Dear planning shy travellers,
Cologne in Germany is the perfect destination for a long weekend city break.
(Nb: I write Cologne, Germany to ensure that the whole London/Tower Bridge confusion doesn’t happen – years and years ago an American millionaire thought he’d bought the beautiful Tower Bridge, but actually bought the rather more plain London Bridge and transported every stone all the way to the desert in the US…)
I simultaneously adore and loathe surprises. WowTrip wanted to send a group of us travel addicts bloggers to a surprise holiday destination, and I was curious to see how I as a type-A organiser would cope with it.
Disclaimer: We were invited guests of WowTrip but my images and words are all very much my own.
It couldn’t have been easier – we selected a date we could all do, sent over our passport & contact details and let the time run away in anticipation. It was like Christmas, but with the delicious excitement of wanderlust shimmied in. (To book WowTrip have a fabulously easy procedure; decide how much you want to spend, when you want to go, discard the destinations you’ve already been – the first is free, then £5 each for crossing off more destinations – and then wait with excitement for your surprise trip!)
Every journey begins with a single step – and if I’m entirely honest, this month’s travel linkup on green travel and being more sustainable was more of a challenge than usual. It’s never been the most important consideration when we’re planning travel – we can definitely do some work on that.
We try and do our very best on a human scale; we don’t own a car and use public transport when at home and travelling where possible (not to mention the wai-wai express – that’s walking to non-NZers), reduce/reuse/recycle as much as we possibly can, and we adopted a small wild animal into our home – who definitely has a zero carbon paw-print. (She’s also worn a bell for years to protect birds & local animals – now she’s a bit too old and lazy.)
2018 has been full of travel, adventures, bad hairstyles in photos and explorations.
My first couple of months were concentrated on building my business and scooting around London (fitting in a few bits of London sightseeing and restaurant visits) before we flew to Romania for a week to explore the Transylvanian castles and political history of Bucharest. I fitted in a cheeky solo beach break in Bournemouth in the middle of a busy project, I explored Basel in Switzerland solo (where in one day I managed 3 meals in 3 countries) and went on a group trip to Cologne, Germany.
During our week in Salzburg, we decided that a couple of nights in an Austrian lake retreat was in order – we just wanted a little peace and quiet in an out-of-the-way nook.
Furiously Google researching before we left, I hatched a plan to hop on the coaches that serve the towns dotted around Austria, and after boarding we merrily watched the countryside gradually change before our eyes over the 45-minute journey.