.  

The following morning was home time but before catching our flight we had to check out the Blue Lagoon. A much larger natural hot spring next to our hotel.  

Needless to say we enjoyed ourselves. It was just what we needed to chill out (pun intended) before heading home. We eventually dragged ourselves out of the hot waters and headed back to the airport. Not before saying goodbye to a few more ponies.

Iceland you were incredible. 

M x

A Weekend in Iceland

Black beaches and waterfalls.

High from our puppy encounter we hit the road. The most amazing thing about Iceland is that even though you're always driving to get to something; a waterfall, beach or glacier etc, everything around you is just as gorgeous, so you end up stopping all the time just to take it all in. 

The second best thing (for us crowdphobes) is that it's completely empty. You can drive for miles and miles without passing a soul.

Our first stop was at the Urridafoss waterfall which was incredibly vast and beautiful. It's Iceland's largest waterfall by volume of water that travels through it.

 *nice tripod

We continued on to the Seljalandsfoss waterfall which was also incredibly beautiful and very very icy! In the summer you can apparently walk behind it but it would have been a death trap if we had tried. We were slipping around all over the place (Joel especially...) Thanks mum for letting me borrow your snow boots, my Nikes would have suffered.

Realising that we would probably deeply regret it is we tried to walk up the steps next to the waterfall we decided to carry on to the famous Skogafoss Waterfall. Legend has it there's treasure behind the waterfall and many films including Thor have filmed there (fun fact for you). It was a bit of a fight to get a shot without lots of tourists in it but Joel and I are pretty relentless when it comes to photo taking so we waited them out and got our shot. These are probably some of my favourite ever pictures, i mean how lucky were we with the weather and that rainbow. It's a moment i'll never forget. 

After getting our fill of the waterfalls it was time to head to the beach. Iceland is entirely volcanic so the beaches are completely black and utterly breathtaking.

We made it in time for sunset.

This was definitely one of the best days of 2016. If you don't want to visit Iceland by now then i've got one more day to sell it to you, i don't think you'll be disappointed.

M x