Places to see!
Lucca is a beautiful old town in the north of Tuscany. Only an hours drive from the more famous Florence, Lucca is known for its Renaissance architecture and its fortified old walls. With its well-preserved, centuries-old buildings and churches, a visit to Lucca truly lets you step back in time. It didn’t take long for us to fall in love with this stunning little...
Siena is a medieval city in the heart of Tuscany, just an hour south of Florence. Although you’re unlikely to get sick of Florence (how could you?), given that you’ve come all that way, you may still want to explore a bit more of Tuscany. Siena is the biggest of all the hill towns scattered around the area and one of the most visited. Because its historic centre is...
Another place I remembered fondly from my first trip to Tuscany as a teen was the beautiful Tuscan hill town of San Gimignano. When we decided to spend a few days in Tuscany, I knew I had to revisit this beautiful medieval town. San Gimignano is a pretty little walled town situated halfway between Florence and Siena. Its historic centre has been declared a...
The Italian city of Florence is Tuscany’s most famous and most visited city. Every year, millions of visitors flock to Florence to get lost in its streets, admire its incredible churches and marvel at its museums and palazzos. Florence is the world’s art capital and whether or not you’re an art fanatic, you can’t help but gasp at the beauty of...
Simon and I have been travelling for years. So when we told people we’d never been to Rome, many of them were rather surprised! We had both been to Italy many moons ago before we even met, but we were both yet to visit its capital. I had loved Italy when I visited Florence and Venice as a teenager. I had even sworn to myself that I would one day return to this...
We chose to end our South African trip (and in fact our two months in Africa) in Johannesburg, South Africa’s biggest city. This was mainly because our ten-year anniversary trip package ended there, rather than any particular desire to see the city. Johannesburg doesn’t have a great reputation for safety and unfortunately, that reputation tends to overshadow any...
After an amazing start in Zambia, followed by some incredible game drives in both Chobe National Park and the Okavango Delta in Botswana, our 10-year anniversary trip was sadly coming to an end. The last part of our trip took us back into South Africa, to a part of the country we had not heard of prior to booking our trip, the Madikwe Game Reserve. Where is the...
After spending three amazing days in Chobe National Park, it was time to move on for more African adventures. The next leg of our 10-year anniversary trip took us to Sanctuary Retreat’s Stanley’s Camp, a safari lodge that borders the Moremi Game Reserve in the Okavango Delta. The Okavango Delta is another of Botswana’s gems. With its rich ecosystem, this World...
Some sad updatesA year after our visit, Doug Groves was tragically killed while out walking with Jabu and Morula, trampled to death by a wild elephant. The world lost an incredible man. RIP Doug. His wife Sandi continues their incredible work.Then, in July 2021, Jabu also died after being released into the wild. The cause of his death was not clear but it is...
After our time exploring Victoria Falls on both the Zimbabwean and Zambian sides, we crossed the border to Botswana and headed to one of the best places on earth to see African elephants, Chobe National Park. Chobe National Park was not our first African safari. We had already been lucky enough to see a fair amount of wildlife during our safaris in Uganda, Namibia...