Solo female travel expert, focusing on travelling around a 9-5 job, getting the most bang for your buck and soft-adventure experiences.
HOW is it almost the end of 2016? This is absolutely ridiculous, I’m sure January 1st was yesterday.
Back in April, I wrote a blog post called “My 2016 Travel Plans“, so today I’m going to do a big summary and see how well my plans held up!
January 2016 – Work Busy Season
As long as I’m working in personal tax, I won’t be travelling in January any time soon! This is our busy period and we work 6 days a week – I definitely am not allowed a holiday!
February 2016 – York, England
I didn’t get my butt in gear quickly enough after the January busy season at work to plan a trip for February, but I did get to discover a new UK love of mine – York!
March – Krakow, Poland
Wahoo, the first international trip of the year! To Krakow, a city I had been dying to visit for quite some time due to my inner history geek! Having the opportunity to visit Auschwitz was incredible and I really want to return to take some of my family members who are as history obsessed as me!
April – Studying
I had two pretty massive exams at the start of May, so April wasn’t a great travel month for me! I was confined to my desk with my head in books for most of the month! The good news is that next April should be my last study session EVER!
May – Ohrid, Macedonia
After the mayhem of exams at the beginning of the month, I was dying to have a trip booked for late May. When I saw cheap flights to Ohrid (a place I’d not even heard of) on Skyscanner, I was sold! I treated my friend to the trip for her birthday and I honestly think it was one of my favourite trips this year – I don’t think I’ve ever been somewhere so beautiful!
June – Salzburg & Hallstatt, Austria
Here’s the true Instagram trip of the year – I can’t scroll through Instagram without seeing a picture of Hallstatt! I originally started looking at booking a trip to Vienna but the prices for accommodation were just too ridiculous in June, so we settled for Salzburg and I am SO glad! It was the perfect little city for a long weekend!
July – Arundel & London, UK
One of my New Year’s Resolutions was to see more of the UK and I think I achieved that this year! Arundel was my favourite little day trip this year, if you live nearby, I would definitely recommend that you visit! I walked around the town exclaiming “I want to live here” more times than I care to admit!
The latter half of the month saw me and my friends take another friend on a surprise day trip to London for her 21st birthday which featured drinks at the Sky Garden and dinner at Crazy Bear – both are now highly recommended by me!
August – Cologne, Germany
Dun dun dun, my first international trip with Callum! And he was the unlucky soul that got to experience my incessant need to visit remote castles. Visiting Burg Eltz was perhaps my favourite day of this year – the long hike was beautiful in itself but having the perfect travel buddy made it even better!
September – Edinburgh, Scotland (& Nearly Norway)
Another UK gem was found in September – how bloody lovely is Edinburgh?! This is the “surprise” birthday trip that I described in my 2016 travel plans! I tried to throw her off the scent by saying in that post that it was an early birthday present for someone when in actual fact it was a late birthday present for her!
We had the BEST long weekend in Edinburgh and I have fallen head over heels in love with the city!
This was also the month of the almost trip to Bergen (Norway). I had reserved a space at a hostel and cancelled at the last minute because I had been told by everyone that experiencing the fjords in September was a bad idea because of fog – little to my dismay, after cancelling Planet D were in Bergen that EXACT weekend and took so many amazing photos with glorious weather!
October – Centre Parcs, UK
This was another month that I should have been sitting at home revising, but I did manage to sneak away on one little trip! I headed to Centre Parcs with my Callum’s family for the weekend. It was my first time there and I’ve just realised that I never wrote about it! Watch this space!
November – Birthday Month
At the beginning of the month, I had more exams and I turned 22! Sadly, I didn’t go away anywhere to celebrate but I did book my first trip for 2017 in November – so that counts right? Marrakech here we come!
We did however take the time to explore some more of Essex (my home county if you couldn’t tell by the blog title!). We had the best day at Rope Runners, Kelvedon Secret Nuclear Bunker and Hopefield Animal Sanctuary using my trusty Essex Pass!
December – Toronto, Canada
From 26 – 31 December, I will be in the very cold city of Toronto! It’s my first time in the city (and Canada for that matter), so any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Disclaimer: This is not a sponsored post and all thoughts are my own.
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Looks like you’ve had a great year! I started my travel roundup last week too!
Hopefully lots more trips to come in 2017!
http://www.georginadoes.co.uk
We did have some similar trips this year! Hope you enjoy Toronto. I was there in June and it was scorching but hopefully you’ll get lots of snow. Krakow and Hallstatt both on my list for 2017 too.