Miyajima is a picture-perfect island off the coast of Hiroshima. It is the best day trip to take if you want to escape that bustling city. Miyajima is really easy to get to and has so much to offer in terms of culture and local traditions. Declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996, Miyajima is one of the most popular tourist’s destinations in Japan...
After our stay in Kyoto we hopped back on a bullet train, this time headed towards Hiroshima. Our ride on the Shinkansen was under two hours long, direct and as always very pleasant. Because we left Kyoto bright and early, we arrived in Hiroshima just before 10 am. That let us spend a few hours in Hiroshima itself, before catching a ferry to Miyajima Island in the...
On a night out when we’d all had a few too many glasses of champagne, my best friend Charlotte decided that for her 40th birthday we’d all go to the Maldives. What a great idea I thought! A week together on a beautiful island in the middle of the Indian Ocean sounded like a blast. What started as a drunken idea quickly became a reality when a few months later...
There are so many great places to visit in Japan that it’s hard to see them all in one go. But if you’re visiting either Kyoto or Osaka, a great side trip is to the city of Nara. Nara is less than an hour away by train from either of those places and is a beautiful place to visit. You may have heard of Nara before; two things make it very popular, the wild...
Kyoto is another great city to visit while in Japan. Japan’s former imperial capital has a population just shy of one and a half million people, making it much smaller and quieter than Tokyo. The main reason to visit Kyoto is to soak up its fascinating culture and history. Kyoto is also the best place in Japan to go temple hopping. Why? Because it has over sixteen...
If you want to escape the crowds of Tokyo, another popular outing is a day trip to Kamakura. Kamakura has so many temples that it is also known as the Kyoto of East Japan. From Tokyo, it takes between one to one and a half hours by train to reach Kamakura, depending on which train line you use and your point of departure. We were staying in Shinjuku and simply hopped...
During our week long stay in Tokyo the bustling capital of Japan, we took a day trip to the popular town of Hakone. We were hoping to catch a glimpse of the famous Mt Fuji. Because leaving Japan without seeing Mt Fuji would be a real shame. We’d seen so many amazing photos of this imposing mountain that we couldn’t wait to finally set eyes on it for ourselves. From...
For many years Japan was high on our travel bucket list. The beautiful temples and blooming Japanese gardens in travel magazines made me want to go and explore it. So after a lot of research, we finally booked to visit Japan during the famous Sakura season, better known as “cherry blossom”. This was our first visit, so we divided our time between...
After many years of flying through Singapore and never getting a chance to stop to explore it, we thought it was time to see what Singapore was all about. So we decided to stopover for three days on our way back from Sri Lanka. I had heard mixed reviews about Singapore from friends. Some love it and some not so much. Of course everybody is different, so it was our...
“Why Sri Lanka?” That’s what most people asked us when we said we were going there on our next travels. We were a little surprised by that question. My own answers were along the lines of “Why not?” or “It’s somewhere I’ve never been” (gotta tick those countries off the list!). Well now that we’re back home we can finally answer that question...