Our favourite thing to do is mainly eat our way around somewhere new: cafes, wine bars, hipster lunch spots, patisseries, and well reviewed restaurants. Trip advisor is our best friend for finding food (...most of the time). Many of you will know I'm prone to fits of 'hanger' (hungry anger) so trip advisor is good to quickly look up what's decent near by and to keep me on the straight and narrow.
We also love just dandering around with not much of a plan for the day. Now, I'm a planner and there is nothing better than making out an itinerary but we (I) like to just plan out what highlights we want to see that day and then just see what happens for the rest of the day (Philip prefers just seeing what happens). That typically just means finding a good cappuccino and a pastry but we're open to spontaneity… it could be ice-cream).
We're the tourists who go in and out of every boutique, art gallery and free museum all while trying to pretend that we're local and very wealthy (this is done by wearing sunglasses no matter the weather and never looking at a map no matter how lost you are). One thing that is an absolute must is drinking prosecco/cava during the day and outside preferably - I love it because it's just not something you do everyday so you get that lovely holiday feeling!
I thought I'd just share some photos of our recent city breaks: London, Madrid, & Amsterdam. Since we got married we made it a priority to travel as much as we possibly can!
London: Despite spending about 12 months travelling to & from London on a weekly basis for work I never fully appreciated it (mainly because you only see the tube-office-hotel) so we love getting weekends in London to chill out. Our favourite things to do when in London are: 1) afternoon tea on park lane 2) shopping 3) walking around chelsea & kensington and looking at real estate prices 4) grabbing a takeaway from monmouth cafe (our absolute favourite coffee!) 5) visiting Neal's Yard 6) people watching in Nottinghill.
Madrid: My number one city! I'm lucky enough to have lived here for a while so when we went back last November it was lovely to just walk around all the familiar spots. The whole time we were here we were making plans to make this an annual visit just because we love it so much. Our favourite things to do in Madrid are: 1) stopping for tapas and tinto de verano anywhere & everywhere 2) visiting the palace and the royal gardens 3) people watching in sol & plaza mayor 4) strolling round Retiro 5) drinking coffee/cava in Malasana 6) pretending to be rich & fancy in Salamanca and 7) shopping in Zara & Mango & Sephora because they are just so much better in Spain.
Amsterdam: We visited Amsterdam just a couple of weeks ago and really enjoyed it. Whilst it wouldn't be one of our favourites, we would still recommend it just because it has to be experienced! We spent 4 days in this quirky city and in the fabulous Waldorf Astoria (thank you hilton points). Once you get used to the smell of weed around every corner, it's a really lovely place to be. It's so nice to walk around though I found it disorientating because I couldn't figure out all the different canals - every street looked the same to me (and no, I did not sample any of the "goods"). We avoided the Red Light District because we just didn't think it was something we wanted to see so we spent most of our days walking around the 9 Streets area and enjoying all their little hipster-esque cafes, bars, art shops, fashion boutiques and home stores.
Amsterdam highlights: 9 streets, treating myself to jewellery/vintage trinkets/Cos dress, wine tasting, brunch, free macaroons & free whiskey, and sampling cheese at every opportunity.
Looking forward to our next trips and plan on sharing more of our travels with you (with better quality pictures if I remember to pack my Canon!). We've planned an Italian road trip for the summer full of city breaks around Milan, Lake Como, Lake Garda, Verona, and Venice. Can't wait!
Give us some more tips of cool cities to visit…
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It was Lake Garda we went to first on a family holiday to Italy and the best place we found for lemon sorbet and gelato was just in the centre of the bay right on the waterfront :)
ReplyDeleteOh sounds great Kirsty! I literally can't wait to eat everything around me in Italy :) x
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ReplyDeleteGelateria Flora! Can't believe I remembered what the shop front looked like lol, I'd love to go back and eat my way around..I would really love to go to Madrid so you'll have to give me some tips for there :) x
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