A London Food and Travel blog full of unique experiences.
Having flown 3 return flights to New Zealand in the space of 12 months one year, you could say I’ve learnt more than a few long flight hacks & tips.
For each of those trips I spent over 50 hours hurtling through the clouds, cruising through 4 hemispheres, over several continents and hours staring at a screen roughly 8 inches in diameter.
2022 has unequivocally been a year of highs and lows. I started the year in New Zealand, having a lovely Christmas with my family (which I appreciated even more after the years of lockdowns) only to find out that my blog website provider had let my blog lapse and hadn’t kept any of the content.
The helpful tech on the other end of the phone sounded as upset as I was, and taught me how to lasso SOME of the 10 years of of memories and travel stories – but it wasn’t an auspicious start to the year. I’ve managed to get many blog posts back, and I’ve been slowly re-adding them as time allowed (which has been kinda handy not only for spotting glaring typos, but reliving those memories all over again.)
Dear Santa (and associated anthropomorphic helpers, elves, family members etc who help your international delivery of Christmas gifts.)
This Christmas, I know your elves are going to be super busy, so I would love you to support some of the small, amazing businesses here in the UK. Yes, I will absolutely do well out of the deal thanks to their creativity when their creations turn up under my tree, and yes, I’ll be able to add to my existing collections.
Christmas is becoming increasingly commercialised, but it’s also a time where people really do think of the kindnesses that they can pay forward. As such, I’ve been sharing a charity gift guide annually since 2014 (which have also helped me buy meaningful presents for those friends and family who are notoriously hard to buy for as well…) as well as supporting great small businesses who are making a difference in the world.
Blogger gift guides are pretty well established now, but as ever I couldn’t just do a normal one – it needed a slightly Adventures of a London Kiwi twist (I even spotted a couple of little sheep fellows – hey, you can take the blogger out of New Zealand…)
When we tripped to Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha, what to wear in the Middle East was the aspect I probably researched the most. I’m no fashion plate, but as a female travelling into a conservative country that has quite strong views on what is acceptable to wear, I fretted about what was suitable to throw into my suitcase.
‘What do I wear to the Middle East’ is something I get asked a lot – and I’ve been meaning to write this post for an age. Normally I roll with smart, comfortable and lightweight layers with a couple of nice dresses stashed for the evenings – but I also packed for Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha with a fair amount of care to include long sleeves and cover-ups. (Our eventual destination of New Zealand each time was easy to additionally pack for – bare feet, floaty beach skirts and a single woollen Christmas Jumper for the amusement of my family enjoying 30’C summer heat.)