Venice. None of it has been unexplored, nowhere is devoid of tourists. Everything has been said.

  

☻ Early mornings spent in Swansea Market, buying farm-grown produce from locals ☻

☻ Y’all should probably prepare yourselves for a bombardment of some of my favourite typical Swansea buildings – renovated into banks or shops in the 1900’s ☻

☻ One of the main things I love about Swansea is that you get lots of little things like this around – in this case, a full-on eroding castle in the middle of town, amongst bars and Topshops ☻

☻ Wind Street, formerly christened as “Wine Street” because of all the drunk people hanging around the bars. Yum ☻

☻ Honestly, you get the most random quaint shop designs like this, in between opticians and banks ☻

☻ One of my favourite Swansea stores – a Waterstones with the most extravagant designs going on inside and out, with a reading corner at the top of the spiralling staircase where you can have coffees and hot cocos ☻

☻ This probably doesn’t look all too amazing to y’all, but I love how the little sidestreets have the pastel seaside buildings ☻

☻ Your typical Swansea bars ☻

☻ The view from the hotel window was awesome, even if annoying foggy ☻

 ☻ One evening, my family and I went down to Winter Wonderland, and I took a bunch of photos whilst the scent of doughnuts and candyfloss hung in the air, with  the breeze being cool and soft as it wafted around the laughing locals ☻

☻ Fun fact: this is where I spent my 11t birthday, and I had the time of my life ☻

☻ This was one of the rides that I went on, and to be honest with y’all, it was pretty sweet, even if my friend Chloe’s hair covered mine and Lucy’s faces the whole time as we swung around an little fake flakes of snow filtered around our speeding cart ☻

☻ Bokeh ☻

☻ I could be wrong, but if you overlook the river Abertawe, the place where all the little city lights are is called Kilvey Hill, the 633ft mini-mountain that I climbed a month ago by myself, only to find that lots of drug-pushers, rapists and possibly murderers hang around there ☻

>> On our final day, my family and I decided to take a detour to Bath (and Margam, but that’s a story for another day), and it was honestly so awesome. I’ve featured a few shots of my favourite things from there. <<

☻ The Roman Baths ☻

☻ The next few shots are from the Roman Baths, where we walked around and tasted some of the warm water ☻

☻ Beautiful buildings made up of the legendary Bath Stone – the weather was too bad for me to get some good photos, but whole streets were made out of this stuff.. stunning ☻

So, to conclude, I spent my birthday re-falling in love with my hometown, and it was great. I took around 600 shots, so I thought I’d show you guys some of my least worst ones.

Happy 1,460 day blogoversary, y’all – we made it!

Day six started with another late bus driver, who instead of taking us down the cute little village streets, took us down the main roads of Malia. There, we saw the dreaded Malia Aftermath – all the vomit and rubbish that last nights set of partygoers left behind (which if I’m honest is really disgusting and disrespectful). Despite that, though, we did pass lots of precipitous hilly landscapes, which dotted the outskirts of the city like giant pencil sharpenings.

We stopped at a place with a small white monastery, which had a tiny room inside. It kind of resembled the amazing one I had seen a couple of days back, but on a much lesser scale. As you walked down, you would see a little empty, doorless cement hut thing, which had religious carvings in the ceiling – and behind that, an awesome view of the ocean, trees and mountains. There was a block of Greek Orthodox buildings, with a guy dressed in head to toe with the related outfit. Overhead – a gathering of vultures.

On the way back to the bus, I went to the tiny little bathroom, which consisted of two stalls. The one to the right was a conventional Western loo. The one to the left – a ceramic hole in the ground. The queue for the right was long, and after discovering my love for flinging myself off boats yesterday, I was like hey, why not. So, leaving the queue for the Western toilet, I decided to squat. Yes. Squat. But heck, it wasn’t so bad. In fact, I’d probably do it again if it meant skipping out queues as long as the one I passed.

We got back on the bus, and I know I overuse the words “stunning” and “beautiful”, but the view of little towns curling round this vast bowl of Elondean ocean was exactly that.

A little while later we arrived at the port, where we boarded our boat and set off for the island of Spinalonga (or “spiralinna” as I couldn’t stop calling it). After half an hour or so of waves lapping rhythmically against the boat and vigorous sunscreen applications, we were there.

Our tour guide, Maria, guided us around the broken houses of the island, facts rolling off her tongue like silver. She said some very interesting things, like did you know that the Turkish are originally from Mongolia? They migrated to what is now known as Turkey, pulling the Iran language and Saudi Arabia religion behind them like a blanket.

Spinalonga, home of the ancient leprosy colonies, was amazing. I love places like these, where you can imagine lives lived so differently from your own, all these years ago.

After a lot of wandering around and hurrying to keep up with our guide, we went back to the boat for a quick trip to a clear in the ocean. There, we had another barbecue-on-boat type thing, and went swimming (and yep, you guessed it, I did fling myself off the side of the boat a handful of times, each time tumbling deeper and deeper into the brilliantly clear ocean). The sun was warm, and the views of towns, oceans and nothingness was lovely. Life was good.

After a bit, I pulled myself up on to the top side of the boat, swinging my legs over the ocean below. Leaning back, sun and salt water resting on my face, I sipped my orange slushie. Underneath, tourists tried to breathe through snorkels (which I’ve decided is impossible), and small bouts of wildlife would pass under the boat.

A little later, the boat took off again and took us to a town called Agios Nikolaos. We wandered for a bit, but having only been given an hour didn’t want to stray too far. There were a bunch of cute little market stalls, selling olive soap and calendars made by locals, and “genuine” leather belts.

On the way back to Malia, we passed a woman probably around 80 years old. At first, it seemed like she was struggling, perhaps using the moped beside her for balance. A couple of seconds later, however, and this frail old woman had flung herself over the motorbike, dialed up the buttons and sped off, black veil trailing behind her.

Day seven was spent travelling down to Knossos, which you’ve probably heard of if you know a bit about the history of Crete. There, we went to the Minoan Palace, where we met our tour guide – who introduced himself by talking about how boring Greece is with its lack of life-threatening animals. We explored around the palace grounds and ruins, where I tried to take some dramatic photos before realising my lens was relishing in grease (*cough* Greece *cough*), so I just stood there leaning over and licking it so I could smudge it clean (which must have looked totally insane to the tourists around me).

The weather grew increasingly hot, and the tour guide went on an incessant ramble, and I have to admit that I was starting to lose the will to live a little bit. The tour soon drew to a close however, and we took a bus to Heraklion. Our guide gave us a few pointers, and as he continued to drone, I broke away from the group. Suddenly, however, a woman honed in on me like a pointer dog, and smothered me in facts about her life story and pregnancy, urging me to give her money to fuel her drug addiction (don’t quote me on that). Once she started decorating my hair with roses, I slowly began to creep away, to the safety of the tourists.

Madre and I discharged ourselves from the rest of the group and went to a small art gallery, (which had a guy playing classical music on the piano in the background), and then wandered about the Heraklion Museum, which had lots of frescos from 1600 BC – kind of incredible.

After a while, we made our way back to Malia and ate at a place called San Giorgio (helloooo large portions). It was quite cute there, even if the dolmades weren’t something my tastebuds could get used to.

I think that if I were to go back to Greece, I’d want to go somewhere more secluded, maybe without electricity and running water, where the only transport available is donkeys. That probably sounds really extreme, but coming from a girl born in a 1st world country, I can’t imagine the kind of life people in those conditions would live, and I’d want to actually experience it for a little while. You know when you see documentaries about the poverty in Guatemala and whatnot, and the people involved have all these epiphanies at the end? I’m just saying, that wouldn’t be too awful.

Day eight was quite laid-back, and started with the stale toast that Maria Rousse always seemed to serve. We went down to the strip, swam, and relaxed. Considering the fact that our flight home would be in the early hours of the morning, we decided to just take it all in and sit back.

When 5pm rolled around, we hunted for a place to eat our last meal at. The final contender for that role was a small place called the Petrino Garden. Why, I hear you ask, did we chose this particular establishment? Obviously because of their flawless decor. Olives hung above our heads, herbs in red and blue pots sat on green and yellow shelves, cacti sticking out around the back… I honestly fell in love with it. The food was pretty darn good too, especially dessert – a gigantic melon sliced in half filled with ice-cream and chocolate wafers, blanketed in hundreds-and-thousands and pierced with a selection of cute little plastic figurines, and a homemade clown thing with a polystyrene smile. And to top it off were two gigantic sparklers fizzing away, like tiny fireworks on the dinner table.

We left soon after, once the waitress had given us both a bunch of kisses on our cheeks and I’d gotten a load of last-minute camera shots of Malia.

Day nine started and at around 1am our coach arrived to pick us up. As we were hauling our suitcases out from Maria Rousse, the waiter (the one with the name of the Spanish verb) came out to say goodbye to us. When he turned his attention to me, he went in for a handshake… and I went in for a hug, and one with quite a bit of momentum as well. Honestly. Just as that happened, I felt his eyelashes quiver against my fist, and what do you know it, I punched him in the eye. He said “ow”, and I apologised and backed away.

We packed out bags onto the coach, and as we started moving the Olympic Holiday reps, both males around 25 years old, quickly introduced themselves and then suddenly delved the coach into music – loud,  fast paced and teeming with n-words. It was basically a party bus, as derogatory slangs burst out from the speakers and the reps sung along with it, taking turns to rap solos. The driver kept trying to turn it down, but they swished his hand away and continued cursing to the lyrics. This lasted for an hour.

We finally made it to the airport, where my mother realised she’d bought a bottle of wine and put it in her overhead bag – to which security pulled it out and chucked it into the nearest bin.

4am rolled along, as we boarded the aeroplane to a pilot that sounded drunk and kept getting facts about the journey wrong – i.e. how long the flight actually was. This was definitely unnerving but hey, four hours later we had landed safely and I was in one piece.

The second we stepped off the plane, all I noticed was the change of air. I don’t know if you guys get this too, but it didn’t smell sweet and warm anymore, but instead cold and flavourless. But eh, maybe its just me.

From there, we just took a taxi back home to the Absolute Middle of Nowhere.

All in all, I had a great time in Greece, and I’m happy that I got to share it with y’all, regardless of how belated it turned out to be. If I’m honest, I probably wouldn’t return to Crete unless we stayed in a derelict village that literally runs on just horsepower, or got to visit Athens, or Santorini, or… okay, I probably would go back again. But with so much of the world left to explore, I think I’d probably prioritise Peru and Italy and the like. However, I would honestly really recommend a short stay around Malia, especially if you’ve already visited somewhere relatively close like Turkey due to the fact that you can then piece together their shared histories.

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Okay so, a handful of days ago, my family and I started talking about how we wanted to go abroad for a week or so, perhaps the Amalfi Coast or Rome. I kind of just shrugged this off, because I’d literally spent my Summer trudging around London and Watford. My dad was like “nah I’m good thanks,” so BAM, two days later I was on an aeroplane to Malia, Crete, party central. With my mum. And it was awesome.

As some of you may know, I have a problem with taking photos. I can go out for the day and take hundreds of photos of a cigarette balancing on a tree, or a baby on some swings. So, naturally, I probably took over 2,000 photos in total whilst on my stay in Greece (keep in mind that we were literally only there for a week). I will split up my trip to Greece into two parts, but that still leaves a lot of photos. Bear with.

So my first day in Crete was spent travelling and running over people’s feet with my suitcase, so I think we’ll just skip that part out and move on. The second day, however, started by me awaking from a four-hour slumber and wondering where the heck I was. Then, the minute I heard the incessant chirping of the crickets and breathed in the air that was so humid that it was almost an effort to respire, I was like “oh right, I’m in Malia”. 

I spent the morning trying to impress the hotel staff with my Greek (to which they laughed and said I have a “long way to go”, the cheek), and then we took off to the classic Strip of Malia, where all the partygoers go to, well, party. If I’m being honest, it was kind of sad that this cute little Greek town has been turned into a place where people go to just get drunk and do The Thing. It was all ‘foam parties’ and ‘booze cruises’ – where is the authentic Greek culture? Where is the rich history behind this? Why are the locals being sent away to the “olde town” whilst skinny white boys carrying six packs vomit up tequila onto their land?

Malia beach, by the way, would be beautiful if it weren’t for the severe congestion full of tourists burning their pale flesh. So, we stopped there for a bit, cramming to get a view of the ocean, before heading back to our hotel Maria Rousse. There, after taking advantage of their awesome pool and overindulging on ice-cream, our rep (Calvin? Kevin?) told us about the “classic” drinking forfeits that they have over here, where they pour beer down your throat (Suffragette, anyone?). Naturally, I first thought he said spit instead of beer, and that led to a very awkward conversation. 

I asked one of the hotel staff what his name was, and you know when you ask someone something and they reply and you don’t understand so you ask again, just to repeat this vicious cycle? Well, as not to embarrass myself further, I then proceeded to nod. To this day, I’m sure his name is the Spanish verb for ‘we live’. 

The Olde Town was definitely my favourite place in the whole of Malia. You get to see all the locals in their little communities and big families, with the children playing football in the street and the elderly nodding off on chairs outside their houses (this is actually a really common thing). These houses, by the way, were all rustic and messy and absolutely stunning, and just how I expected authentic Greek houses to look like. 

We ate at a place called Kaleman for dinner the first/ second night, which served pretty awesome food. The only problem was the rogue bug that landed slap-bang in the middle of my food – apparently I screamed and a bunch of people jumped from surprise, but eh, let’s not get caught up in the small details.

The third day was spent walking so much that I’m surprised my kneecaps didn’t spontaneously combust from all the friction. We walked down this massive stretch of dust road, which was filled with rusty, quaint buildings – classic Greek buildings that people actually live in (funnily enough). They just seemed so unnaturally stunning that I assumed they were a bunch of antique holiday homes.

I don’t know about you guys, but I have never been to an all-marble cemetery. But, that’s exactly what we passed as we continued our walk down this long, deserted road. The coffins were out in the open, and were all made of this gleaming white marble. The tombs were larger than I would have imagined, and a small white chapel shadowed over the land at the back. 

We went down to Malia Port, which is insanely overrated. All there was was a couple of rusty boats and two local children staring at me as I tried to take semi-decent photos of the nothingness surrounding us. Don’t get me wrong, it was a cute place to stop at, but  I wouldn’t walk a mile just to see it. If you walked down a little bit though, you would get to the beach. Pale sand, choppy turquoise waves.. it was magnifique. And, at the edge of the water was a small white lone chair. I don’t know why, but the simplicity of an abandoned chair overlooking the waves was really beautiful. 

We continued our trek, leading us to a small resort called Cretan Malia Park. As nice as it was, I don’t understand why someone would pay to go all the way down to Greece, just to stay in a big resort and stay there the whole time. I always thought that the whole reason behind going abroad would be to explore new places, cultures, languages, and the such – not stay by the pool all day – but eh, I could be wrong.

There, we ordered some quick food, and were served by a rather grumpy waiter. Once we finished ordering though, he was like “all inclusive, yeah?” and we said that no, in fact we weren’t. His features then shifted slightly, and so did his attitude. From then on, he was a lot more positive, and even put extra ham in my vegetarian sandwich which was thoughtful. 

For dinner that evening, we ate in the roof garden of Stablos and Elizabeth, which gave us a great view of the square below, which all fitted around the church with a clock tower dusted with birds. The food portions were crazily large, as in the starter alone could have fed three people. And my madre and I both ordered two courses each. I kid you not. We were practically bursting at the seams when we left.

I have found that countries with hot climates such as Greece and Turkey tend to have roads filled with people on mopeds – which makes sense, considering how much cooler they will be (both temperate-wise and status-wise). But never before have I seen people riding with literal animals tucked into their armpits, like I did on my third day in Greece. The loud rip of a moped erupted from the road to the side of me, and I looked over to see a man riding, with a small fluffy dog under his arm, fur ruffled by the wind. And what’s more insane is the fact that I saw people both on the phone and smoking, driving at the same time as they held a kid on their lap. I have to admit that they’re very skilled people, but boy is that a weird sight for the eyes.

Day four started with a bang. Or more accurately, the crashing noise of my mother trying to prise open the balcony door. 

By the way, there’s this one little patisserie in Malia which sells the best ice-cream I’ve ever seen. I don’t know what it’s called in English, but the title printed above the door looked something like Syovpo’s. I ate an insane amount of ice-cream (oh hey there, Crohn’s Disease) from that shop, with the only problem being that the owner had a tendency to close up the part of the shop that sold ice-cream at super random times of the day, and for no apparent reason. 

Anyway, the forth day was pretty laid-back, as we just walked around and tested out food. We ate dinner at Toto Lotto, which consisted of pretty food in very pretty surroundings. The tables were awesome, with slabs of glass covering a whole collection of postcards from various places and events – but the dead pufferfish that stared right into your soul was a definite downer.

I spent the rest of the day out in the warm weather, writing. According to my notes from that day, I basically just thought about my Greek expectations. To summarise, I imagined crumbling white handmade buildings (thank Mamma Mia for that one, kids) with locals riding up steep paths on donkeys. For some reason, the fact that we were going to Malia, a part of Greece famous for partying, didn’t completely register with me, hence my surprise at all the gigantic commercialised partygoer things.

Not too long ago, it was my Dad’s birthday.  Our last holiday had been in August, with only little trips to Wales and the south of England to keep the wanderlust at bay – and wanderlust had hit both my mother and I pretty bad. So, as a “birthday present” to my father (although mainly for my mum and I because he prefers colder climates) we booked a weekend away in Barcelona. Hopefully, by now you all know the story about my parents meeting in Tenerife, a small Spanish island, and my near miss at being an official-born Spaniard, and if you don’t, well frankly you should pay more attention. Gosh. 

When I went away to Barcelona, I decided to take notes on a small notebook that I carried around with me, so that when I got home I could organise them into something I could comprehend. However, guess who didn’t do that until everything had been forgotten? I’m  currently left with notes saying, I quote, “security, vodka, battle (flaus), windows less time than No Tears, 20 mins?!” So let’s see how much I can distinguish out of those.

So, we all awoke early on Friday, took a taxi down to Gatwick Airport (driven by my uncle, v convenient), where we waited for our plane to get ready. During our wait, I managed to run over one guy’s foot with my suitcase and nearly trip up over someone else’s myself, so that was a brilliant start. We soon boarded, and after only a mere few hours (less than half what it would take for me to take a coach to Swansea) we were in the West of Europe, excited and anticipating my first time in mainland Spain.

The first thing I noticed about Barcelona was the vast amount of street art visible on almost every shutter we passed. In fact, one of my favourite things about just roaming the side streets was seeing modern graffiti on doors made in probably the 1920s, as it clashed really artistically. Our hotel apartment, called Roma Reial, was situated in a little corner off Las Ramblas, which is a very tourist-esque ‘outside mall’ with a boqueria at one end and the gothic quarters at the other, and we were at the centre of street performers and native Spaniards alike. We had a small balcony which gave us a cute view of the buzzing atmosphere below, which was complete with a water fountain that seemed to be a meeting place for the locals. Breakfast was served each morning in the basement of the hotel – a dark, wide room with towering ceilings, which although would have been a perfect set for a horror movie, also turned into a bar in the evening.

One of the main reasons that my family and I wanted to visit Barcelona in particular was so that we could see Gaudi’s work in real life. For those of you who don’t know, Antoni Gaudi was a Catalan architect who designed the most beautiful gothic buildings in Barcelona, and had all these great, incredibly intricate ideas for towers and spirals that he never got to see finished. So, when we walked down to a few of his most famous creations, we were definitely disappointed. Although the work was fantastic, all the crates and scaffoldings that were being used to complete the work completely obstructed the view. Of course, this was to be expected as certain buildings like the Sagrada Familia are too complicated to finish in a mere few years, but we had thought that to some degree we would be able to appreciate all the blood, sweat and tears put into the flawlessly designed architecture. Saying that, what we did see was fantastic, with every little detail expertly crafted into beautiful little projects of their own, and if any of you guys get a chance to visit Barcelona, you can’t miss Gaudi.

As some of you might know, Spanish is probably my favourite language in the world (including variants like Italian), because I love the way that the words roll off your tongue. I’ve been studying Castilian, my most favourite dialect, and like to think that I’m half way to becoming fluent. So, when one evening whilst out at dinner, I asked for the bill once we’d finished, only to call it “la cincuenta” instead of “la cuenta”, meaning that I’d actually asked for “a fifty”. The waiter stared at me whilst my family and the people we’d been chatting to, just laughed. It wasn’t my best showcase of the language.

In downtown Barcelona, there is a small chocolate shop called ‘Be Chocolat‘, where truffles and bars are made in front of you (which is always a nice touch), and I can’t recommend it enough. Despite the fact that I’m lactose intolerant, I had great fun gouging on the mounds of chocolate truffles that we had bought. There are also lots of small, dainty shops filled with brightly coloured pots and handmade souvenirs, that really differ from your average tourist-in-mind businesses. I tasted some (slightly awful) tea in a little tea shop, and took some photos with the vibrant and bold person-sized-people-models, and it was a good day. We passed many, many street performers, many advertising their CDs and websites, giving Barcelona its over personal background music.

On our final evening, after having dinner at Las Ramblas, we went down to Barcelona marina as the sun was setting. I absolutely adore boats and anything ocean-related, and it was nice having a stroll down by the water as a warm breeze ruffled our hair and hugged our bodies like sleeves. It could have been improved by some candle-lit cafes overlooking the water, but all in all it was a cute little place to journey to, which I could imagine walking down to quite often just to admire the beauty of sunset-filled waves.

We left early enough to catch the Barcelona sunrise as we boarded the coach back to the aeroplane, which was truly stunning, as it lit up the beautiful architecture and palm trees around us. The pinkish haze of the busy city was a truly great vision to end the trip on.

All in all, I really enjoyed my time in Barcelona, and I would definitely go back there, even if only to check out places like Park Güell. I plan on getting back into regular blogging, so you should be seeing that from now on, and I’m sorry for having left for centuries.

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I fell in love with the views almost immediately, although the heat constantly clung to my body like a sleeve. The food was deliciously fresh and even though I lived on a dairy-free diet I felt as if I didn’t miss out in the slightest – I ate seabass, brisk salads, baklava, (ironic) English breakfasts… the quality food was one of the top things that I adored about Marmaris.

We ate at a small Turkish restaurant called Etiler perhaps three or four times during our stay as that was where we had originally spotted a load of local diners, and it was one of the best decisions that we made. The food was flawlessly cooked, and as we were by the sea all the seafood was locally caught, meaning that the fresh flavours were pure and unprocessed. I really do suggest eating at local spots as you will very rarely be disappointed – the locals know what’s good, trust them.

Marmaris was a beautiful part of Turkey and I’m so glad to have been situated there for the duration of our stay. However, a few days in to the trip we took a water ‘taksi’ (I’ve never ridden one before and asdfghjkl are they amazing) to another part of Turkey called Icmeler, which although was equally beautiful, it didn’t have as much to do. The shops were very similar to those of Marmaris and the beach walks were proportionally smaller, but it was an interesting visit nevertheless.

I completely fell in love with water ‘taksi’s in Turkey, and being surrounded by nothing but neverending ocean and mountains was probably the most magical part of my time in Asia. The weather was hot and perspiration-inducing, but the sea salt spray from the ocean cooled us all down immediately and left the air young and crisp. The soft crashing of the waves against the boat balanced out the sound of the sea foam doubling over on itself and fizzing – it was even more relaxing than our time at the Turkish Baths.

The taste of salt settled on our lips and crusted my glasses and hair with a fine dusting of spray. My skin was covered in sodium molecules, and was thoroughly exfoliated by mother nature, eliminating spots and blemishes nicely. It was absolutely amazing.